Russian-Ukrainian War: Combat Tactics & Strategy

[Deans]

https://rpdeans.blogspot.com/2026/04/uk ... ussia.html

A deep dive into casualty figures gave me an interesting insight. Russian losses among its infantry is affecting their ability
to take territory at the rate they were expected to. My latest blog post analyses this.

[Manish_P]

... Russian losses among its infantry is affecting their ability to take territory at the rate they were expected to....

A tale almost as old as time itself. After all is said and done you need the humble bloodied infantryman to win a war.

[ramana]

How a Ukrainian drone unit operated about 40 km + from the Frontline.
https://x.com/i/status/2055557890052674015

Do read the series. Combat operations are changing. What used to need fancy artillery is now being replaced with drones.

[ShauryaT]

How a Ukrainian drone unit operated about 40 km + from the Frontline.
https://x.com/i/status/2055557890052674015

Do read the series. Combat operations are changing. What used to need fancy artillery is now being replaced with drones.

While drones have certainly changed the battlefield in the Donbass, I also feel anti drone tech such a radar cued, FCS controlled coordinated 7.62 mm and 30 mm cannons are coming into play along with more simple defenses like a steel net, along with exotics such as lasers to defeat this drone threat. The jury is still out, if these are true battle field weapons or just harassment weapons. Having said that, for forces that do not have the means and tech of mass rocket forces, drones are at the very least good harassment. Do not think India should take off its eyes from building scalable rocket forces and other high precision but cost effective solutions to tackle the 100-300KM range for under $500K per shot.

[Manish_Sharma]

https://x.com/SudsG5/status/2058031259344134202?s=20

There's been a PR blitz on the Ukrainian drone war of late. Make no mistake, Ukranian drone capabilities, esp long range deep strikes in Russia have improved exponentially. Multiple studies now show that drones are the single largest driver of causalities (a self pat on the back here, I called this in 2023 when drones were just making an appearance) for both the Russians and Afu.

However this blitz and the attendant chatter on the "Russia will collapse anytime" angle hide one key aspect.

Russia has in the past 2 years completely reworked it's battlefield strategies to minimise losses. Even Mediazona report lower losses in 2025 vs 2024 and 2026 is likely to be even lower than 2025.

The Russian offensive war went through 2 distinct phases since the start and is on the 3rd now.

Phase 1 was a pure conventional, massed armour / apc formations type war across a very wide front. The AFU did well to fight this off and the RU took horrendous casualties.

Phase 2 was the RU shortening lines to maximise AFU attrition but set piece siege battles like Avidka and Bakhmut. The template here was a bogged down trench facing trench war, with arty doing the most killing, with a few set pieces where the RU threw in human waves and took these objectives in a few months time but at horrific and unsustainable casualties.

After this there was an interim phase where the Afu tried to go on the offensive and learnt just how hard is it to traverse minefields, zeroed in arty and waves of drones.

Which brings us to the present. The RU is now a highly networked force, and by all accounts vastly outproduce the Afu on drones (western media though doesn't even talk about this, only the Afu drone blitz). They don't fight set piece battles anymore.

Take the battles of Pokrovorsk and now the next city in the defensive belt Kostiantynivka, the RUAF simply kept nibbling at the edges, inflicting high causality rates on the defenders who were fighting from fixed positions and as of 2 weeks ago broke in to the city centre without fanfare.

The current RUAF strategy involves highly networked troops, moving on pre mapped areas and then salami slicing it. Then rinse and repeat. Yes AFU drones are reaping a grim harvest but then why are RUAF casualties lower than what they were in 2024 and 2024 was many times lower than what it was in 2023?

The end state though is still not clear but clearly the Russian state has found some sort of a sweet spot in terms of casuality vs battlefield success.

The drone strikes in the Russian rear must 100% be causing a lot of economic pain but I don't think that in itself is going to cause Russia to come to the table