April 23, 2026:
Russia cannot handle the number of Ukrainian drone attacks. For example, earlier this year, within one week, Ukraine carried out over a hundred missile and drone attacks. Targets included petroleum storage sites, electronics factories and power plants and distribution networks. Ukraine has significantly stepped up production of their locally designed long range drones. This is what made recent successes possible.
Russian military analysts are taking a more realistic view of the situation. They note that Ukraine itself is radically changing its goals and methods of war, specifically increasing the scale of drone use, as well as the tactical and operational depth of its operations. Ukraine is also deploying additional air defense systems to protect logistics systems and critical supply lines. In addition, Ukraine has started building defensive fortifications, as well as analyzing their personnel losses. Following the Ukrainian attack on a Russian factory in western Russia, near the Belarus border, it was apparent that Russian anti-aircraft systems were unable to shoot down Ukrainian missiles or surveillance drones.
Russian paranoia about Ukrainian efforts to hack the Russian internet and monitor civilian and military activities, including traffic and surveillance cameras has led to shutting down internet access in areas near the Ukrainian border subject to Ukrainian drone strikes. It took some time before the Russians realized that these internet shutdowns had little impact on Ukrainian drone attacks.
The Russian current reaction to all this is to change nothing and issue press releases about imaginary victories. Russia now claims that Ukraine, not Russia, has suffered 1.3 million casualties so far. That is an accurate figure for Russian losses, but Ukrainian losses are 200,000 dead and about half a million wounded and missing.
Russian offensive operations have been largely stalled during the last year. Ukrainian forces are on the offensive and are taking more territory from the Russians. The Russian response has to increase military spending, which now accounts for about half the annual budget. A lot of that money is spent on trying to obtain more soldiers. Few Russians want to serve in Ukraine and Russia is having growing diplomatic problems as it offers large sums of money to poor citizens of Asians countries so they can fight and die in Ukraine.
Desperate for more manpower, Russia is now doing something it told Russian parents it would never do, actively recruiting college students and young Russians in general. High school students are trained as drone operators and assured of a relatively safe job as a drone operator in Ukraine. Ukrainian forces eagerly hunt down and kill Russian drone operators because that’s how you win battles. Despite this, a growing number of teenagers are joining the military right after graduation. Russia continues to offer large sums for those who sign one year contracts to fight in Ukraine. In reality these contracts don’t expire until the war is over or the soldier who signed the contract is dead. Many of these young men die while serving in the infantry, which is what happens if they fail to qualify as a drone operator. Russia also often doesn’t pay some or all enlistment bonuses, and some combat officers send drone operators into combat. Particularly if they don’t pay bribes demanded by those officers.
Despite all this, parents and school officials still encourage their sons to sign contracts and fight for the Motherland. At the rate this is going, Russia is going to have a hollow generation where many young men were lost to war and its after-effects. Nothing like this has been seen since World War II, where generations of young Russian men born in the early 1920s were largely wiped out. History is repeating itself in Russia, as it has so many times in the past.