Ukraine changed its prime navy and political defence personnel previously week at the same time as its armed forces arguably achieved their greatest efficiency in three years.
Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov’s ouster on July 15 was adopted six days later by the alternative of Commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskii. Each males had been adopted out the door by a few of their most succesful lieutenants.
Ukraine appeared to have discovered a successful system, making 2026 Russia’s worst yr of the struggle for manpower losses, territory and financial efficiency at house.
Some 193,500 of its troops have been killed or severely wounded, mentioned Ukraine’s defence ministry – the primary yr Russia has averaged losses of 32,000 a month in response to Syrskii – and Ukraine’s Overseas Intelligence Service estimates it’s unable to achieve recruitment targets.
This ache has produced a internet acquire of simply 81.1 sq km for Russia, in response to the Institute for the Research of Battle, a Washington-based assume tank that assesses territorial actions utilizing geolocated open sources, and the pattern of gains-to-losses is enhancing in Ukraine’s favour.
If June was a disastrous month for the Russian operation, netting it simply 30sq km, July has up to now been worse, with Russian forces making internet losses of 1.6sq km a day, in response to the ISW.
In the meantime, Russia’s struggle financial system, which boomed in 2022-24, has seen progress this yr flatten at simply 0.2 %, Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted.
Ukraine has changed defence ministers and commanders-in-chief earlier than, however this was the primary simultaneous shake-up of the struggle and appears to have come amid an inner debate about technique.
On the day after Fedorov’s ouster, which produced road protests towards the transfer, Syrskii spoke of “an efficient technique that’s at present demonstrating concrete outcomes”.
A day after his personal ouster, Syrskii wrote a column on the Militarnyi information web site saying, “The Minister shouldn’t … be a struggle strategist. This isn’t his process and never his accountability.”
“Battle technique, planning of operations, the state of affairs on the entrance — by regulation, I’m accountable to the Supreme Commander-in-Chief,” he mentioned.
The nub of disagreement appears to have been unmanned warfare.
Syrskii created the world’s first Unmanned Forces Command, the SBS, and fought the world’s first struggle wherein First Individual View drones brought about an estimated 95 % of enemy casualties.
Ukraine’s center and long-distance drones have devastated Russian logistics and oil provide, slackening the drive it might ship to the entrance.
Fedorov pressed arduous on this route throughout his six months on the job, shopping for extra drones in 4 months than the defence ministry had purchased in all of 2025, and even spending troopers’ payroll cash to swell orders.
Syrskii disagreed. “In opposition to us is an enemy that’s superior in all the things, who fights, particularly, with artillery, aviation, and infantry. I can’t switch a million-strong military ‘to drones’ in two months and say: now we’re combating like this,” he wrote on Militarnyi.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who lately instructed The Monetary Instances that “the sky can be decisive on this struggle,” mentioned on July 20 he was “persevering with to find out what changes needs to be made to Ukraine’s defence technique and what priorities in manufacturing and provide to the navy have to be carried out as shortly as attainable.”
What’s Ukraine doing that’s working?
Ukraine developed using short-range drones on the battlefield to scale back its personal publicity and decrease casualties. That technique has yielded outcomes, successfully halting Russia’s advance this yr.
Syrskii mentioned Ukraine gained extra territory than it misplaced in Might, the month wherein it started to strike Russian logistics utilizing the overland route from Russia into its southern areas of Zaporizhia and Kherson.
By the top of Might, Ukraine was additionally disrupting logistics within the jap areas of Luhansk and Donetsk, forcing Russia to drift gasoline and materiel throughout the Sea of Azov to Crimea. Ukraine then focused these ships.
Since June 6, Ukraine’s commander of the Unmanned Techniques Forces Robert Brovdi mentioned, Ukraine had disabled 196 gasoline tankers and destroyed three-quarters of Russia’s ferry capability throughout the Kerch Strait, the closest crossing from Russia’s Krasnodar Krai to Crimea.
As an additional advantage, Brovdi mentioned, Russia had been compelled to redeploy 200 models of its personal unmanned forces command, known as Rubicon, to guard an equal variety of ships, weakening its frontline.
“That’s what number of vessels can be destroyed by SBS “Birds” within the Black and Azov Seas throughout the the rest of July and the primary half of August – it’s a matter of honor,” he wrote on his Telegram messaging channel.
The SBS has additionally struck 117 electrical substations and energy stations this month, Brovdi mentioned, most of them in Crimea, plunging a lot of the peninsula into darkness.
Aside from hampering the armed forces and the financial system, that has been a drain on Moscow, which was earmarking 5 billion rubles ($64mn) in compensation for darkened houses and furloughed workers, along with measures introduced the week earlier than.
Ukrainian Navy spokesman Dmytro Pletenchuk mentioned Russian delivery had been paralysed within the Sea of Azov, and that the Kerch Bridge was being allowed to face “in order that the Russians can depart the Ukrainian Crimea,” as a result of “it’ll cut back our losses throughout attainable future actions immediately in Crimea.”
Ukraine’s long-range strikes this week destroyed a Tupolev-95 strategic bomber on the Engels airfield 800km from Ukraine, and a MiG-29 fighter airplane on the Khalino airfield in Kursk, along with quite a few air defence radars and launchers.
Ukraine additionally struck the Slavneft-Yanos refinery in Yaroslavl, which it described as the most important “within the central a part of the nation”.
In a shift from its normal navy and vitality targets, Ukraine struck 4 warehouses of the Wildberries on-line retail group, which it suspects Russian recruits use to order a lot of their protecting gear and weapons.
Russia has retaliated this month by concentrating on Ukraine’s port infrastructure on the Black Sea, to forestall it from exporting the grain harvest.
Container shipper Maersk mentioned on July 22 it was diverting container site visitors initially meant to be offloaded at Odesa or Chornomorsk to Romania’s Constanta. This additionally meant that Ukrainian outbound container site visitors ready in Chornomorsk couldn’t be loaded except moved to Constanta.
Ukraine has retaliated in flip, claiming to have bottled up Russia’s grain exports coming down the Don river to the Sea of Azov, through which Russia exports 30 % of its grain.
Russia can be retaliating by rising the variety of ballistic missiles in its nightly strikes on Ukraine’s cities.
Since June 26, Russia has included missiles in nearly each strike, opposite to previous observe, when it held again its missiles for one huge mixed missile and drone strike per week.
Ukraine says it has discovered the way to intercept 95 % of drones and 87 % of cruise missiles, however fewer than half of Russia’s ballistics.
“You hope that ballistics will do for you what all the things else has didn’t do,” Zelenskyy wrote to Putin in June.
An evaluation by Militarnyi advised Russia was dipping into its missile reserves to attain this, utilizing greater than its month-to-month manufacturing capability within the first two weeks of July.
