Barros said Russian advances have been extremely slow, with the front line shifting only marginally. He estimated that Russian troops needed about 22 months to advance roughly 32 km from Avdiivka in the Donetsk region to Pokrovsk, a city Moscow aimed to seize by autumn 2024 but has yet to fully capture.
A June report by Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) showed that in areas such as Kharkiv region Russian forces advanced at an average pace of about 50 metres per day in 2024 — slower than the Allied offensive on the Somme during World War I. Since January 2024, Russia has captured around 5,000 square kilometres, less than 1% of Ukraine’s total territory.
“That is very little, achieved at the cost of hundreds of thousands of casualties and the loss of more than 1,000 armoured personnel carriers and over 500 tanks,” Barros said, calling Ukraine’s defence operationally strong and effective. He added that some analysts tend to overemphasise minor Russian territorial gains of no strategic significance and prematurely predict a collapse of the front line.
CSIS estimates show the scale of losses on the Russian side. Between February 2022 and May 2025, around 250,000 Russian soldiers were killed in Ukraine, compared with roughly 50,000 killed in all wars fought by the Soviet Union and Russia between World War II and February 2022. Including wounded soldiers, total Russian casualties amount to at least 950,000. CSIS said no Soviet or Russian war since World War II has come close to the current fatality rate in Ukraine.
Ukrainian losses are also severe. CSIS estimates between 60,000 and 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed, with total casualties — killed and wounded — reaching about 400,000.
Barros said the past year also saw a worrying rise in civilian casualties, which he linked in part to a “dramatic” increase in the use of drones. He said Russia now launches up to 600 Shahed-type drones at civilian targets in a single night.
Data from the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU), published on Nov. 25, showed that long-range drones and missiles killed 548 civilians and wounded 3,592 in 2025, increases of 26% and 75% respectively compared with the same period a year earlier. Between January and October, more than 12,000 civilians were killed or wounded in various attacks, up 27% year on year and 67% compared with 2023.
Most civilian casualties were recorded in Ukrainian cities far from the front line, reflecting intensified Russian long-range strikes, HRMMU said.
ISW's Barros said the mass use of drones has fundamentally changed battlefield tactics. Russia has made what he described as “significant and concerning” progress near Huliaipole in southern Ukraine by prioritising specific sectors of the more than 1,200-km front line and relying on infiltration tactics.
He said both sides now operate within a “tactical strike zone” 15–30 km deep, where the use of armoured vehicles has become rare because drones quickly detect and destroy large targets. As a result, combat is increasingly conducted by very small units of a few soldiers tasked with stealthy infiltration.
“Anything larger is seen and killed by drones,” Barros said, adding that even the movement of three tanks is enough to attract lethal drone strikes.
According to the Atlantic Council, about three-quarters of Russian casualties in the past year were caused by Ukrainian drones. Ukrainian commanders cited by The New York Times said drones now kill more soldiers and destroy more armoured vehicles in Ukraine than all traditional weapons combined, including tanks, artillery and mortars.
Of the 31 Abrams tanks delivered to Ukraine by the United States in 2023, 19 have been destroyed, many of them disabled by drones, the newspaper reported.
Barros said Ukraine retains a technological edge in drone production, but Russia has proven capable of rapidly scaling up output. Kyiv produced more than one million FPV drones by 2024, while Moscow claims it can manufacture around 2,500–3,000 drones per month.
Both countries are continuing to expand production and each planned to produce between 3 million and 4 million drones this year, according to The New York Times.
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Source: PAP