As Ukraine entered its fourth year of Russia’s full-scale war, it was geopolitics, not the war itself, that dominated headlines, as Kyiv’s relationship with new U.S. President Donald Trump nosedived over a proposed minerals deal.
In the meantime though, the battlefield continues to rage on multiple fronts, with daily Russian assaults continuing through a period of consistent sub-zero temperatures across eastern Ukraine.
The most intense fighting continues to be in southern Donetsk Oblast, where, although Russian territorial gains have slowed to a halt outside the key city of Pokrovsk, Ukraine’s defense of the area around Kurakhove buckled over the first months of 2025.
Going forward, many unpredictable factors hang over the next year of the war. Ukraine is trying to solidify its defense with new reforms, Russia faces questions over its ability to sustain its current rate of attacks and losses, while looming largest is the future of U.S. aid.
To reflect on the key conclusions of the third year of the full-scale war and what to look out for in the fourth, the Kyiv Independent sat down with the U.S.-based military analyst and senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Rob Lee during a working visit to Kyiv.
The interview has been edited for clarity and length.
The Kyiv Independent: How would you describe how 2024 went for Ukraine, and what kind of core issues have really defined it?
Rob Lee: 2024 was a year in which Russia had a number of advantages. They had scaled the production of ammunition before this – the U.S. and Europe were trying to catch up to that. They had already received significant support from North Korea, from Iran, both in terms of ammunition, equipment, and now obviously troops from North Korea.
Ukraine began the year in a position of weakness, where they struggled to replace manpower losses from the summer of 2023 offensive. And we know the U.S. delayed passing the aid package for about six months until April 2024. So last winter was a quite difficult time for Ukraine, where there was a lack of fortifications. We know that Ukraine has improved on that since then. There's a lack of manpower, still a problem, and there was a key lack of ammunition too.
I would say on the positive side, it's obviously been a very difficult year for Ukraine, but the worst-case scenario did not happen. We didn't see any kind of significant breakthrough, like an operational breakthrough.
We've seen incremental attritional assaults. Russia has made advances. It is still a very difficult situation on the front line, but there was a possibility that things would have gotten worse.
We came here three times in 2024. If I gave a summary of the findings from those trips, the manpower situation progressively got worse each time. The brigades we were meeting at the front line were more and more on their strength each time we came.
The average age of Ukrainian infantry was going up each time, so maybe it was 40 at the beginning of the year. It became 45 later on, and we were hearing in October that brigades had an average age of 50-year-olds as infantry.
It was very clear that there was a sense of maybe not exhaustion, but just of being fatigued or tired. Obviously, people have been fighting this war for three years now, a high-intensity conventional war. But look, Ukrainians are still fighting. They're still putting up a very tough defense.
The Kyiv Independent: The Russian advance now seems to have really slowed down, is that, from the Russian side, more resembling to you an operational pause or a greater kind of lack of this same ability to attack with expendable infantry at the same rate?
Rob Lee: So on both sides, there's a general sense of weakness. When we look at the forces, both militaries have significant experience now in combat. Three years of experience. But the experience is not evenly distributed across the force. So UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) units, UAV pilots are extremely capable on both sides now.
Artillery crews are very capable because many of these people have three years of experience. The attrition of FPV (first-person view drone) pilots and artillery is lower, and so in many cases you have cohesive units that have operated for years. So they're very, very capable.
But the infantry side has become degraded on both sides. Most of the attrition and casualties is suffered by the infantry. And so in many cases, in an infantry squad, many of the people are going to be new, with probably less than a month of experience in many cases.
I think Russia made a choice: Instead of trying to develop well-trained, cohesive units, they've kind of accepted this attritional fight where we're going to get a lot of infantry, we're going to get a lot of manpower, we're going to throw them into assaults. We're not going to train them that much. We're not going to really focus on that. And, of course, the quality is not that great.
