Iran, not Ukraine, is currently at the center of America’s volatile foreign policy. But while the U.S. has shifted its focus elsewhere, Ukraine has been more than holding its own. Its military has increasingly taken the initiative in the country’s east, where small factions of Russian and Ukrainian troops are locked in a hellish form of drone-based hybrid warfare. Ukraine continues to inflict heavy casualties on Russian forces, and has sometimes even clawed back small portions of territory it has lost over the last few years, though major breakthroughs seem all but impossible. Perhaps even more significantly, Ukraine has been able to hit Russia’s interior with drones and missiles, even in Moscow, which has spooked Vladimir Putin and a war-weary public. Still, the oil crisis caused by war in Iran has handed Russia a temporary economic lifeline. (Ukraine’s drone expertise, meanwhile, is suddenly in hot demand in the Middle East.) And Russia continues to bombard Kyiv and other cities across Ukraine two of its most intense attacks have come in the last few days, including a devastating barrage Saturday night.

Since Russia’s invasion, I have periodically checked in with Michael Kofman, a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and perhaps the foremost expert on the conflict in the U.S. We spoke once again last week about Ukraine’s improved position, its biggest vulnerabilities, and whether an end to the war might arrive anytime soon.

In other interviews you’ve done recently, you’ve described the fighting in this war as more disorganized and diffuse than ever. What does it look like now?It’s become a much more difficult battlefield to map because there aren’t really cohesive defensive lines. Often positions are commingled, especially in cities, and there is a substantial grey zone between the two sides where both sides tend to claim degree of presence, but presence does not necessarily confer control on this battlefield. And there’s a fairly low density of infantry forces on the front lines, particularly on the Ukrainian side. So the popularized image from a few years ago, that this is a bit like World War I with trenches plus drones, is simply inaccurate. The battle space hasn’t looked that way at least for the last year or year and a half, if it ever did.

There are defensive positions, and there are lines of defense and defensive barriers, but what they really do is present an obstacle to enemy infantry or enemy vehicles that are primarily destroyed by drones, artillery, and mines. These are not trenches of defensive positions that are being held by a large number of people. And at this point, the contest that really matters is the contest for superiority in what folks colloquially call the kill zone, which means superiority in employing drones on the battlefield. The side that has the advantage in both qualitative and quantitative employment of drones can dictate the initiative and has the ability to displace the drone units and supporting artillery of the other side. And control really shifts not by infantry assaulting the infantry positions of the other side, but by one side being able to effectively suppress and displace the drone units and the supporting artillery units of their opponent.

Is it even possible for Russia to make much progress with this form of warfare? It’s very unlikely. So far this year, the Russian military is performing quite a bit worse than last year. The rate of gain is barely half of what it was around this time in 2025. They’re not necessarily losing control of terrain, but they’re certainly not gaining it at any significant rate, especially given the substantial casualties they’re taking to try to advance. The way the Russian military has been fighting for some time represents a fundamental trade-off. Infiltration tactics and light motorized attacks with small amounts of infantry are simply not capable of generating any kind of operationally significant breakthroughs. So even when there’s a localized breach of Ukrainian defenses, the Russian military can’t exploit it, can’t generate momentum, and can’t turn that into anything because Ukrainian forces are then able to stabilize the situation and increasingly even counterattack.

What it does allow the Russian military to do is two things. First, they’re able to sustain, or, at least up until this year, had been able to sustain an offensive period roughly from late March all the way to December. Contrary to typical depictions in the press, there is no spring offensive or summer offensive or fall offensive. It is just one offensive that doesn’t really end, other than a short period over the course of the winter. The cycle of Russian offensive operations in this war is a series of mechanized attacks starting from March through April. Then, as foliage and terrain cover returns, the Russian military switches to infiltration tactics, which are more effective and reduces their casualties, and that continues on until about October, when the weather turns poor again, drones are not nearly as effective, and Russian forces try mechanized assault once again. That typically goes on up until November and December.

So in the cycle of combat operations, the trend that can be observed is that Russian casualties last year started to roughly match their monthly recruitment rate, so they’re no longer able to generate reserves or expand the force. And the Ukrainian military has been able to consistently adapt to Russian tactics, such that the Russian forces who are trying to fight in 2026 the way they fought in 2025 are seeing a significantly reduced effectiveness. They are suffering both from the reduced quality of their forces, and the steady improvement in how Ukrainian units are able to employ drones and organize their defense — even if those units themselves still suffer from a lack of manpower and a lack of cohesive defensive lines.

That lack of Ukrainian manpower is something we’ve discussed before as a major problem for them. Have drones been able to counterbalance that?I think it’s a combination of things. First, the manpower situation in the Ukrainian military has improved slightly. It stabilized over the course of the winter, and the Ukrainian force along the........

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