Disarmed forces: Putin has “ground down” nearly all Soviet military stockpiles, reducing the intensity of the war in Ukraine

Offensive operations require a certain degree of mechanization and motorization of infantry units. With severe shortages of wheeled and tracked armored vehicles, the already slow pace of territorial advances will only continue to decline. The same applies to self-propelled and towed artillery, including tanks used for indirect fire. No amount of loitering munitions or FPV drones can replace full-scale artillery support, making any effective offensive actions nearly impossible.

Unless one side or the other can drastically increase domestic military production or gain access to allied stockpiles of military hardware, the war appears headed for an overall decline in combat intensity.

Speaking with The Insider, Pavel Luzin, a visiting researcher at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, suggested that the Russian Ministry of Defense will be forced to either adopt tactics used by Middle Eastern militant groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, or reorient its military-industrial complex to produce a narrower range of less advanced combat systems. According to Luzin, Russia may combine both approaches.

On the other hand, Gustav Gressel, a defense policy expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), warns against underestimating the Russian military’s ability to adapt:

“Tactical adaptation means substituting one system with another. For example, as Russia increasingly has problems fielding enough workable gun-artillery, they increasingly rely on air-launched glide bombs for fire support. Unfortunately that works just fine for them. We also see Russians substituting APCs for non combat essential transports with quads, ATVs, motorcycles, and so on.

Operative adaptation would mean to end these large scale offensives to preserve vehicles. Russia could calm down the front while continuing to bomb Ukraine with missile and drone attacks. Or conduct smaller, more targeted offensives.”

In an analysis published last May, The Insider examined how North Korea, China, Iran, and Belarus could aid Putin’s war effort. Since then, evidence has emerged that North Korea has supplied Moscow with self-propelled artillery, anti-tank missile systems, and short-range air defense systems — in addition to the munitions Pyongyang began sending after Kim Jong Un’s visit to Russia in September 2023.

Ukraine’s allies also possess significant stockpiles of military equipment, but political constraints limit their supply. Gressel notes that most Soviet-era stockpiles in former Warsaw Pact countries were either sold off or stripped for parts in the 1990s and 2000s. Nations that still maintain Soviet-era equipment in active service are only willing to provide it to Kyiv if they receive replacement Western systems in exchange. Germany has facilitated some of these equipment swap programs, but on a limited scale. Meanwhile, Western equipment stockpiles will require major repair and modernization efforts before they can be supplied to Ukraine. Additionally, even at modest production levels, Russia is currently manufacturing more new tanks and armored vehicles than Ukraine’s Western allies can provide.