Nearly three years after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian military has taken painful blows but has invested resources to regenerate its military forces fighting on the front lines of its neighboring country.
Kyiv has managed to curb Russia’s Black Sea fleet, pushing many Russian assets farther from Ukraine’s shores and forcing the Kremlin to give up its ability to use bases on the annexed Crimean peninsula.
The war, which has afforded Moscow significant gains in the east of Ukraine throughout 2024, has cost Russia’s land forces dearly. According to Ukraine’s numbers, more than 780,000 soldiers have been killed or injured since February 2022.
Western estimates are lower, but consistent with Ukrainian evidence that Moscow’s losses peaked this fall and winter in Ukraine.
In early December, the Ukrainian said that Russia had lost $3 billion in weapons and devices in November alone.
But its naval fleets deployed elsewhere in the world remain largely unscathed, even as Ukraine has at times attacked the Russian military in the Baltic Sea with sabotage efforts and in the Caspian Sea.
Back in April, the head of the U.S. Army in Europe, General Christopher Cavoli, said Russia had only lost around a 10th of its air force in Ukraine. Moscow’s military has lost “no capacity at all” in some areas—including its strategic forces, space capabilities and long-range aviation, Cavoli told U.S. lawmakers earlier this year.
Hoping to make up for significant losses, Moscow has put its industry on a war footing and is about to fill much of the lost aircraft, even as Western experts question the quality of the aircraft now replacing losses suffered across Russia.
But the war was also a crucible for new technologies to be implemented for the first time: Moscow devotes about 40% of public spending to its armed forces.
In the first weeks of the war, Russia said it had used its Kinzhal missile for the first time in an attack on an arms depot in western Ukraine.
The Kinzhal, also known as the “Dagger”, is a hypersonic ballistic missile that has since been widely used against Ukraine. It is one of the “next generation” weapons unveiled by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2018, and was introduced from modified MiG-31 fighter jets.
Almost two years later, in early 2024, investigators in Kiev said that Moscow had used a “next-generation” missile against Ukraine, the Tsirkon. A Russian official said in mid-2022 that Moscow had finished testing the hypersonic Tsirkon, also known as Zircon.
Hypersonic means that a missile can travel at least five times the speed of sound and is highly maneuverable.
In November 2024, Russia fired what it has described as a new hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile at a Ukrainian defense facility in the central Dnipro region. Ukrainian authorities initially reported an attack using an intercontinental ballistic missile.
Moscow said the Oreshnik, which means “hazelnut,” can reach 10 times the speed of sound, or Mach 10. Ukrainian officials said the missile that hit Dnipro reached Mach 11. Putin declared in mid-December that Russia would launch a massive missile. -to produce the Oreshnik missile to “protect the security of Russia and our allies”.
Russia has also begun supplying ballistic missiles through its allies, such as Iran and North Korea.
Moscow’s military announced in late December that it was a new regiment would operate S-500 air-defense systems, which have been under development for years as the upgrade to the in-service S-400s. Ukrainian military intelligence said back in June that Russia had moved parts of the experimental system to Crimea.
Russia lost a significant number of its tanks and armored cars in the first months of its full-scale invasion. The British think tank, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, claimed in February 2024 that Moscow had lost more than 3,000 tanks in Ukraine, a figure that exceeded its inventory when the invasion began in 2022.
Russia has been forced to rely heavily on tanks and armored cars from its vast Soviet-era arsenal and remove devices from storage. Moscow is known for museum tanks and loading old cars with explosives to launch against Ukrainian forces.
The Kremlin also published reading notes from a meeting between Putin and the head of Russia’s largest film studio last month, in which the executive leader admitted that the studio had sent around 30 T-55 tanks, 8 PT tanks -76 from the Soviet era, as well as a handful of infantry fighting cars and trucks for the army in the war effort.
“I knew that they needed them, so I got in touch with the defense ministry, and they took these vehicles,” the long-standing head of Mosfilm, Karen Shakhnazarov, told the Russian leader.
But stockpiles are finite, and Russia has said massively upped its production of new armored vehicles and tanks. Western experts have been skeptical about the quality of these vehicles.
The war also saw the brief arrival of the T-14 Armata, hailed as a “breakthrough” and once described through a senior British Army officer as “the maximum revolutionary tank in a decade. “
But the British Ministry of Defense said in January last year that Russian forces deployed in Ukraine had been “reluctant to settle for the first batch of T-14s allocated to them due to the poor condition of the vehicles. ” The British government described the T-14 as “stubborn to delays. “
Russian state media reported in April 2023 that the tanks had arrived in Ukraine, and a few months later, Russian state news agency Tass reported in August 2023 that the T-14 would be replaced after its trip to Ukraine.
