A new counteroffensive is the only way forward to success for Ukraine, the commander of its Armed Forces recently told a small group of milbloggers.
“Victory is impossible if the Armed Forces work only in defense,” said Col.-Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, according to Ukrainian military journalist Kirill Sazonov’s recent post on Telegram. “We have to seize the initiative and counterattack. We have and we will. Where and who – you will see.”
Sazonov said the details of a future counteroffensive will remain off the record for security purposes. However, he pointed to the successful Ukrainian counteroffensives of the past in Kharkiv and Kherson oblasts as examples.
“It was the encirclement of the enemy, the attack on the flanks and the cutting of logistical routes that brought success to the Armed Forces,” he explained. “The liberation of Kharkiv Oblast, the liberation of Kherson – exactly according to this logic.”
Syrskyi’s conversation came as Ukraine’s defenses are crumbling in the east and its salient in Russia’s Kursk Oblast is being chewed up every day in that country’s massive counteroffensive. Defending its eastern region of Donetsk poses the greatest challenge for Ukraine.
In particular, Syrskyi explained that the situation in Pokrovsk and Kurakhove “is difficult” but “better than it was a week ago” when it was “critical,” Sazonov stated. “Some units withdrew, left their positions, and there was no one to close them. A crisis situation indeed. But the issue has been resolved, the reserves have been deployed, the enemy’s plans have been thwarted.”
Though Russian troops outnumbered Ukrainian forces by a 5-1 ratio near Pokrovsk, huge losses as the result of so-called meat waves mitigated Moscow’s mobilization efforts, Sazonov explained.
“The enemy is already experiencing a lack of reserves and does not have time to replenish units after losses,” Sazonov postulated. “If earlier the armored vehicle carried 8 to 10 paratroopers on board, now it carries three. The enemy command did not expect such losses. And they have no other tactics.”
A recent report by the Institute for the Study of War backs up that contention, noting that Ukraine’s fierce defense of Pokrovsk has forced Russia to change its approach.
Ukraine, too, is changing tactics.
“The structure of the armed forces will change,” Sazonov suggested. “Too costly and inefficient options were rejected. The new structure will be flexible and adaptive, which will allow effective management and will remove unnecessary links in the structure.”
Syrskyi’s talk about a new counteroffensive appears to gloss over one of Ukraine’s biggest problems – the lack of sufficient personnel to mount future attacks.
“Ukraine’s problems, meanwhile, are worsening mainly because of manpower issues,” The Economist recently reported. “The army is long out of willing recruits, and its mobilization campaign is falling short, recruiting barely two-thirds of its target.”
One senior Ukrainian official told the publication he is worried the situation may become irretrievable by the spring.
“An even bigger problem is the quality of the new recruits,” the publication posited. “‘Forest,’ a battalion commander with the 65th brigade, says the men being sent from army headquarters are now mostly too old or unmotivated to be useful. All but a handful are over the age of 45. ‘I’m being sent guys, 50 plus, with doctors’ notes telling me they are too ill to serve,’ he says.”
Ukraine is facing new uncertainty as a second Trump administration prepares to take the reins in Washington.
With less than two months in office left, the Biden administration has recently ramped up its support for Ukraine, in particular allowing it to use donated weapons like U.S.-produced Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) short-range ballistic missiles deep inside Russia. The feeling in the current White House has been that a new Trump administration might cut off aid, leaving Ukraine hanging.
Trump has promised to end the war quickly, without providing details, as we previously noted. Some on his transition team have suggested a plan that freezes the lines where they are on Jan. 20, adding pressure to Ukraine’s bid to regain territory.
However, Trump’s counterterrorism advisor nominee Seb Gorka recently shed some light on how the new administration’s approach could offer Ukraine hope, given the unlikelihood of Russian President Vladimir Putin agreeing to a ceasefire.
Trump “will say to that murderous former KGB colonel, that thug who runs the Russian Federation, you will negotiate now, or the aid that we have given to Ukraine thus far will look like peanuts,” Gorka said. “That’s how he will force those gentlemen, to come to an arrangement that stops the bloodshed.”
Whether Gorka’s comments truly reflect Trump’s thinking remains to be seen.
What will happen to Ukraine after Trump takes the oath of office is unknown. While European leaders have vowed to fill whatever gaps in military aid might be created by a potential U.S. pullback, nothing is guaranteed. So as much as Syrskyi would like to live up to the old football axiom that the best defense is a good offense, resource constraints and a change in political winds may make that impossible to pull off.
The Latest
On the battlefield, Russia continues to advance across wide swaths of the battlefield, especially in western Donetsk Oblast in the country’s eastern region.
