It's from SONAR21, "Why Can't the Russians Defeat Ukraine?"
Russia committed approximately 150,000–190,000 troops to the initial invasion on February 24, 2022, drawn from essentially its entire available pool of pre-war Battalion Tactical Groups — roughly 100 BTGs out of approximately 120 available.
The initial objective was to create enough military pressure on Ukraine to force it to the negotiating table… That goal was achieved. When Judge Napolitano, Mario Nawfal and I interviewed Foreign Minister Lavrov on March 13, 2024, Mr. Lavrov emphatically stated that the proposed Istanbul Communique was based on a document provided by Ukraine.
The delegations led by Ukrainian negotiator David Arakhamia and Russian diplomat Vladimir Medinsky met in Istanbul with President Erdogan serving as the mediator. A draft agreement (sometimes called the “Istanbul Communiqué” or draft peace deal) was discussed and the two sides reached a tentative agreement that included Ukrainian neutrality, limits on Ukraine’s military, security guarantees, and the status of Crimea and Donbas. Then the US and the UK intervened and compelled Ukraine to abandon the talks.
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Russia’s 2025 strategy represented a deliberate evolution from its single-axis focus of 2023 and 2024 toward a multi-front simultaneous pressure approach designed to overwhelm Ukraine’s ability to reinforce any single threatened sector. The year is best understood through its declared objectives, its operational execution across multiple axes, and the structural shift in how Russia was choosing to fight. It is important to emphasize that Russia’s SMO strategy was still intact — i.e., Russia was not mobilizing the country for war, it was continuing to carryout limited operations with the goal of demilitarizing Ukrainian forces without putting the Russian nation on a war footing.
Entering 2026, according to Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Syrskyi, more than 700,000 Russian soldiers were engaged against Ukrainian forces — a figure Putin has cited similarly. Note the rare convergence there: both Kyiv and Moscow have put the Ukraine grouping at around 700,000, which makes it one of the more reliable numbers in this space. This represents almost a four-fold increase in the number of Russian soldiers committed to the Ukraine battlefront compared to 2022.
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The total strength of the Russian army now stands at 1.5 million soldiers, which means less than half are committed to the fight in Ukraine. Here is the critical difference between Russia and Ukraine: Russia has ample reserves of men and ammunition while Ukraine has no strategic reserve of fresh, equipped formations that could exploit success or backstop a major breach. While the war grinds on at a slow pace in terms of Western assessments, the facts on the ground show that Ukraine has no viable means of stopping the Russian advances. Russia, it appears, is content to inflict massive casualties on Ukraine using its superiority in artillery, drones and FAB-glide bombs. Ukraine’s artillery and drone forces are dwarfed by Russia and Ukraine does not have FAB-glide bombs and the aircraft to deliver them if it did.
The defeat of Ukraine is inevitable. The real question is how much of Ukraine outside of the Donbas, Kherson and Zaporhyzhia will Russia capture?
Very concise and comprehensive.
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