Offensive lockdown: Ukraine’s growing advantage in the air creates a threat of a collapse of the Russian front in the next few months

The pace of the Russian spring offensive was the slowest in the last three years, and in May the front finally stood still, despite the high level of manpower losses on the Russian side. The numerical advantage has practically ceased to be converted into territorial gains for the Russian army.

The Russian command faces a systemic crisis: falling rates of contract recruitment make it impossible to fight as before, using a combination of light motorized attacks and infiltration to maintain the offensive for most of the year. (Over the past five months, the Russian force could have been reduced by about 40 thousand people.) At the same time, the Ukrainian defense has achieved air supremacy not only on the line of contact, but also in the operational depth of the middle strikes - the near and middle rear of Russian troops.

According to the Minister of Defense of Ukraine, due to the technological advantage of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the air, the cost of seizing new territories for Russia will reach 200 people per square kilometer. This means that even a new “partial” mobilization on the scale of 2022 will help it advance only a couple of thousand square kilometers and will not allow Vladimir Putin’s dream of reaching the borders of the Donetsk region to be realized.

The change in the balance of power, in addition to the shutdown of Starlink, was facilitated by a technological breakthrough in the production of Hornet drones, created in cooperation with the company of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and scaled up thanks to the unprecedented investments of Ukraine’s allies, who invested $1.6 billion in drone production in the first quarter of this year alone.

The ambitious plan of the Ukrainian command implies the creation of a “logistics lockdown” in the near future, when the front lines of Russian troops will be cut off from logistics support. This will require another qualitative step in increasing the number of drones operating at medium depths.

If the Russian side does not find ways to adapt, the implementation of such a plan against the backdrop of insufficient rates of replenishment of losses in manpower will create a real threat of collapse, at least, of individual sections of the Russian front in the next three to six months.

The stalled offensive and the halt of the front

Today we can say with confidence that the Russian offensive of 2026 has floundered. January turned out to be the last month when Russian troops made significant progress, expanding the territory of their control (by approximately 250–425 sq. km). Then, over the past four months, the promotion amounted, according to the Black Bird Group project , to 165 square meters. km, and according to the Deepstat resource, which calculates based on data from the OSINT group DeepState , - 440. In 2024, promotion for the same months was, according to estimates of two projects, 600–620 sq. m. km, and in 2025 - from 950 to 1150 sq. km (the discrepancy in data is explained by the difficulty of calculations in the context of an expanding gray zone, over which neither side can speak of sustainable control). One way or another, the current rate of advance is the lowest since 2023, and the situation in May should be characterized as a complete stop of the front.

According to the Black Bird Group, the Russian army increased control over Ukrainian territory by 82 square meters in May. km, and according to Deepstate - only 14. According to the calculations of Ukrainian military analyst Alexander Kovalenko , capturing about 88 sq. km during May. km of territory, the Russian army lost about 68 sq. km. This gives a result close to the DeepState data. Figures from the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) traditionally show the most favorable picture for the Ukrainian side: over the past four months, the net net result (lost territory minus returned) in favor of Ukraine is approximately 70 square meters. km. Finally, the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Syrsky, claims that the Ukrainian army has liberated up to 600 square meters since the beginning of the year. km of its territory. Thus, the subject of debate is not so much the question of how far the Russian troops advanced, but the question of whether they were advancing or rather losing territory.

Chart 1. Dynamics of occupation of Ukrainian territories, 2024–2026, quarter. km per month

At the same time, the intensity of clashes on the front line remains high. According to data collected by Icelandic OSINT analyst Ragnar Bjartur Gudmundsson , in the first five months of this year it was even higher than in the same period in 2025, but only slightly lower than at the end. The losses of the Russian army, according to the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, remain high and in May almost reached 34 thousand people, which is the most significant figure since the beginning of the year. Thus, losses per square kilometer invariably increased, and by the end of spring their high level was already running idle, not ensuring even a minimal advance of the army forward.