Here are the key takeaways from the Institute for the Study of War’s latest assessment.
- Russian forces continue to make significant tactical advances in western Donetsk Oblast and are coming closer to enveloping Velyka Novosilka and advancing towards important Ukrainian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) supplying the rest of western Donetsk Oblast and running into eastern Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts.
- Russian advances in western Donetsk Oblast may become operationally significant if the Russian command properly exploits these recent tactical successes, which is not a given. Russian advances in western Donetsk Oblast do not automatically portend the collapse of the Ukrainian frontline.
- Ukrainian military officials continue to warn of potential Russian ground operations against Zaporizhzhia, though the timeline and scale of this offensive operation remain unclear due to the operational constraints imposed by ongoing Russian operations in Kursk and Donetsk oblasts.
- Russian forces recently advanced in southwestern Toretsk and south and southeast of Pokrovsk.
Last week, we reported on a new (or newish) missile Russia launched at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. Eventually dubbed Oreshnik by Putin, the ballistic missile had six warheads but no explosives, according to a new report by Reuters. This was a real possibility we discussed in our initial analysis.
The attack caused limited damage, two Ukrainian sources told the news outlet.
The missile, as we previously wrote, was derived from the secretive Russian RS-26 Rubezh intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM).
European nations can’t make arms fast enough. Ukraine can make weapons but is strapped for cash. Now those countries have developed a plan to pay Ukraine to make them, according to a new report in the Wall Street Journal.
Ukraine’s arms industry, operating at 30% capacity due to funding shortages, is now producing weapons faster and cheaper than Europe through the “Danish Model,” the publication reported. This system, developed by Denmark, funds Ukrainian firms directly to meet frontline needs and strengthen local defense. Countries like Norway, Sweden, Lithuania, Germany, and the Netherlands are supporting or adopting similar approaches.
Once shrouded in mystery, images of a downed U.S.-made Disruptor loitering munition in Russian hands have emerged on social media.
The Russian BPLA_Inform Telegram channel published photos of one of them. As we previously reported, Disruptor is part of a secretive family of drones made by the AEVEX company called Phoenix Ghost. The system was first developed for the U.S. Air Force and supplied to Ukraine in its ongoing fight against Russia.
AEVEX and U.S. military officials repeatedly declined comment and were unwilling to share images or videos of the drones. However, AEVEX finally publicly unveiled the weapons in October during the annual Association of the U.S. Army conference in Washington D.C. You can read more about them in our deep dive here.
The Disruptor was a mystery to Russians as well, until recently.
“I first learned about this UAV at the beginning of this year,” BLPA_Inform wrote. “A channel subscriber sent a video in which a sapper examines an unknown UAV and then destroys it. This was the first evidence of the use of this device. I had never seen anything like this before. It was later, only in the summer of 2024, that videos and photos of similar devices began to appear. And as always, it was not clear where this ‘pipe plane’ came from. But now everything has become clear, and we have to study it.”
A Switchblade 600 loitering munition, made by AeroVironment, is seen attacking a Russian T-90 Breakthrough main battle tank. The video below shows the drone’s terminal attack toward the top of the tank where a crew member is sitting on the turret. Another drone shows the explosive aftermath of that attack. Videos from the use of these weapons in Ukraine have been rare.
In August, the U.S. Army awarded a massive contract valued at close to $1 billion to AeroVironment for the delivery of Switchblade-series loitering munitions over the next five years. You can read more about that here.
The Ukrainian Air Force dropped another AASM-250 Hammer rocket-assisted bomb on a Russian target in Kursk. As we recently reported, France will have provided 600 of the weapons to Ukraine by the end of the year.
The following images show a Ukrainian FrankenSAM air defense system in an underground shelter at an undisclosed location. FrankenSAMs leverage Soviet-designed ground-based air defense systems already in Ukrainian service and adapt them to fire western missiles. These systems have already been well-proven in combat. In this case, it is a Buk 9A310M1 TELAR armed with two ship-launched radar-guided RIM-7 Sea Sparrow missiles converted as an air defense munition.
Russia too continues using Buk air defense systems, as you can see in the following images of a version with improvised armor enhancements.
One of Russia’s most advanced armor-defeating weapons – the PTKM-1R shaped-charge anti-tank landmine – was recently captured in images emerging on social media. It is often referred to as a “jumping mine” because it launches about 100 feet in the air after activation, attacking tanks from the top where they have the least amount of armor protection.
A PTKM-1R is engaged after its acoustic and seismic sensors detect an approaching tank from upwards of 200 meters (nearly 660 feet). A submunition then “jumps” up, with two rocket motors spinning it rapidly, allowing infrared and radar sensors to search for the target. Once the target is located, the submunition descends in a top attack, its high-explosive, shaped charge able to penetrate the thinner layer of protection.
