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Notes -
Serious estimate? Here's one- the war this year will get harder for Russia, but for reasons that go beyond volume of American aid.
I've tried to decrease Ukraine war posting discussions this year as part of a new year's resolution. (I do intend to do a 'how did predictions from last year' pan out post later. Maybe next month.) But I think this is a fine enough case to register some positions and predictions. (Sadly, no links this time.)
My position is that predicted issues in the Russian war effort have started to materialize in ways that mean less and less novel American aid is required to cause equivalent levels of difficulty to the Russians. Further, these issues will occur in ways that play into Putin's habit of strategic procrastination, which will delay a possible war-ending deal.
This is a long one, so...
First-
I think Trump (and the Europeans) will maintain a relevant level of aid to Ukraine to keep from any sort of foreseeable logistical collapse.
I agree that the 'high water mark' as far of effort and impact goes is probably in the past. I'll even say Trump aid may be intermittent / there may be coercive plays. But I think the 'serves his domestic politics' play to that, even if aid is more 'sold' than 'given.'
In particular, I'd expect the next major aid package announced to be tied to the announcement/passage of a more final version of US-Ukraine mineral deal terms. I raised earlier this year that the deal could provide for a payment mechanism of sorts for future US aid. I also wouldn't be surprised if signing the (US-favoring) deal is an explicit or implicit condition for another major aid package. At the most coercive, I could see the Trump administration holding out on aid even if it led to Ukrainian battlefield setbacks. But I suspect that, one way or another, some deal to keep aid flowing will be made, even if it's the Europeans paying for it.
The Europeans in particular are an often under-appreciated part of not just the Ukrainian financial support, but the military gear support. This capacity has grown slower than they want, but it has grown over the last years. Without claiming/implying the tradeoffs are equal, even a reduction in US aid in various categories can be mitigated by an increase in European deliveries. Note that the Europeans in this context also include Ukraine, which has substantially expanded its own military industries in key categories, especially munitions. And especially-especially drones, which matter more for reasons in a bit.
Second-
I suspect by the end of the year it will become an increasing common take that the Russian military mobilization engine has plateaued in ways that limit perception of its further growth potential.
Last year and a bit before, I've been registering a prediction/characterization that the Russian operational tempo of 2024 was not sustainable for all of 2025 absent significant external support. This was based not only on personnel losses, but the expenditure of munitions, loss of systems versus the soviet stockpiles, and the Russian economic capacity. This was not a prediction that the Russian economy would collapse in 2025 or even 2026, but rather than the rate of exertion- and thus what is needed to stop it- would have to be dialed back to be sustainable.
There is certainly reporting and indicators out there suggesting these are occurring to various extents. The Russian economic forecasts by the state financial institutions certainly haven't been planning on a much-longer war. No one talks about overwhelming Russian artillery fires advantages anymore because, well, it's not so overwhelming. It's higher, but earlier this year we were looking at 2-to-1 ratios rather than the 10-to-1 from 2022. This has significant implications because ratio effects aren't linear- a higher advantage is greater due to what it means for the ability to suppress / deny enemy capabilities.
The ever-increasing enlistment incentives are meeting a certain level of needs, but are also indicating all the previous record high incentives were not meeting recruitment needs. The fact that Russia made a deal for North Korean forces, and more recently may or may not be trying to recruit from China with a Chinese blind eye, are also indicators of attempting to find manpower by any means.
The Soviet stockpiles in certain conditions are certainly lacking. Depending who you follow (and I vouch for Perun), the industrial investments may or may not be plateauing. There is always a capacity limit of how much more a society can militarize without even more serious consequences, and there's a reason why the pro-Russia economic characterizations emphasize the living standards of the Russian worker rising rather than what that means on the industrial side of a militarized economy (i.e. that the government is having to pay more and more for the labor, i.e. diminishing returns on top of other implications).
The most relevant issue, though, is the continuing and visible de-modernization of the Russian military. Outside of some very specific areas- and those do include drones and drone defenses- the Russian military is regressing in capabilities. Earlier in the war, this was going from an information-age army to a soviet-era army as the good stuff died and the soviet standard was brought out of storage. Now its transitioning from an Cold War armored force to a Great War army that is a far greater proportion of infantry as well as motorized non-armor units.
