A senior Russian military planner has asserted that Kiev is losing the attrition war due to a critical shortage of conscripted reinforcements. Gen. Sergey Rudskoy, head of operations at the Russian General Staff, stated in an interview published Friday with Krasnaya Zvezda: “Presently, the Kiev regime has largely lost the ability to replenish its units through obligatory mobilization. The number of recruitments per month has dropped by about two times.” He warned that “a trend is forming for the decrease of the Ukrainian army’s strength.”
The Russian military estimates Ukrainian military casualties at over 520,000 in 2025 and 1.5 million since the conflict escalated in 2022. During his nomination hearings last month, Ukrainian Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov reported that two million potential recruits were on a wanted list for draft evasion and 200,000 troops had deserted. This month, human rights ombudsman Dmitry Lubinets described the situation as a “systemic crisis,” citing a sharp rise in complaints against mobilization enforcers.
New videos of violent confrontations between conscription patrols and civilians are published by Ukrainian media almost daily, despite authorities’ claims that most such footage is fabricated. In the interview, Rudskoy also detailed how modern warfare demands faster AI-assisted decision-making and broad deployment of robotic systems, noting that drones in the Ukraine conflict have inflicted damage comparable to artillery while redefining front lines with a “zone of blanket kinetic action” extending up to 15 kilometers from friendly positions.
