Russia - Ukraine December 31st, 2025

The below is an attempt to condense some of what I feel are the key developments of the last 12 months, and to a certain extent the war as whole, into a few pages. 

Politics

Politically, and as a whole, the key event this year, far outshining anything else, was President Trump’s arrival in the White House and his inserting himself into the war, or, more correctly, trying to end the war. Sitting here well on the outside and trying to establish some perspective on these developments, it is clear that only two people really are working to find a peaceful solution to this war: Pope Leo and President Trump. Others may want the war to end, but not peacefully.

Further, it seems as if the leadership in Europe is determined to continue the war, without any real idea how it might be brought to a successful - to Kyiv - conclusion.

Kyiv, while wanting the war to end, has staked out a position - no land will be ceded to Russia - that appears at this point to be impossible to achieve, particularly in light of the single most important factor, the demographics of the war. 

Russia meanwhile, the target of a 4 year ramp-up in sanctions, has adapted, and learned to live with the sanctions, and it seems unlikely at this point that economic sanctions are going to push Russia to agree to any sort of agreement, particularly given the continued support of China. Prognostications on the economic collapse of Russia continue to surface, but there are few explanations why Russia will economically fail when there are multiple European states with worse economic indicators, and they continue to function.

Europe, meanwhile, has let another year pass, and has yet to fully ween itself from Russian energy. Nor has Europe, with more than 10 times the collective GDP of Russia, managed to match Russia in the production of most weapons and ammunition.

Combat Operations

The reality on the ground over the past year, and since summer of 2023 is that the Ukrainian army continue to demonstrate more tactical agility, but the Russians retain the operational edge and the overall initiative.

Ukrainian forces routinely act quicker than the Russians, exploiting seems between units at the battalion and company level, and continue to demonstrate the ability to move units (brigades) around, shifting them from one hot-spot to another, and doing so significantly quicker than the Russians. The retaking of Kupyansk is a case in point: Russian forces infiltrated Kupyansk and at one point controlled perhaps 40% of the city proper. The Russian forces - probably about 2 battalions (perhaps 1,000 troops total) bogged down, and the nearby Russian units, not engaged in the fight, were shifted southward. Ukrainian forces were then pulled from southern Ukraine and moved to Kupyansk and over the course of the last month or so, as Russian elements continued to withdraw, the city has been retaken and cleared.

But, at the same time, Russian forces overall continue to grind slowly west. 

A year ago Russian forces in the north were all east of the Oskil River as far south was Kupyansk, and east of the Zherebets river further south. Since then they have pushed across the Oskil, (they have also taken more of the border area just north of that river), pushed across the Zherebets River along its entire length, and in the south, west of Lyman, have pushed across the Nitrius River and are approaching the Oskil in the south.

In the Bakhmut area they have taken Siversk, they have mauled Chasiv Yar, they have pushed through Toretsk and are now impinging on Kostianitnivka, They have pushed into Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad and the are just north-east of that city, they have reached Novopavlivka (south-west of Pokrovsk), they have reached nearly all of the East bank of the Vovcha River, they now have all of Hulyaipole under fire and a small part of the city is now controlled by Russian forces, and fighting continues across the south.

In each of these cases, on any given day, the Ukrainian forces can counter-attack and make gains. But the Russian ability to simply take the blow, and then slowly resume the attack remains undiminished.

Added to this is the development in the past year of the Russian use of ever more drones, the proliferation of Russian jammers, and the proliferation of Russian fiber-optic controlled FPV (first person video) drones, coupled with better reconnaissance and the use of many more gliding smart bombs. Taken together, they have substantially complicated Ukrainian tactical movement, and Ukrainian logistics.

But there is an additional point - the towns and cities that the Russians take are in ruins. Gen Syrskyi has made the point that Ukrainian forces still control a large chunk of Pokrovsk; he says 50%, I think not that much, but the point is, in fact, immaterial. A year ago Pokrovsk was still a key logistics and personnel marshaling site for the Ukrainian army. Today it is a ruin. Even if they recaptured it, it would be of no value to Ukraine in any sort of defense of the country. Like many of the towns and small cities the Russians have rolled over, the city is in ruins.

Casualties

The final point in this discussion is casualties. MODUK recently made a statement finally bringing them into some sort of agreement with impartial assessments of Russian losses. Mediazone remains the most disciplined of any group that is studying the problem, and the UK estimate seems to lean in that direction. Mediazone places Russian killed in the range of 157,000 - 219,000. I have made my own stab at casualties and ended up with 165,000 to 190,000 killed, so, I will use the Mediazone number of 219,000.

