Almost three years after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian army has suffered painful blows, but it has invested resources to be able to regenerate its military forces fighting on the front lines of the neighbouring country.
kyiv effectively slowed down Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, expelling many Russian assets 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 slightly lower, but agree with Ukrainian assessments that Moscow’s losses have hit their highest points this fall and into the winter in Ukraine.
In early December, the Ukrainian said that Russia had lost $3 billion in weapons and equipment in November alone.
But its naval fleets deployed elsewhere around the world remain largely unscathed, although Ukraine has occasionally targeted Russia’s navy 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 that is now replacing losses suffered through Russia.
But the war has been a crucible of new technologies deployed for the first time, and Moscow has devoted about 40% of public spending to its armed forces.
In the first weeks of the war, Russia 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 comes from modified MiG-31 fighter jets.
Nearly two years later, in early 2024, researchers in Kyiv said Moscow had used another “next-generation” missile against Ukraine, the Tsirkon. A Russian official said in mid-2022 that Moscow had finished testing the hypersonic Tsirkon, also referred to as the 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 described as a new intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile at a Ukrainian defense facility in the central Dnipro region. The Ukrainian government first reported on the attack with an intercontinental ballistic missile.
Moscow said the Oreshnik, which translates to “hazel tree,” can travel at 10 times the speed of sound, or Mach 10. Ukrainian officials said the missile that struck Dnipro reached Mach 11. Putin said in mid-December that Russia would start mass-producing 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 vehicles in the first months of its large-scale invasion. The British tank, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, claimed in February 2024 that Moscow had lost more than 3,000 tanks in Ukraine, a figure exceeding its inventory at the time of the launch of its invasion 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 a readout of a meeting between Putin and the head of Russia’s largest film studio last month, in which the director-general admitted the studio had sent nearly 30 T-55 tanks, 8 Soviet-era PT-76 tanks, plus a handful of infantry fighting vehicles and trucks to the military to prop up the war effort.
“I knew them, so I contacted the Ministry of Defense and they took those vehicles,” Karen Shakhnazarov, Mosfilm’s longtime director, told the Russian leader.
But stocks are limited and Russia has announced a big increase in production of new armored vehicles and tanks. Western experts are skeptical about the quality of those cars.
The war has also seen the brief introduction of the T-14 Armata, hailed as a “breakthrough” that was once labeled by a senior British army official as “the most 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. ” -14 as “obstinate about delays. “
Russian state media reported in April 2023 that the tanks had arrived in Ukraine, and a few months later, Russian state news company Tass reported in August 2023 that the T-14 would be changed after its experiment in Ukraine.
There have also been more improvised changes to Russia’s tanks. Pejoratively dubbed “turtle tanks,” adapted tanks with bolted-on steel protection popped up along the front lines in eastern Ukraine this year.
Ukrainian fighters also reported that Russia was using civilian vehicles and golf carts to advance on the battlefield.
Ukraine and Russia have made huge advances in drone technology since February 2022, with both sides closely watched by the international community aware of how unmanned technology has reshaped war.
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 autonomous drones, in favor of gigantic quantities of reasonable drones that can be “assembled, temporarily deployed, and temporarily lost,” Bendett said in Newsweek.
Russian and Ukrainian forces are also increasingly using aerial drones controlled by fiber optics to thwart intense electronic warfare, he noted.
Russia is still playing catch-up in some unmanned systems spaces, such as surface drones, ground drones and heavy multirotor drones, but is making progress in their development, especially in the voluntary and personal 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 an extensive inventory of aircraft, from its newest stealth jets to its long-standing helicopters. According to Ukraine’s numbers, Russia has lost around 369 aircraft and 329 helicopters. This could not be independently verified.
Ukraine’s military intelligence firm said in June 2024 that it hit one of Russia’s acclaimed Su-57 aircraft, also known by its NATO nickname Felon, in what it described as the “first case of its kind in the history”. Su-57 stealth fighter at the Akhtubinsk airfield in the Astrakhan republic, southern Russia, many kilometers from the front line of combat.
Moscow has been keen to keep its top-of-the-line, fifth-generation Su-57 stealth jets far away from Ukraine’s air-defense systems. Unlike other jets widely used in Ukraine, such as Russia’s Su-35 aircraft, Su-57 fighters have not played a major role in the Kremlin’s air presence in Ukraine.
The Russian military’s tactics and strategy evolved elsewhere in the war, but experts sometimes say Moscow came to rely on infantry-led attacks and large numbers of troops to gradually overwhelm Ukrainian defenses.
“Russia is at war with many Soviet-style 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 implemented in the full-scale war) and called up army reservists.
In addition to attracting reservists, Russia has used personal military companies, or mercenaries, to varying degrees during the war, although these have taken a back seat to the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin Array, leader of the influential Wagner group, and his failed anti-Kremlin mutiny in mid-2023.
Convicts imprisoned in Russia, or those sent to so-called “punitive units” or “Z-Storm” squads, have been very concerned about the fighting. Russia has also invited foreign citizens to fight on its behalf, providing them with competitive salaries and Russian citizenship. Also in the group are Chechen fighters led by Putin loyalist Ramzan Kadyrov and, more recently, thousands of North Korean troops have been deployed to the Kursk region of southern Russia to combat Ukraine’s takeover of Russian soil.
Ellie Cook is a security and defense reporter for Newsweek based in London, United Kingdom. His paintings largely focus on the war between Russia and Ukraine, the US military, weapons systems, and emerging technologies. He joined Newsweek in January 2023, after applying as a reporter for the Daily Express and having a degree in International Journalism from the City, University of London. Languages: English, Spanish. You can contact Ellie by email at e. cook@newsweek. com.