By Andrew Osborn and Greg Torode
LONDON (Reuters) -Russia has what it needs to fight on in Ukraine for at least another year and retains the battlefield initiative, but is struggling to replace its destroyed tanks, experts at a leading security research organisation said on Wednesday.
In what has become a war of attrition now nearing its three-year mark, both sides are sustaining heavy casualties as Moscow’s forces slowly but steadily advance at a time when the scale and nature of any future U.S. military aid to Kyiv remains unclear under U.S. President Donald Trump.
For now at least, Russia is in a stronger position than Ukraine on the battlefield despite Kyiv seriously reducing the once formidable Russian Black Sea Fleet’s room for manoeuvre, experts at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) said.
“(With) attrition being such an important factor on land Russia has the initiative and Ukraine is fighting a defensive land battle,” said IISS senior land warfare analyst Ben Barry.
“Without any ceasefire the most likely contour of the war over the next few months is more of the same. More bloody attrition on land with very heavy casualties on both sides. If Russia wishes to prolong the war I judge it has the potential human, equipment and logistical resources to continue to do so through the rest of this year.”
Trump has said he wants to end the war as fast as possible though it’s not yet clear how he intends to do that. Ukraine says it needs both European and U.S. help to ensure its security. Russia says it wants full control of four Ukrainian regions it has claimed as its own, something Kyiv rejects, and for Ukraine to be kept out of NATO.
Russia and Ukraine accuse each other of not being serious about peace negotiations.
In its annual assessment of military capabilities, the IISS said that Moscow’s total defence spending was higher than total European defence spending in purchasing-power-parity terms.
It said Russia also appeared better able to maintain the size of its military than Ukraine.
“While Russia appears to be able to sustain the manning of its forces, evidence suggests that Ukraine, which generally kept its casualty figures secret, has suffered a serious drain on its personnel – with many ground units under-strength,” the report said.
Ukraine’s Defence Ministry this week launched a recruitment drive to attract 18-to-24-year-olds to military service for a year in an attempt to address its manpower problem.
‘TANK PROBLEM’
Russia, the report said, had a serious tank and armoured vehicle problem which meant it was taking heavier personnel losses on the battlefield.
Moscow lost 1,400 tanks in 2024 and is struggling to make new tanks at a fast enough rate to replace the old ones despite increasing production of advanced models like the T-90M tank.
“Russia is increasingly trading quality for quantity to support its war effort,” the report said.
“The scale of its equipment losses fighting against
Ukraine has meant that, to keep units equipped, it has had
to draw down from its stocks of Soviet-era armour.”
That has seen Moscow fall back on small numbers of vintage armoured personnel carriers built in the 1950s and tanks built in the 1960s, said the IISS, which estimates Russia has lost a total of 4,400 main battle tanks in the war so far.
“The remaining equipment in store could allow Russia to sustain the current rate of loss in the short term, but a significant number of these platforms would require deep and costly refurbishment,” the report said.
Henry Boyd, the institute’s senior fellow for military capability, said Russia would need to significantly expand its production of new armoured vehicles or look to imports.
Another problem for Russia, said Nigel Gould-Davies, a Russia specialist at the same research centre, was that the current course of the Russian economy – which he said was suffering from “fundamental monetary imbalances” after being put on a war footing – was unsustainable “in the longer term.”
(Reporting By Andrew Osborn in London and Greg Torode in Hong Kong; Editing by Gerry Doyle, Jon Boyle and Sharon Singleton)