One of the reasons the Russian army was / has been very very scary over the years has been the amount of metal it can drive into battle. Tank fleets that dwarf the Europeans, armored fighting vehicles for miles, and so on. Every Russian offensive was carried into battle with a good degree of protection. Those days are not gone, but the armor is visibly thinning, in literal and metaphorical senses. Armies tend not to conduct infantry assaults with commercial vehicles when they have armored personnel carriers to spare, and they don't increasingly use donkey-logistics when they have an excess of civilian vehicles to supplement the supply trucks.
The Russian army at scale is increasingly not only de-armorizing, it is de-motorizing. This doesn't mean it's incapable or that nothing has improved- their drone force is quite capable. But drones don't move front line forces, and this matters because...
Third-
In 2024, the types of military aid thought essential for Ukraine to defend itself will become less novel / cutting edge than in previous years, where the US was providing exclusive capabilities.
One of the points of last year was the Ukrainian need for fortifications in their east. The Ukrainians didn't fortify as early / as effectively in various regions as the Russians did when Russia made its defensive line in late 2022/early 2023. The Ukrainians had started the far east with extremely well developed fortifications in the Donbas. As the Russians ground forward on weight of artillery, however, the Ukrainians didn't replace them fast or effectively enough. As a result, part of the grind of 2024 was that the rate of advance kept making it harder for the Ukrainians to develop new fortifications.
This saw a broader reversion around the time of the Kursk offensive. I noted at the time that part of the value of the offensive was to fight somewhere other than the east. Russia kept some offensive pressure growing, but ultimately the resources spent sieging the Kursk pocket weren't pushing the eastern front. With that time came time to fortify, even as the Russian armor quality continued to degrade. This is one of the reasons why even though the last month or so of Kursk was bloody for the forces in Kursk, other parts of the front were continuing to do generally well. That may change when the Russian Kursk forces are free to reoreint. I'd certainly expect an offensive of note in the coming notes, especially against the Kharkhiv area.
The issue is that- pairing with the de-armorization- there are types of defenses that work far better against non-armor forces than armor forces. Not just 'more' defenses, which the Ukrainians have been working on, I'm talking the mechanical efficacy of things like 'barbed wire.' Military vehicles, especially tracked and heavy vehicles, are built to resist / ignore barbed wire. Infantry and light vehicles are not. But barbed wire alone isn't what matters- it's what it is supported by. Like artillery fires, which are far, far more effective at suppressing or devastating assaults if done at 2-to-1 ratios than 10-to-1 when the Russian artillery might suppress Ukrainian fires. Or drones- particularly those with EW-resistant controls, like the fiber-optic drones that are increasingly common. Drone that Ukraine is increasing in ever-greater numbers, and which are effective against light-armor / no-armor vehicle and infantry targets.
These are mechanisms that are less capable than the sort of cutting-edge precision needed more when the Russian military was more capability. You need precision munitions more when you have fewer rounds and the enemy has more armor, meaning a vehicle kill needs a direct hit. If the Russians are moving in scooby doo vans, all you need is an airburst round, and that's WW2 technology. There was a time when the US was the only meaningful provider. But while that is still good and needed, drones are in many ways a substitute, and Ukraine can produce drones. The things that will be needed will be less 'only America can bring this' and more 'only American can bring this much... maybe.'
But less novel or not, they will contribute to inflating those infantry assault costs, which increases the need for more replacements, which increases the needed signing bonuses and foreign equipment and-
And this is different than earlier in the war.
In 2022, Ukraine was desperately dependent on foreign aid for munitions, not least because it was literally running out of soviet-era artillery ammo. That artillery ammo issue let the Russians enjoy 5-to-10-to-1 artillery fires for years. The Ukrainians were being flooded with anti-armor weapons like Javelins because, again, the Russians had huge armor advantages. Not only did the Russians have their standing, substantial stocks, but they had the best and easiest to re-activate armor stockpiles. Last year, the Russians resorted from their own stockpiles to buying the North Koreans. They can certainly do so, but how much is for sale and for how much is now a limiting factor that could technically be detected from orbit.
In late 2022 / 2023, the Russians manpower generation situation and future potential was considerably better. The late-2022 conscription not only brought in a lot of bodies to plug the line, it brought in cheap and young bodies (sometimes). So did the prisoners. Contract incentives mattered, and they were sufficient, but they weren't escalating. Putin was nervous about further mass mobilization, but it was still very credible. Now, the main new inputs are the most expensive recruits... and not the best, either. And looking abroad is increasingly a matter of policy, which can in turn be disrupted by, say, the Chinese interest in their European relationships.
