Contrary to the prevailing narrative of steady Russian advances, 2025 was not a successful year for the Russian military. Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, delivered this assessment in a special Foreign Affairs podcast episode devoted to the war's fourth anniversary.
As "Hvylya" reports, Kofman argued that despite Russia's advantages in materiel, manpower, and a substantially reduced Ukrainian edge in drone warfare, the Russian military failed to convert any of it into meaningful results. Read the full interview transcript on our website.
"Russian advances were mainly along axes the Russian military didn't actually prioritize. Ukraine held Russia to incremental gains," Kofman said. The Russian approach - high-intensity offensive operations across a front exceeding a thousand kilometers - was built on a bet that the Ukrainian military would eventually crack. "That simply hasn't taken place. They weren't even able to take the rest of Donetsk - Ukraine still controls roughly 20% of it. And the Russian military is no closer to achieving even that minimal objective," he noted.
The manpower picture deteriorated sharply. Russian casualties climbed through the year, and by the fall and winter, unrecoverable losses began matching the recruitment rate. The force could no longer expand. The trend line in manpower availability turned increasingly negative for sustaining offensive operations into 2026. As we reported earlier, the surge in Russian casualties has become a critical factor undermining Moscow's offensive plans.
Kofman stressed that the broader dynamic remained unchanged: a war of attrition and positional fighting where cycles of attrition and reconstitution prevent either side from gaining a decisive edge. The most significant tactical development of 2025 was the battle over drone superiority. Ukraine started the year with a clear advantage in the drone engagement zone, but Russia invested heavily in both quality and quantity, pushing toward parity by year's end. Yet even this shift failed to translate into strategic gains for Moscow.