Ukraine changed its high army and political defence personnel prior to now week whilst 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 substitute 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 components, making 2026 Russia’s worst yr of the battle for manpower losses, territory and financial efficiency at residence.
Some 193,500 its troops have been killed or significantly wounded, stated Ukraine’s defence ministry – the primary yr Russia has averaged losses of 32,000 a month in keeping with Syrskii – and Ukraine’s International Intelligence Service estimates it’s unable to succeed in recruitment targets.
This ache has produced a web acquire of simply 81.1 sq km for Russia, in keeping with the Institute for the Research of Warfare, 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 30 sq km, July has thus far been worse, with Russian forces making web losses of 1.6 sq km a day, in keeping with the ISW.
In the meantime Russia’s battle economic system, which boomed in 2022-24, has seen development 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 battle and appears to have come amid an inside debate about technique.
On the day after Fedorov’s ouster, which produced avenue protests towards the transfer, Syrskii spoke of “an efficient technique that’s presently demonstrating concrete outcomes.”
A day after his personal ouster, Syrskii wrote a column on the Militarnyi information web site saying, “The Minister mustn’t… be a battle strategist. This isn’t his process and never his accountability.”
“Warfare technique, planning of operations, the state of affairs on the entrance — by legislation, I’m accountable to the Supreme Commander-in-Chief,” he stated.
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 battle through which First Individual View drones precipitated 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 probably ship to the entrance.
Fedorov pressed exhausting on this path 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 not too long ago instructed the Monetary Occasions that “the sky will likely be decisive on this battle,” stated 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 army should be applied as shortly as attainable.”
What’s Ukraine doing that’s working?
Ukraine developed the usage of 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 stated Ukraine gained extra territory than it misplaced in Could, the month through which it started to strike Russian logistics utilizing the overland route from Russia into its southern areas of Zaporizhia and Kherson.
By the tip of Could, 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 stated, 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 a additional advantage, Brovdi stated, Russia had been pressured to redeploy 200 items 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 will likely be destroyed by SBS “Birds” within the Black and Azov Seas through 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 stated, most of them in Crimea, plunging a lot of the peninsula into darkness.
Aside from hampering the armed forces and the economic 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 stated Russian transport 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 would 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 biggest “within the central a part of the nation”.
In a shift from its common army and power 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 stated on July 22 it was diverting container visitors initially supposed to be offloaded at Odesa or Chornomorsk to Romania’s Constanta. This additionally meant that Ukrainian outbound container 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 also 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 virtually each strike, opposite to previous apply, when it held again its missiles for one huge mixed missile and drone strike per week.
Ukraine says it has realized 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 prompt 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.