This can go on for various categories. The Black Sea fleet used to credibly blockade the Ukrainian coast. Anti-ship missiles do a lot for that. More anti-ship missiles have little impact if the Russian navy hides on the other side of the Black Sea. Similarly, Russian economy had more room to militarize more earlier in the war. The Ukrainian economy needed more American and European aid while it's own economy militarized. But the if the Russian war economy plateaus, then it's not growing relative to the Ukrainian one, even if the Ukrainian economy plateaus, and the more the European (and American) economies- which are much larger- start to reverse relative size trends. In 2022, US ATACM was a huge impact for letting Ukraine strike major ammunition stockpiles, slowing the Russian logistics trends. In 2025, Ukraine is capable of its own drone attacks on Russian airbases and refineries. The American stuff still matters, but it's no longer about bringing novel technologies or opening them up for new uses.
Yes, there are things that Russia has improved as well. Again, drones. The glide bomb program has proven to be a good standoff program. The size of the force has increased. But these are not the same as a better force overall. And, as a result, more people can translate to more targets if those people lack the systems to enable the critical-mass breakthroughs that let maneuver warfare occur.
Which leads to an either-or-or. Either the Russian army gets qualitatively better suddenly to regain capabilities it lost years ago, or the Ukrainian army needs to crumble in the face of one more big kick (which has been the prediction any month now since technically before the war started), or there will be a heck of a lot of squandered Russian lives and assets for yet more meatgrinder gains.
Ultimately, I suspect the last. And the consequence of the last isn't Russian collapse, but an increasingly balanced equilibrium... aka 'things getting tougher.'
Fourth -
These are problems that Putin is prone to letting add up because they will not 'lose the war' (and he's a strategic procrastinator who's liable to miss his 'optimal' deal moment)
None of what I said should be perceived as saying 'Russia will lose the war.' That's not the point or the claim. The point is that these are problems that will make things harder for Russia over time, because Putin has been the sort of leader to put off hard decisions if he thinks waiting can produce a better opportunity. This has repeatedly been a tendency in this war, including the mobilization debacle, the delay on bringing in North Korea (it would have been worth a lot more a lot earlier), and so on. I fully expect that sort of delay to kick in for when Putin decides to get serious about cutting a deal... if he does.
I've said many times over the years I find Putin to be strategically inept. That doesn't mean I don't see a reason for his decisions, I just think they are unsound in quality. And I can absolutely see unsound reasons for Putin to put off a deal. The worst reason to put off a strategy of 'end this bad idea of a war from a position of strength' is to look at the last year and a half or so and think 'Russia is accelerating and will keep accelerating.'
Yes, I know many people believe Russia is steam rolling Ukraine and thus Putin has no reason to compromise. One of the big themes of last year was that the Russians were significantly more gains in 2024 than 2023. I also note that a large % increase of a small number is still a small number, and that the nature of unsustainable inputs is that the inputs won't be sustained. If the dispute isn't over whether the inputs of sustained offenses (manpower, mechanized systems, material advantages) will decrease, but when, then it's really, really important to make to try to make a sell before the peak, not after. If you miss the peak, it's much harder to stop when and where you want when things are going downhill than uphill. You have to conclude negotiations while you have an advantage, lest the other parties change their perspective and their willingness to close a deal. And given some of the negotiating demands allegedly claimed not just of Ukraine, but from the US and EUropeans...
Finally-
I am increasingly comfortable predicting the war won't end this year. If it does, I would expect a late-year cease fire around the late-fall mud season, when most movement would be stalled regardless.
I fully expect it to easily continue into 2026. If this is wrong and Putin changes tack, it will be either after internationally-obvious Russian issues that create a notable-even-for-Russia casualties (extremely unlikely), and/or a withdraw of Chinese support (likely at European pressure/quid-pro-quo, also unlikely more more-so in the context of global trade war concessions).
Last year I mooted summer negotiations in earnest at the earliest, but was willing to hold judgement until a Trump policy became clearer. I didn't think a Trump-Putin ceasefire was likely, particularly as long as the Kursk offensive held territory, but I was optimistic Trump would accept if Putin wanted to offer a quick ceasefire to freeze the conflict instead of dragging out negotiations as long as an appearance of strength was maintained. I strongly suspect Putin will attempt the later.
Very interesting read, and I hope you're right re: Russia finding it harder.
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