More improvised modifications were also made to Russian tanks. Pejoratively nicknamed “turtle tanks,” the adapted tanks with bolted metal cover have made an impression this year along the front lines in eastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian fighters have also reported Russia using civilian cars and golf buggies to advance on the battlefield.
Ukraine and Russia have made great strides in drone generation since February 2022, and both sides have been heavily monitored across the foreign network for how the unmanned generation has reshaped warfare.
Moscow, like kyiv, has used a wide variety of drones that are updated and modified every few weeks. These drones were deployed as part of the Russian military’s effort, from reconnaissance to movements in Ukrainian positions.
Among the most widely used Russian drones are the Iranian-designed Shahed unmanned aerial vehicles, long deployed in Moscow opposite Ukraine. They emit a unique low hum and are relatively easy for kyiv to take down once detected. But the most difficult component is detecting the drones in the first place, and Moscow has advanced its designs several times, adding black ones for attacks in the middle of the night.
Moscow and kyiv are moving toward advertising drones, with Russia still using military-style drones like the Orlan and Lancet, said Samuel Bendett of the Washington-founded nonprofit think tank CNA.
The general trend on both sides of the war has been to move away from expensive standalone drones, favoring a high number of cheap drones that can be “quickly put together, quickly fielded, and quickly lost,” Bendett told Newsweek.
Russian and Ukrainian forces are also now increasingly using fiberoptic-controlled airborne drones to cut through heavy electronic warfare, he noted.
Russia is still playing catch-up in some areas of unmanned systems, like surface drones, ground drones and heavy multi-rotor drones, but is plugging away with their development, notably in the volunteer and private sectors, Bendett said.
Russia, like Ukraine, has announced that it will create a branch of the army dedicated to drones until the third quarter of 2025.
Russia has a vast stock of aircraft, from its newest stealth planes to its long-standing helicopters. According to Ukrainian figures, Russia lost around 369 aircraft and 329 helicopters. This can be independently verified.
Ukraine’s military intelligence firm said in June 2024 that it had targeted one of Russia’s much-touted Su-57 jets, also known by its NATO nickname, Felon, in what it described as the “first case of its kind in history. “The spy firm said it hit the Su-57 stealth fighter at the Akhtubinsk airfield in Russia’s southern Astrakhan republic, which is many kilometers from the front line.
Moscow is keen to keep its high-end fifth-generation Su-57 stealth jets away from Ukraine’s air defense systems. Unlike other aircraft widely used in Ukraine, such as the Russian Su-35, Su-57 fighters have played a primary role in the Kremlin’s air presence in Ukraine.
Russia’s military tactics and strategy have evolved at different points in the war, but experts generally say Moscow has come to rely on infantry-led attacks, using high numbers of soldiers to overwhelm Ukrainian defenses bit by bit.
“Russia is at war with a lot of Soviet-type things,” said Andrii Ziuz, former director general of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council and current head of leadership generation at London-based Prevail. “From tactics to weapons. “
“But they are learning fast, by changing the tactics and getting success in drones and radio electronic warfare,” he told Newsweek, adding Russia’s so-called “meat assaults” were paired with their air superiority and vast numbers of missiles.
The shape of Russia’s military has changed and losses increased, with the Kremlin launching recruitment drives. Moscow has restructured its military to help its short-term requirements in Ukraine, as well as taking on longer-term reforms more targeted at NATO.
Moscow declared a partial mobilization in September 2022—the only such action the Kremlin has put into place throughout the full-scale war—calling up reservists into the military.
In addition to attracting reservists, Russia has used personal military companies, or mercenaries, to varying degrees during the war, although those have taken a backseat since the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the influential Wagner Group, and his failed mutiny opposed to the Kremlin in mid-2023.
Convicts imprisoned in Russia, or those sent to so-called “punitive units” or “Z-Storm” squads, have been heavily involved in the fighting. Russia has also recruited foreign nationals to fight on its behalf, providing what can be competitive. salaries and Russian citizenship. Also in this group are Chechen fighters led by Putin loyalist Ramzan Kadyrov and, more recently, thousands of North Korean troops have been deployed in the Kursk region of southern Russia to combat control of Ukraine. on Russian soil.
Ellie Cook is a Newsweek security and defense reporter based in London, U.K. Her work focuses largely on the Russia-Ukraine war, the U.S. military, weapons systems and emerging technology. She joined Newsweek in January 2023, having previously worked as a reporter at the Daily Express, and is a graduate of International Journalism at City, University of London. Languages: English, Spanish.You can reach Ellie via email at [email protected].