Graph 2. Average losses of the Russian army, thousand people per month

War of attrition countdown

According to Carnegie Center expert Michael Kofman , who regularly visits the combat zone on the Ukrainian side, Russian troops this year are showing at least twice as bad results as last year. In Kofman's assessment, Russian tactics in recent years have been a combination of light motorized attacks with a small amount of infantry and infiltration - this did not provide operationally significant breakthroughs, but allowed the offensive to be sustained over an extended period from about late March to December. Now this tactic has stopped working: Russian losses have equaled the influx of recruits, and the successful adaptation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the battlefield has limited the ability of Russian units to move forward, even despite the Ukrainian Armed Forces' problems with manning and the lack of coherence of defensive lines.

Political scientist Fareed Zakaria noted that throughout the war, Russia's main advantage was not that it fought well, but that it could afford to fight poorly and compensate for ineffectiveness with an influx of new soldiers. Now Russia is losing manpower faster than it is recruiting contract soldiers. Although the exact recruitment figures are unknown, according to various sources, the reduction in its monthly pace could be 20–25% (→ Re: Russia: The contract has broken ). Finnish President Alexander Stubb claimed in a recent interview that Russian troops lost 35 thousand people killed and wounded in May, recruiting only 27 thousand. According to the latest calculations by Janis Kluge based on regional budget data , the number of contract soldiers recruited during the first quarter amounted to 71,200 people (23,700 per month). While the estimate of Russian losses during this time is 90 thousand people. In April–May, the Russian army lost another 65 thousand killed and wounded. If the recruitment trends of the first quarter continue, this means that in January–May the Russian group decreased by approximately 40 thousand people (which is approximately 5% of its size, if we are guided by Ukrainian estimates at the beginning of the year ). Thus, at the moment, there is a systemic advantage of the Ukrainian “drone force” over the capabilities of the Russian “manpower”. In this case, we are talking about a reverse war of attrition, in which the Russian side began to lose (→ Rogov: The end of the doctrine ).

According to the Minister of Defense of Ukraine Mikhail Fedorov , as a result of the technological advantage achieved by the Ukrainian side, every kilometer of advance costs the Russian side more and more losses. According to the minister's calculations, in October the Russian army lost 67 servicemen per square meter. km of advance, in January - already 165, in February - 244, in March - 254, in April - 179. Fedorov calls the strategic goal of the Armed Forces of Ukraine the scale of losses of at least 200 people per square kilometer. With such damage, another “partial” mobilization, comparable in scale to that carried out in the fall of 2022 (200-300 thousand people), will give the Russian army the opportunity to advance no more than a couple of thousand square kilometers and will not allow it to reach the borders of the Donetsk region.

Brigadier General of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, commander of the 3rd Army Corps Andrei Beletsky also calls the winter and spring Russian offensive campaign “a failure”: in May, according to his estimates, Russian troops were able to capture only about 10 square meters. km of territory. Russia faces a shortage of manpower for the offensive, which “is felt more and more every month”; as a result, the Russian army has already lost the ability to organize “meat assaults” in the form in which they were practiced seven or eight months ago. If current trends continue, Beletsky believes, the crisis in the Russian troops will worsen, and in six to seven months a turning point will occur at the front.

Advantage zone: drone cooperation and the “Martian hornet”

The drone “wall” became a key resource for the Ukrainian army against superior Russian manpower last year, forcing the Russian side to resort to infiltration tactics and preventing it from achieving impressive operational breakthroughs during the massive offensive of late 2025. However, as Ukrainian military and military analysts noted, the Ukrainian army had practically no means of destruction in the near and middle rear of the enemy. This limited its deterrent capabilities, while Russia made extensive use of glide bombs to overwhelm Ukrainian defenses. In 2026, the turning point occurs precisely in the combat theater of middle strikes - strikes on the near and middle rear at an operational depth of 25 to 200 km behind the front line.

