Why Russia’s armed forces have proven resilient in the war in Ukraine
By Alexander Hill
Ukraine has agreed to a United States proposal of a 30-day ceasefire in its war with Russia following talks with United States officials in Saudi Arabia.
The proposal comes with the promise of resumed US intelligence sharing and military assistance to Ukraine after both were recently frozen by US President Donald Trump.
Russian officials say they are awaiting further details before making a decision on whether to accept the ceasefire. But it’s unlikely Russia will agree to a ceasefire without something concrete on the table in its favor first.
Few analysts would argue today that Ukraine is winning the war. Russia has the upper hand militarily, even if that has not translated into dramatic battlefield successes. Nonetheless, the threat of the Ukrainian position in the Kursk region collapsing is now very real.
Since the failed Ukrainian counteroffensive in the summer of 2023, Russian forces have crept forward in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. The Russian advance in the Donbas has accelerated in recent weeks, but remains slow. Both sides have suffered heavy losses.
Among Ukraine’s Western backers, political will to continue the war appears to be waning. Trump argues it’s time for Ukraine to cut its losses and negotiate an end to the war. Such a deal would likely ultimately mean acknowledging Crimea as part of Russia, and some level of acceptance of Russian control over much of the Donbas.
There has been much discussion in the West on Ukrainian resilience in the war. Very little has however been written about Russian resilience — whether on the battlefield or in wider Russian society.
In the recently published “Routledge Handbook of Soviet and Russian Military Studies“, colleagues and I examine how the Soviet and Russian armed forces have developed over time from the Napoleonic Wars of the 19th century to the war in Ukraine.
IMAGE: In this photo taken from video released by the Russian Defense Ministry in July 2024, Russian soldiers operate a 2S7M Malka self-propelled gun at an undisclosed location (Photo: Russian Defense Ministry Press Service)
Russian advantages
Russia has significant battlefield advantages over Ukraine. Russia has more than three times the population of Ukraine, and its war effort is being sustained by strong support from Russian society.
From relatively early in the war, Russian polling data indicated President Vladimir Putin has had support from a clear majority of the Russian population. This support has certainly been helped by the fact that much of Russia’s population has been kept from experiencing the full economic and human costs of war.
The Russian economy has played a large part in sustaining Russia’s war effort. Despite western sanctions and high inflation, the economic outlook remains fairly strong.
According to Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service, GDP growth was reported as 4.1% for 2024, albeit fuelled to a large extent by military spending.
Other than inflation, most key economic indicators are positive. Unemployment rates reached post-Soviet lows in mid-2024, and have subsequently dropped to around 2%.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has increasingly struggled to sustain the strength of its armed forces. It has had to mobilize lower quality and less willing conscripts than earlier in the war. It’s also trying to attract volunteers younger than the conscription age of 25 with financial incentives.
Where Ukraine relies mostly on conscription, Russia has been increasingly reliant on volunteers for its armed forces. The death or injury of volunteers is far less likely to have a negative impact on wider morale than the death of conscripts.
Russia still seems to have enough volunteers to fight in the war in Ukraine that it doesn’t have to use its annual conscript pool for that purpose. Russia conscripts a pool of soldiers each year regardless of whether there’s an ongoing war. Volunteers are offered high salaries and significant benefits for their services.
IMAGE: People walk at Red Square in Moscow, Russia, in January 2025. Russia’s population has in the main been kept from experiencing and seeing the full economic and human costs of war (Photo: AP via The Conversation/Pavel Bednyakov)
Playing to traditional strengths
Russia began the war in Ukraine in February 2022 with an inadequately sized force given its unrealistic objectives. The initial plan to seize Kyiv was overly ambitious for the forces committed.
However, after Ukrainian counterattacks in the fall of 2022, not only did Russia commit more adequate resources to the war, but gave them operational aims that suited their capabilities.
After failing to rapidly seize key targets near Kyiv in the face of stubborn resistance, the Russian military has shifted to a considerably more methodical approach that has played to traditional strengths, mitigating weaknesses in co-ordination in a more fluid environment. One traditional strength has been in artillery.
The Russian armed forces have historically placed emphasis on the value of — and breaching of — fortified defensive positions.
These strengths have been apparent not only in blunting the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the summer of 2023, but also in the subsequent, often successful, co-ordination of small infantry storm detachments with drones to take Ukrainian defensive positions.
While the Russian army remains a relatively blunt instrument, it is not as blunt as it was in late 2022 and early 2023.
This more methodical approach certainly contrasts strongly with both the almost reckless Russian advance at the very beginning of the war on the Kyiv axis — and indeed the squandering of lives by the Wagner Group in early 2023.
Credible sources are no longer suggesting that the sort of losses suffered by troops from the Wagner Group in taking Bakhmut in May 2023 are still being suffered by Russian forces today.
The Russian military has also been making use of new technologies as the war has progressed. The Soviet and Russian armed forces have a long history of embracing new technology. While at times they have been slow to do so, when they do, they adopt that technology en masse and with enthusiasm.
During the early phases of the war, Ukraine had the advantage in terms of drone use. However, as the war progressed, Russia too made increasingly effective use of drones. The recent use of a drone to spot for a recent Iskander-M missile attack on Ukrainian troops assembled in the village of Cherkaske near the regional centre of Dnipro is a case in point.
Negotiation implication
Any lasting deal Ukraine could make with Russia in the near future is likely to be far worse for Ukraine than the sort of deal that was being discussed back in the spring of 2022. Regardless of one’s perspective on the conflict, such a situation appears inevitable given battlefield realities.
However, renewed negotiations may stand a higher chance of securing a sustainable peace in the near future. Given heavy losses on both sides, both Russia and Ukraine will be heavily invested in seeking a lasting deal.
If a deal is to last, it will have to not only foster Ukrainian security, but align with Russia’s revised demands for peace as outlined in mid-2024. Russia has already made it clear that it will not accept NATO troops in Ukraine, since part of the rationale for the war was to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO.
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Alexander Hill is professor of military history, University of Calgary. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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