On both sides, the average age (of the infantry) is quite high. The Russian side is probably lower than Ukraine, but you're still getting plenty of people in their 40s, 50s, 60s. You're getting people who are in debt that need the money.
If you sign a contract to join the Russian military, you go into an assault unit, the likelihood of being killed or wounded within a month is quite high. And I think it's a question about how much the Russians know about that. Do they know how dire the situation is? That's not clear.
But it's certainly an issue where Ukrainian brigades are very understrength. Russia is still struggling to break through them. And that's partially because Russia has weaknesses. They just don't have as much equipment as they did before. They don't have the artillery advantage they had before. Their infantry is not as capable as it was before. So even if their infantry takes a position, they're not really trying to achieve a breakthrough. It's kind of trying to take the next tree line, and they're content doing that.
On the Ukrainian side, despite the issues with infantry, we know they've significantly scaled the production of FPVs and UAVs. The Defense Ministry said it was 1.6 million produced last year – very impressive numbers.
The quality of FPVs has gone up tremendously. The best Ukrainian young engineers are all working on these things. And so the innovation is very fast.
You have a number of (drone) regiments that are being formed as separate regiments. And those units are just extremely efficient. They are like industrial-size killing machines at the front line. And they've really improved the coordination between UAV units, which was a really significant issue early in the war.
And so I think there are two factors. On one hand, Ukraine has improved a number of things in terms of UAV use. And out of necessity, Ukraine has to innovate because they don't have enough manpower. There is a greater political sensitivity to catalysts in Ukraine than there is in Russia, where it's obviously very low. And they can't fight the same way that Russia can fight. So on one hand, it's this innovation that Ukraine is succeeding in. On the other hand, it's Russia – they have resource advantage, but they're struggling to really capitalize on it as much as they possibly could.
The Kyiv Independent: When we talk with experts and commanders, manpower seems to be the biggest issue. And it almost seems like it can only get worse because Ukraine's overall manpower is limited. It's not something that foreign aid can replace. What are the most important steps Ukraine can make?
Rob Lee: One of the things that's been announced is an attempt to increase the number of volunteers from the 18 to 24-year-old age bracket. Someone mentioned this week that they'd received 10,000 applications – I don't know all the facts there, we'll have to wait and see.
In the beginning of the war in 2022, Ukraine obviously had a professional military and then there was a massive influx of volunteers. And those volunteers really sustained the war in 2022. You had very motivated people. You had some of the best, most educated, the highest-ranked people in Ukraine fighting in 2022. And as casualties mounted in 2023 and 2024, it went back to being a kind of mobilized military, in which case you get kind of a mix of results. You get some people who are still motivated to fight, some people who are less motivated to fight.
And of course, the military in 2025, it's a mobilized military. In the infantry in particular, you're not getting volunteers. I think the last group of volunteers for the infantry were the convicts.
There are several issues. One of them is trust. It's about if you were sent to the military and you were given a certain job, to know that you are not going to be sent into infantry.
The Kyiv Independent: But the infantry is where you need the new people in the first place.
Rob Lee: Right. In all wars, it's the infantry that has the highest burden by far, that shows the burden.
They don't rotate that often. We should not underestimate how much of a burden these guys are holding. It's really tremendous. And there's no end date. There's no demobilization system. And so it's very difficult.
The U.S. has been pushing for the mobilization age to be reduced to 18. I don't know, and I'm not Ukrainian. It's kind of a political decision, so I don't want to wade into it. There are Ukrainians who believe that's the right move to do, but I also know many that don't think it's the right move to do, including people who are fighting, who think that the age pool from 30 to 50 is still large enough. There are more people who can mobilize to fight. And if you keep reducing the age pool, then men or boys who are in high school are going to be sent out of the country, so more families are going to be broken apart. You'll get more people who go AWOL to avoid the war.
And of course, a lot of the most educated, best engineers are 18 to 24-year-olds, and you want them to be able to sustain the economy. So it's not fully clear that that's the solution.
