‘Even a New Mobilization Won’t Allow Russia to Achieve Victory in Ukraine, Rogov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 25 – Russia’s core offensive strategy has been its ability to mobilize vast reserves of manpower together with a popular tolerance for casualties, but “Ukraine’s ‘wall of drones’ appears capable of grinding down virtually any quantity of enemy manpower,” Kirill Rogov says.

            As a result, the émigré Russian political analyst who directs the Re: Russia project,  argues, “even another ‘partial’ mobilization is highly unlikely to bring about a turning point in the conflict” and lead to a Russian victory. Instead, it may lead to an outcome like the one Russia suffered at the end of World War I (re-russia.net/analytics/0429/).

            Even with such a mobilization, Rogov continues, its “manpower reserves would be ground down within a matter of months without yielding a victory that could in any way justify such a cost; and it is precisely that prospect which poses such extremely high risks for the Putin regime.”

            In 2022, Russia’s failure to take Kyiv was viewed by many as the result of tactical mistakes rather than underlying problems. More recently, the same observers have argued that in any war of attrition, Russia must eventually win because of it larger size and greater resources.

            That view, he says, “remained unshaken right up until 2025 when Donald Trump … made it the central pillar of his negotiating strategy” and insisted that Kyiv “has no choice but to make concessions to Moscow,” a position that its supporters defended as a case of “’military realism.’”

            But now the situation has changed. Last year, “the war of attrition began to look like a challenge facing both sides equally” given that “Russia was compelled to expend significantly greater economic and human resources on its offensive operations than Ukraine had to in defense but nonetheless failed to achieve any meaningful results.”

            Now, Ukrainian drone strikes deep into Russia are further calling into question both Russian calculations and the judgments of those who say Kyiv must yield. Indeed, Rogov argues, “the situation today is moving toward a point at which Ukraine’s ‘wall of drones’ will be capable of grinding down virtually any number of enemy troops.”

            If Putin mobilizes more troops, he might achieve some small but temporary gains and only at a cost of increased casualties with domestic consequences for his regime. Moreover now unlike in 2022, Russians recognize that the Kremlin’s strategy is based on “piling up corpses” of its soldiers rather than on anything else.

            Thus a new mobilization might very well end as did the Brusilov Offensive in the summer of 1916, a breakthrough that soon failed and that changed the war Russians viewed the war and came to the conclusion that their government had to get out of it or be changed so that the conflict could end.

According to Rogov, “the consequences of Russia’s failure—in the face of a drone army—to leverage its advantage in manpower as a resource for victory in a war of attrition will not be confined solely to the scope of the conflict with Ukraine. This may well mark the dawn of a new era in Russia’s history and in its relations with its neighbors.”