Although Ukraine has been using medium-range drones for more than a year, it was only this spring that these operations became systematic and began to threaten Russian logistics. ISW analysts indicate that at the first stage, from the end of 2025, Ukraine intensified attacks on Russian air defense systems and radars. Military expert Kyle Glen notes in this regard that massive losses of air defense systems actually lead to a cascading effect and the failure of the entire defense, making subsequent Ukrainian unmanned raids even more effective. The Ukrainian OSINT group Tochnyi reported 492 Ukrainian strikes on air defense infrastructure from June 2025 to March 2026 ( ISW geolocated 41 such strikes in January, 61 in February and 115 in March).

According to Defense Minister Fedorov , the technological advantage of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is now ensured precisely by relying on middle-strike drones: “The more the enemy is destroyed at the operational depth, the fewer assault actions take place at the front.”

The change in the situation, in addition to cutting off the Russian army’s access to the Starlink satellite network in February 2026, was facilitated, firstly, by the exponential growth in the scale of drone production: in the first four months of the year, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, cited by the Financial Times , Kiev produced almost 4.5 times more reconnaissance drones, more than three times more medium-range drones and one and a half times more long-range drones than in the entire 2025 This, in particular, was a consequence of the support of European allies, experts from the Kiel Institute write in their latest review of Western assistance to Ukraine (Ukraine Support Tracker) . According to their calculations, allied military assistance to Ukraine at the beginning of 2026 averaged €2 billion per month. At the same time, the volume of assistance in the production of drones increased from €400 million in 2022 to €1.2 billion in 2025, and in the first four months of 2026 already reached €1.6 billion. In March-April alone, Germany and Norway allocated approximately €500 million each for the purchase of drones, and the Netherlands - about another €250 million, that is, the same amount as for the entire previous year.

These allocations have contributed to the rapid scaling of a new generation of strike capabilities, most notably the Hornet UAV, which is produced by Perennial Autonomy as part of a partnership between Ukraine and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt's Swift Beat LLC. Hornet (“Hornet”) is an attack drone with a wingspan of more than 2.2 m, a weight of about 15 kg and a cruising speed of up to 120 km/h. It can stay in the air for up to two hours, cover distances of up to 150 km and rise to altitudes of up to 5,000 m to evade short-range air defense systems. Hornet is also equipped with AI technology for target acquisition. The total cost of the drone, according to Defense Blog , is only $5-12 thousand, while the Russian ZALA Lancet X-51 with a similar flight range and warhead size costs about $68 thousand, notes the Kyiv Independent .

The Russian military recorded the first cases of using Hornet in late February - early March - they began to call the new Ukrainian drone “Martian”. In early April, a Hornet strike on a Russian counter-battery radar in the Zaporozhye region, 35 km from the front line, was geolocated; on May 8, the 1st Corps of the Azov National Guard released a video of Hornets in the skies over Mariupol and Donetsk, and by mid-May they began to regularly hit targets on the roads of the “land corridor” to Crimea. Russian z-bloggers point out the difficulties with intercepting the Hornet. The author of the “Notes of a Veteran” channel notes that they “are not visible on the video interception devices we have.” The “Hammer of the Witches” channel, having analyzed the design of the entire Hornet that came into its possession , notes that “this is an extremely dangerous UAV - it is hard to hear, detectors cannot see it, it flies deep into our rear and is resistant to electronic warfare, in addition, since it is a wing, it is extremely difficult to shoot it down with small arms.” As the author of the channel adds in another post , it is generally impossible to suppress a Hornet using electronic warfare if it has a Starlink terminal installed or if the drone has already captured the target with an AI auto-acquisition system.

The Russian side is also investing heavily in drone forces. The sub-sector of aircraft production (code 30.3 OKVED; UAVs are included in the code group 30.30.6 within it) showed growth of 30% in 2023, 35% in 2024 and 56% in 2025. However, at the front, Russian units, judging by reports from military commanders, continue to have an acute shortage of equipment, including unmanned aerial vehicles. The statement by First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov that Russia is capable of producing more than 15 thousand FPV drones per day caused a sharp rebuke from military officials. One of the leading Russian z-channels “Rybar” claimed that the scale of UAV production was increased at the expense of a decrease in quality. For a long time, Russia’s key technological advantage was considered the use of FPV drones on fiber optics, but this is fading due to rising prices for fiber optic cable, notes the Kyiv Independent: a 50 km long fiber optic cable reel, which previously cost about $300, has risen in price eight times. In addition, the systemic problem of the Russian troops remains the lack of an effective system for purchasing drones, similar to the Brave One created in Ukraine, Rybar writes.

