Ukraine’s Top General Claims Attrition Strategy vs. Russia Is Succeeding

January 14 ------ Russia’s army in 2025 failed to make useful ground gains at the price of crushing and, at times, debilitating casualties, vindicating the Ukrainian strategy of inflicting maximum losses against Kremlin forces in a war of attrition, Commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) General Oleksandr Syrsky said in a statement.

Russia’s top military leadership over the past twelve months set itself the objective of ending its war against Ukraine with the total conquest of Ukraine’s southern and eastern Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, along with a planned takeover of the major seaport Odesa, and failed decisively to achieve any of those goals, Syrsky said in 12-month roundup published on his personal social media, and by AFU information outlets.

“The past year was a great test for us. The Russian aggressor sought to end the war against Ukraine – but planned to end it with defeat [of Ukraine], imposing his conditions on us from a position of force,” Syrsky said. “We did not allow the enemy to make critical breakthroughs, thwarted his plans, and repeatedly forced him to postpone the dates of planned operations. "According to most independent analysts, during 2025, Russian Federation forces, deploying 600,000-700,000 combat troops in Ukraine, using primarily infantry-heavy short-range assault tactics, captured between 5,000 and 5,500 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory. That land space represents slightly less than 1% of Ukraine’s total territory, or an area slightly bigger than County Donegal in Ireland, or the English county of Norfolk.

Syrsky said the price paid by Moscow for those gains, by AFU calculation, amounted to at least 418,000 soldiers killed or seriously wounded in combat. Estimates by independent military watch groups, as well as Britain’s Ministry of Defense, are similar.

Ukrainian combat unit video and soldiers speaking to Ukrainian media, including Kyiv Post, say that dense clouds of First Person View (FPV), bomber, and observation drones orbiting battlefields are the main engine of Russian combat losses. First used as an emergency measure to give frontline troops firepower following a US embargo on artillery ammunition deliveries to Ukraine in late 2023, drones – 95-99% of them domestically-manufactured - now account for at least half of all Russian military killed and wounded, operators say.

Syrsky claimed that the lethality of Ukraine’s defenses over the year had repeatedly forced Kremlin planners to delay or even cancel major offensives, because Russian assault units ran out of troops to carry out attacks. “This year proved: we are capable of systematically exhausting the enemy and significantly reducing his potential. The defense forces did not allow the aggressor to implement his plans, preserved [Ukrainian] strategic positions and prepared the ground for further [AFU] operations,” Syrsky said.

Although Russian forces, in 2025, held the initiative and scored relatively small but unquestionable ground gains, Ukrainian forces during the year also conducted limited counterattacks, regaining lost territory. The most visible Ukrainian counterattacks took place in the eastern sector near the city of Pokrovsk, a named Russian major objective since mid-2023.

Source: kyivpost.com