Ukrainian forces have frequently lauded the Bradley Fighting Vehicle for its firepower and survivability. They are not, however, impervious to attack, as you can see in the following video showing the turret of one being blown up.
Of the more than 300 Bradleys promised and delivered to Ukraine, at least 58 have been destroyed, 25 damaged, 25 damaged and abandoned, four damaged and captured, and two captured, according to the Oryx open-source tracking group. Those figures could be higher because Oryx only tabulates losses for which it has visual confirmation.
One of Russia’s so-called turtle tanks offered little protection against a Ukrainian FPV drone dropping a thermite charge on it. The following video shows the thermite burning the tank’s added grate, causing the turret to erupt in flames. Once primarily used in grenades and artillery shells, among other applications, thermite is a combination of oxidized iron and aluminum that burns at about 4,440 degrees Fahrenheit.
The use of shotguns and electronic warfare equipment to defeat small weaponized drones is part of Ukraine’s new, expanded basic combined arms training.
The new training regimen will now last 45 days, instead of the previous 30, according to the Land Forces of Ukraine
“This will make it possible to increase the number of practical classes and update the training program in accordance with current challenges,” it stated. You can see the training unfold in the following video.
FPV drones, now a go-to weapon in Russia’s all-out war on Ukraine, are swift, deadly, and operated by VR goggle-wearing pilots. They blow up tanks, chase down troops, and cause widespread mayhem for both sides. So it is only natural that there is a movie in the works glorifying FPV drones and those who fly them.
“Ghosts of the Sky,” is a Russian film “based on real events about a secret unit of FPV drone operators,” according to the Russian Project Archangel Telegram channel.
“Forget everything you know about combat,” Project Archangel gushes. “For the first time on screen, breathtaking footage from drone cameras will show the unpredictability and dynamics of combat with unprecedented accuracy.”
The film’s plot revolves around “an elite squad of the best FPV drone pilots.”
“They carry out particularly dangerous missions, where the success of the operation depends on their skills and composure,” Project Archangel continued. “The plot centers on a complex and multi-stage mission to rescue hostages captured deep in enemy territory. The squad must penetrate a dense network of defenses and rescue the hostages using only their drones and the highest professionalism.”
Evoking the symbolism of Ukraine’s national flower, the following video shows a Ukrainian Army Aviation Mi-24P Hind helicopter gunship operating from a forward airstrip in a sunflower field during the summer. The Hind sports angry eyes and 19-tube M261 rocket pods pulled off an AH-64 Apache gunship.
Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko publicly called out talk show host Joe Rogan, accusing him of being a Russian asset.
The controversy was sparked by Rogan’s criticism of the outgoing Biden administration for allowing Ukraine to use weapons like U.S.-produced and donated Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) short-range ballistic missiles inside Russia.
“Zelensky says Putin is terrified. F–k you, man. F–k you, people,” Rogan opined. “You people are about to start World War III. Maybe that would be a good thing we would like to avoid from a dying former president.”
Klitschko, brother of Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, took to Twitter to publicly pummel the popular talk show host.
“You talk about these American weapons being sent to Ukraine, which you believe will lead to the Third World War,” Klitschko suggested. “So, let me tell you that you’re repeating Russian propaganda – Putin’s Russia is in trouble. So they want to scare you and people like you. His war was supposed to last three days, it has lasted three years thanks to the heroism and sacrifice of us Ukrainians.”
James Scott Rees Anderson, a former U.K. soldier, is going to jail in Russia after being captured fighting for Ukraine in Kursk Oblast.
Anderson, 22, “is suspected of committing a number of particularly serious crimes that pose a particular public danger,” the Russian Rustroyka1945 Telegram channel claimed. “We hope that he will be shown the same warm hospitality there as our fine guys did before.”
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said that he had “been aware of the events over the last few days,” while the British Foreign Office is “supporting the British family after reports of his detention.”
Anderson’s father James tried unsuccessfully to discourage his son from going to Ukraine but claimed he went there because he “believed he was doing the right thing,” according to the Daily Mail. You can see Anderson after his capture in the video below.
The moment a Ukrainian FPV drone struck a Russian Bukhanka van was captured by a Russian soldier’s helmet camera. Video from that scene shows the drone striking the vehicle, also known as a “Loaf” because of its boxy style. It then shows the troops’ frantic efforts to save their colleagues.
And finally, ignoring the explosions taking place in their path, a group of Ukrainian medics is seen moving forward, bearing a stretcher carrying a wounded colleague. Despite incoming artillery rounds, they barely flinch.
That’s it for now.
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com