But the problem is that we're three years into the war, and the manpower pool is not what it was at the beginning of the war. And look, Russia has a lot of men, and they clearly have a lot of men who are willing to sign up for contracts to go into fighting. There's little political sensitivity.
We know Vladimir Putin has been resisting another mobilization campaign, but he probably can do it. He could probably do an unlimited campaign. I think he has enough control domestically in Russia, where it probably won't create such significant political turmoil.
So this is still a really big issue for 2025 – if Ukraine can at least fix or not let the manpower situation worsen – because I think Russia could probably sustain this war this year.
The Kyiv Independent: Yes, with mobilization, it's being done here in a democracy, and it is causing tensions. But when people say it will cause real unrest in Russia, I think people forget about what kind of a state Russia is.
Rob Lee: And just one thing to add: In Russia, they can execute soldiers. If soldiers turn around, they will be executed.
And so they don't, so they get pushed forward. And we also see all these videos of Russian soldiers committing suicide – just kind of can't imagine a worse situation than basically serving the Russian military. In Ukraine, that's not going to happen, right?
The Ukrainian commanders are not going to execute soldiers who are unwilling to fight, and so you have to deal with it in different ways. It is a democracy, and there's greater value for the lives of Ukrainian soldiers than there is for the Russian military.
The Kyiv Independent: How realistic is, maybe not completely, but to what scale can infantry be truly replaced by unmanned systems on the ground?
Rob Lee: Well, we're going to see this year. One of the key priorities, I think, for Ukraine's government this year is to scale up the production of unmanned ground vehicles. There are significantly more companies developing new GVs, offering them, than last year.
There are some brigades that are very far forward using new GVs. I was told some things I can't repeat, so I'll be careful here, but I do think this year we're going to see a quite significant expansion in use of new GVs. The main priority is probably going to be logistics.
"Ukraine has to innovate and adapt to the situation."
So as we know, the most dangerous situation right now is the rotation of infantry. This is not when they're in the trenches. Once they've built good dugouts, they can hold them pretty well. But it's rotating between the rear area to the front line, which is quite difficult with vehicles because FPVs present this kind of new threat, which often can fly maybe 10 miles or 10 kilometers past the front line. So if you can replace the use of vehicles for logistics, that can really significantly improve the situation.
Some of these new GVs are quite large. They can bring logs and other things to build better fortifications. And for some of the brigades, a majority of supplies are being moved by UGVs right now.
There are still limitations. So operating UAVs, UGVs is still very manpower intensive. We're talking about four-man teams. Usually, it requires a lot of coordination.
This is how Ukraine has to innovate and adapt to the situation. Russia has more manpower. Ukraine cannot afford to lose more infantry. That is a key issue. And so UGVs are part of this, just as UAVs were for compensating for lack of artillery ammunition or lack of infantry right now.
The Kyiv Independent: We've heard about plans to change the Ukrainian military into a corps system. How do you assess that decision and how can it be executed in a situation where the military is so overstretched along the front line?
Rob Lee: The idea is the right one. A consistent problem throughout the war is that Ukraine is a brigade-style military, and there isn't really much of a command and control structure above that.
You have operational strategic groups, operational tactical groups, but these commands, they're not really responsible for the units under their command. Units kind of come in and leave, whereas you want them to have long-term responsibility because then you're going to be more careful about how you use them, you're not going to have too many casualties.
One of the broader problems in the Ukrainian military the last year and a half, because there's a manpower problem, is that often brigades will be piecemeal deployed across the front line, where a brigade may have two battalions in one direction, a battalion in another direction. Those battalions are attached to other brigades. That other brigade commander, they're probably going to use the attached units more aggressively than their own units, just out of a sense of survival.
This has created a variety of problems. So the move to a corps structure would be useful, and I think the idea that the brigade commanders – I'm not sure if it's official – but like Khartiia Brigade, Azov, 3rd Assault, 92nd, some of the really famous units, taking the lead – it makes sense. One of the problems last year is that Ukraine set up a number of new brigades, the 150 series. Many of them had a variety of problems, which I won't go into, but if you put those brigades under the command of another brigade that has a good culture, that does training the right way, that does leadership the right way, you can in some ways ameliorate those problems, and that's kind of an ideal situation.