But there is also the question of wounded. Both Russian and Ukrainian forces appear (hidden within all the numbers) to be running between 3 to 1 and 4 to 1 wounded per killed (WIA v KIA) But the total WIA number is mainly irrelevant. What is relevant is the number of WIAs who do not return to active duty - the irreplaceable loss. In both armies this is reported as 30% (Actually, they boast that 70% of all wounded return to service; neither talk about losses). Assuming a 4-to-1 WIA v KIA ratio (which may be high) that means that for every 5 KIAs the armies would also suffer 6 WIAs who will not return to duty.

Using 219,000 as the Russia KIA number would yield 263,000 wounded who will not return to service. In addition, there are perhaps 50,000 Russian men charged with desertion. This places Russian irreplaceable losses at 532,000 through nearly 4 years of war.

What about Ukrainian losses?

Ukrainian losses remain well hidden. However, there are some numbers that have sifted out which give some hint of the casualties; the most important was a statement almost a year ago that 100,000 Ukrainians had lost arms or limbs as a result of the war. Interestingly, numbers exist that allow you to make reasonable estimates on what that means as far as total casualties.

First, the number of amputations has grown at a fairly steady rate of just under 2,900 per month, which would suggest the current number is in the vicinity of 133,000.

Injuries in combat - civilian or military - run about 70% to arms and legs; then a percentage of those result in amputation, normally somewhere between 5% and 10%

As there have been some 40,000 civilian wounded, this would yield perhaps 3,000 civilian amputees. The rest would therefore be military. For the sake of understating vice overstating, call the number of military amputees 100,000, recognizing that all further numbers could be 25% low.

If there have been 100,000 amputations, that would suggest KIAs in excess of 250,000 (perhaps as high as 350,000) with 300,000 wounded who will not return to active duty. And there are more than 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers charged with desertion.

This places Ukrainian irreplaceable losses at 650,000 or higher.

Russian irreplaceable losses would be 532,000. 

The real translation there is that Ukrainian irreplaceable losses are on the order of 2% of the population, while Russian irreplaceable losses are on the order of 0.36% of the population; placing Ukraine’s loss rate at 5.5 times that of Russia’s.

Thoughts 

The Ukrainian demographics are the most disturbing part of this entire equation; As you’ll recall, Ukraine in 1992 has a population of 52 million. By the beginning of 2022 that number had shrunk to 43 million. The estimate by various international organizations (the UN, the International Monetary Fund) now put the number at 31 million. Projections by various think tanks suggest the number will drop below 15 million in the next ten years; the war is not going to help that trend.

In trying to figure out what might happen next year, I am reminded of Yogi Berra’s wisdom:  “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” But, here’s a few thoughts:

The Russians have five times as many people as Ukraine. Filed under the heading “Blind squirrels finds acorn,” I commented in the spring of 2022 that if Russia solved the manpower problem, they will “win” (winning to be defined in a moment). By the end of 2022 Putin appears to have settled on a plan that met his needs. It’s not perfect, but it is succeeding.

To this, Gen Syrskyi recently commented to those who call for Ukrainian forces to withdraw from this or that city: “Where do we go? We have no place to go.”

My answer to that is that Ukraine needed to build hard defenses that the Russians couldn't push through. In the summer of 2023 the Ukrainian army launched a counter-offensive in the south (south of Orikhiv) that never penetrated the final positions of the Russian defensive line. Ukraine needed, and needs, to have the same stiff a defensive line. Once they stopped the Russian army for good, then perhaps they could seize the initiative and change the problem. But they have not, and they have not had the initiative since fall of 2023. It is worth noting that even when Ukrainian forces pushed across the border in the direction of Kursk, the Russians didn’t change their plans elsewhere along the line (though Kyiv later claimed they did); that is, Russia did not surrender the initiative.

What that distills down to is that the Russians have settled on a way of war that is giving them what they want. And it is important to look at what that is: a land without Ukrainians. That is “winning” for Moscow. The point of the Russian tactics is to cause casualties - and they are doing that. But also, to destroy Ukraine. The power grid, the ports, the rail networks, are being destroyed. And, Ukrainians continue to leave the country. At the same time, Kyiv and Europe do not have a strategy that moves them closer to the survival of Ukraine. It’s going to be a long year for Kyiv, unless President Trump can make the deal of the century.

v/r and Happy New Year - pete