Summarizing this picture, we can say that the key problem on the Russian side remains the problem of scaling innovations, which becomes a critical issue precisely in a drone war, where such operational scaling - until the moment when the enemy has found one or another countermeasure - is directly proportional to the scale of the damage caused.

Middlestrike Theater as a New Operational Doctrine

Already in April of this year, the number of Ukrainian medium-range strikes “has doubled compared to March,” claimed Ukrainian Minister of War Fedorov . OSINT researcher Clément Molin has geolocated a total of more than 1 thousand Ukrainian middle strikes since the beginning of the year (of which 35% are for warehouses, 20% for transport, 12% for energy facilities, 10% for air defense systems and radars), but their total number, according to the analyst, is much higher.

In March and April, Ukrainian drones began systematically targeting railways in the occupied territories and frontline regions of Russia (including Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhye and Kursk regions, in which at least 10 freight trains and fuel tanks were attacked), ISW notes . By May, Ukrainian drones began to take control of key logistics routes in the Donetsk, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, including the T-0509 Mariupol-Donetsk highway, which supplies the Russian group north of Mariupol, and the M-14 and M-18 highways connecting Russia with occupied Crimea. On May 31, the Ukrainian Armed Forces announced that they had taken control of logistics routes in the occupied Lugansk region.

This, according to the Ukrainian command, is only an intermediate stage. On May 27, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense announced plans for a “logistics lockdown” for the Russian army. According to Fedorov, Kyiv has allocated an additional 5 billion hryvnia ($113 million) for the purchase of drones for the most effective combat units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in order to increase “the scale of middle strikes for the systematic destruction of enemy logistics and supply lines, depriving the enemy of the opportunity to conduct offensive actions.” In fact, we are talking about a plan for a drone “encirclement from above” - to cut off at least some sections of the Russian front line from logistics support.

However, air control over several transport routes in the Russian rear does not mean complete paralysis of logistics, notes Alexander Kovalenko . In his opinion, to create a full-fledged “kill zone” over the occupied territories and the middle rear, it is necessary to increase the scale of the use of drones along the entire line of combat contact from the current hundreds per day to thousands. However, Kiev is taking steps in this direction: as part of solving the problem of the “logistics lockdown,” Defense Minister Fedorov announced in the coming months a reform of the procurement and supply system for drones, which includes a transition to tender procedures. Previously, a similar reform in the procurement of 155 mm artillery shells led to savings of more than 16%.

Adapting to this threat has been difficult for the Russian military, says missile technology specialist Fabian Hoffman . He compares the current wave of middle strikes with the “shock” after the Ukrainian Armed Forces began using HIMARS rocket systems in the summer of 2022: then Russia lost a huge number of ammunition depots, logistics hubs, and manpower. Adaptations to HIMARS were made in two main ways: logistics were moved further away from the front lines, and the supply network as a whole became more decentralized. But now there is no easy way for the Russian army to adapt, says Hoffman: moving logistics even further to the rear will reduce the efficiency of supply and will not solve the problem of controlling transport routes.

The ambitious plan of the Ukrainian command currently looks like a serious and quite real threat. If the dwindling influx of manpower to the front line is supported by the closure of its supply routes, this will create a very real threat of collapse, in any case, of individual sections of the Russian front. We will see whether such a scenario is realized or not over the next three to five months. It cannot be ruled out that the Russian side will find retaliatory measures. However, after two years of fears about the collapse of the Ukrainian defense line, today we can talk about a similar threat looming over the Russian front in the not too distant future. And this is the new reality of the fifth year of the Russian-Ukrainian war.