But as you mentioned, forming the corps right now is quite difficult. So it's going to be a big question about how it's executed.
The Kyiv Independent: Going back to Russia, it almost seems like in the information space, there are two images of the Russian military. One is that Russia has upscaled its recruiting and its production, and is almost a truly unstoppable military machine. But then other people say that all they can do is human wave attacks and, at the rate of their loss, they'll lose so many million people to take this much of Ukraine. What is the real picture of the Russian military?
Rob Lee: So it's a mix. There are strengths, and there are really serious weaknesses, too.
Russia's certainly not unstoppable. Russia, since October 2023, they've been strategically on the offensive, they've had the initiative, they've advanced in the Avdiivka direction, but other places: In Toretsk, the fight began sometime in the summer, Chasiv Yar, they got there around April, and they've almost taken the city, but it's taken a very long time, heavy casualties. And they're still struggling to take back Kursk.
A lot of this comes back to what Russia's political objectives and the military means are. So Vladimir Putin last year laid out that the minimum conditions for negotiations is control of all four oblasts that he says are part of Russia, right? Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson. Russia is a very long way from taking all those oblasts, right?
So obviously Luhansk, almost all of it is Russia-controlled, although there's still very heavy fighting for the last part of it. Donetsk, there's a lot of fighting to go. Russian forces got to Pokrovsk around August, and they still have not been able to encircle it for a long time at heavy costs, and obviously Ukraine has had some counterattacks the last few weeks, retaking some areas.
So not only have they not taken Pokrovsk, but trying to get to Kostiantynivka, Druzhkivka, Kramatorsk, Sloviansk – at this rate, it could take quite a long time. And of course, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, this is something far, far removed. Russia's still very far from achieving its minimum objectives in this war.
But they have a significant manpower advantage. They recruited a large number of contract soldiers last year. That means they can sustain this war for this year, at least, in terms of manpower. As it later goes on, this could be a more significant issue.
Some capabilities Russia has are much more capable now than they were before. They've got FPV units, they have far more ISR (intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition) units, although, obviously, Ukraine has had success countering them. They've improved and modernized many of the missiles, such as KH-101s and Iskander-Ms.
Their long-range missile strikes, they've improved the tactics behind it. They do adapt. We shouldn't say that they don't. Russian EW (electronic warfare), depending on who you talk to, is still quite effective. And they have some other supporting capabilities that have gotten effective.
And Russian air defenses are not as effective as the air defense systems we've seen in this war, but they still do shoot down a lot of missiles. They have shot down plenty of Storm Shadows and ATACMS. Obviously, these UAV attacks Ukraine conducts on Russia, most UAVs get shot down, although still, if a few get through, that's often enough.
The Kyiv Independent: There is a prospect of the U.S. really abandoning Ukraine in terms of military aid, and then there are other more political questions like intelligence and Starlink. How bad could it be for Ukraine if that's cut off?
Rob Lee: The short answer is I don't know. I think there are different scenarios. One is where the U.S. does not pass an aid package, but they are open to Europe purchasing U.S. weapons or ammunition to form military sales for Ukraine, in which case, that could potentially supplant this, and Europe is still a very rich group, they still have plenty of money, and if they tap into Russian currency reserves, that is another option.
At the same time, if the U.S. does not pass an aid package, then the artillery expenditure rate for Ukraine is going to go down. Instead of 2 to 1, if it's 3 to 1, 4 to 1, what that means in the front line is that more Ukrainian soldiers will die, on a very basic level. It doesn't necessarily mean it will be decisive, but it will become more difficult for Ukraine to fight.
There are other systems that I believe only the U.S. produces, like the interceptors for Patriots, munitions for HIMARS, I'm sure there are a variety of other things, too, like Stingers, Javelins. Some of those things will be really critical.
