Russia's spring push in Ukraine is running into the same wall that stopped it last year. Michael Kofman, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has argued that Moscow simply no longer has the force generation capacity to translate losses into territory, and that the assaults launched since March are already showing it.

In an interview with War on the Rocks cited by "Hvylya", Kofman said Ukraine is actually performing better than expected in early 2026. "The front stabilized around the winter as usual, but coming out of the winter into early spring, Russian forces began mechanized assaults again, but they haven't been doing that well," he said.

The reason, in his view, is structural. "The Russian military has just not been able to generate substantial reserves or expand the force given the losses they have been taking over the course of 2025," Kofman said. "They can sustain the fight maybe at this intensity or a bit less, but it is increasingly clear that they can't do significantly more or better, at least right now, than the way we saw them perform last year."

Kofman described a now familiar cycle: Russian commanders attempt large mechanized assaults in April, burn through armor and crews in a few weeks, then fall back on small-group infiltration tactics once the spring foliage returns and thermal imagery becomes less effective. Individual soldiers or pairs, guided through gaps by Mavic drones, probe Ukrainian positions until somebody walks through, and only then are reinforcements fed down that path.

That approach is grinding and painful, but it rarely produces breakthroughs. "Either infiltration through individual soldiers or small infantry groups or motorized attacks - they are just not conducive to getting any kind of breakthroughs," Kofman said. He noted that Russia has effectively "Wagnerized" its regular units, with assault companies of convicts and newly contracted personnel receiving about two weeks of training before being sent forward.

The picture Kofman draws is of a Russian army capable of pressing, bleeding and grinding, but not of winning the war of attrition it started. With reserves thin and training times measured in days, the ceiling on what Moscow can achieve this year looks, in his reading, firmly in place.

Also read: why military analysts believe Russia will struggle to advance in 2026.