HIMARS fills a very critical role in the Ukrainian military for operational-level fire. There's nothing else that replaces it. And then Patriot interceptors – Patriot is the main anti-ballistic missile defense system for Ukraine. And that is what is protecting Kyiv and all other cities from ballistic missile threats. Ukraine has the ability to shoot down cruise missiles pretty effectively. We know they can shoot down Shaheds and other UAVs very effectively. But ballistic missiles, the options aren't as great.
If you lose this kind of ballistic missile defense, then that could be a key issue. Russia might go after defense industrial factories again or go after the energy grid more successfully. And that could pose significant issues.
So it won't be a complete breakdown, but a loss of U.S. aid could have significant effects. Starlink, obviously, plays a really important role in communications, in integrating the UAV systems.
If the U.S. not only stops providing aid but also refuses to allow Europe to buy munitions, that could have a really significant effect, particularly because we know Ukraine already has a manpower problem, and that would compound the issues Ukraine faces.
The Kyiv Independent: Russia's going forward and they are advancing, there's no real reason for them to be interested in stopping the war, and I think that's always the key question about a negotiated peace. So if we're looking first and foremost at the battlefield beyond grand geopolitics, what would it take for Russia to feel at this point that they just can't go any further forward and they're happy to take what they have?
Rob Lee: For this war to end, it begins with Russia not being able to advance on the battlefield. As I said before, the minimum objectives that Russia has are to take control of all four of those oblasts, which Russia only partially controls right now.
Russia, at this rate, is quite far from achieving that. I don't think it's likely that Russia would take all of Donetsk Oblast this year, unless there's a kind of catastrophic breakdown of Ukrainian forces. And again, it comes back to the U.S. aid and other factors.
And so for Russia, as long as they're advancing on the battlefield, and they have not achieved taking all of Donetsk Oblast, I think the war is going to continue. Peace negotiations can go on, but the gap there is too significant, and I don't think there's any chance that President Zelensky is going to give up territory that Ukraine currently controls. I just don't think that is politically palatable, and I don't think Ukrainians would allow it. So right now, we have a gap between the Russian demands and the Ukrainian version of what they would be willing to accept as the end of the war.
The other big factor here is that how the war ends is really critical. There's a reason why Ukraine keeps asking for security guarantees, because – people talk that Ukraine is tired of this war, exhausted, and that's true – but I think my sense is that what Ukraine is really tired of is this persistent threat from Russia. This threat has been going on for quite a long time, the war began 11 years ago, and for Ukraine, it's important that however the war ends, that it ends and does not begin again.
There's a chance that if the Trump administration offers concessions that are outside of Ukraine, such as about the security architecture of Europe, maybe that will allow Russia to end the war on different terms in Ukraine because that would be a significant victory for Russia. This war is in part about changing the security architecture of Europe. It's not just about Ukraine.
We saw the demands that Russia made back in December 2021 about going back to what the NATO borders looked like in 1997 and so on. I think Russia still wants that, and they're still talking about that publicly.
My view is that this war is going to continue. It will likely continue as of this summer. Maybe we'll see a ceasefire, but not necessarily a permanent ceasefire because Russia has not achieved even its minimum objectives in the war. It has not been a success for Russia, it's come at a high cost, and even though Putin has very strong control of Russia, can he sell what he's achieved so far as a victory to the Russian people? I'm not sure he can because he really hasn't succeeded, and the costs have been quite significant. So, unfortunately, I think the war is probably going to continue.
We'll see how the U.S. responds because I think negotiations are going to be more difficult than maybe some U.S. officials currently imagine. The way to end this war is to prevent Russia from advancing on the battlefield, to get to a point where Russia can't have success. But as long as Russia advances on the battlefield, it's going to continue. And for the U.S., the best ability to affect that is to continue providing greater aid because then that will enable Ukraine to stop Russian advances.
Dominic Culverwell
