Russia’s Summer Push for Donbas Faces Troop Shortages and Ukrainian Innovation
Yuri Lapaiev
Executive Summary:
Russia is prioritizing unmanned systems as troop losses outpace recruitment, expanding drone forces to over 100,000 personnel as of April. Ukraine faces similar constraints, accelerating drone integration and counter-drone tactics to offset manpower shortages.
Political pressure to fully seize Donbas is driving Russia’s offensive despite limited progress. High casualty rates, stalled advances, and resource constraints suggest gains will remain slow, costly, and unlikely to produce a near-term breakthrough.
Ukrainian long-range strikes—targeting Russian energy and defense infrastructure—are increasingly effective, exploiting gaps in Russian air defenses. Expanded Western support and joint production could strengthen Ukraine’s capabilities while helping Europe develop independent strike and defense systems.
Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said on April 3 that Russia will continue its war against Ukraine “until its objectives are achieved” (RIA Novosti, April 3). On April 12, he claimed that Russia only has 17–18 percent of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic left “to liberate,” after which “very complex” negotiations with Ukraine would begin (Interfax, April 12). These statements establish full control over Ukraine’s Donetsk oblast as the Russian Armed Forces’ main objective in its spring-summer campaign. Peskov is attempting to downplay the amount of contested territory to emphasize Russian progress, argue that peace is near, and set expectations for a long negotiation process.
Brigadier General Pavlo Palisa, deputy head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, also expects the Russian Armed Forces to focus on Ukraine’s Donbas region in 2026. If military conditions are favorable for them, Palisa says the Kremlin will also expand and intensify their efforts to the south into Zaporizhzhia oblast. According to Palisa, Russian plans include continuing to establish buffer zones in the Kharkiv, Sumy, and Chernihiv oblasts. Palisa also said that the Kremlin plans to create a buffer zone in Ukraine’s Vinnytsia oblast along its border with Transnistria, a breakaway region of Moldova that seeks to join Russia. In the long term, Russia will attempt to seize the Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv, Odesa, and Kherson oblasts. At the same time, Palisa emphasized that Russia lacks the resources to implement all these plans (RBC-Ukraine, April 8). The battlefield situation confirms this perspective. During the first week of April, the Russian army failed to capture a single settlement, and it was not until April 15 that the Kremlin announced its occupation of Vovchanski Khutory village in Kharkiv oblast (The Moscow Times, April 11; Interfax, April 15).
Numerous reports from military personnel on the ground indicate increased activity by Russian forces, marking the beginning of the spring-summer campaign. Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) General Oleksandr Syrskyi has publicly confirmed this interpretation (Telegram/@osirskiy, April 15). Due to a gradual shortage of armored vehicles and their vulnerability in modern combat, the Russians are increasingly moving away from traditional mechanized assaults. Instead, they are adopting tactics involving small infantry groups, sometimes using all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) or motorcycles to transport assault troops to the front lines quickly. Struggling to gather sufficient resources, the Russian Armed Forces are unable to conduct effective attacks along the entire front line. They concentrate their efforts instead on a few specific areas, while halting offensive action in other directions. Their goal is to gradually capture key cities in Donbas, known as the “belt of fortresses,” including Kostiantynivka, Pokrovsk, Druzhkivka, and Dobropillia, and to eventually occupy Slovyansk and Kramatorsk (RBC-Ukraine, April 1). If successful, this would create operational space for the Russian army to capture the Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, and Mykolaiv oblasts. Ukraine cannot afford to lose these cities.
Moscow is expanding its unmanned systems forces in support of its maneuver forces (see EDM, April 2). According to Ukrainian intelligence, as of early April, Russia had increased the size of its unmanned systems forces to 101,000 personnel and plans to expand this number to 165,500 by the end of 2026 (Telegram/@osirskiy, April 9). To recruit more personnel for its unmanned forces, Moscow is employing unconventional measures. For example, it is offering students the opportunity to enlist for fixed-term service through the Alabuga-Polytech College. The students are promised a posting with the 50th Special Purpose Brigade “Varyag” of the Russian Armed Forces’ Unmanned Systems Forces, and their duties will include launching the “Geran” unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) (The Moscow Times, April 16).
The Russian command is actively developing its unmanned capabilities by employing new tactics and weapon systems. The Russian Armed Forces are working on a “Drone Line,” an experimental project of the 2nd Combined Arms Army (CAA) that creates a continuous, networked, and automated “kill zone” along the front lines using first person view and surveillance drones. The Russian approach is designed to counter Ukraine’s similar initiative. It is tactically different from Ukraine’s, though both are meant to coordinate drone operations across the front line. Ukraine is developing drone capabilities to expand the kill zone, while Russia is focusing on systematizing the drone use past the front lines. The Russian “Drone Line” divides the approximately 32 kilometers (19.9 miles) under the 2nd CAA’s responsibility into two echelons and 18 sectors. The first echelon is the “total clearance zone,” 0–5 kilometers (0–3.1 miles) beyond the contact line, and the second is the “zone of detection of advancing forces’ logistics,” 5–10 kilometers (3.1–6.2 miles) beyond the contact line (Substack/@twomarines, April 3). Specialized elite units such as Rubicon and GROM Kaskad are responsible for areas beyond 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) from Russian-controlled territory. Within each echelon, specific sectors were designated for particular units. The Kremlin deemed the experiment a success and expanded this approach to the entire Center Group of Forces in the summer of 2025. Russia tested a similar approach for the 6th Combined Arms Army in areas near the city of Kupyansk in Kharkiv oblast (Substack/@twomarines, April 3). At the same time, Russia is increasing its use of attack drones, including both the inexpensive Molniya models and the more advanced Geran-5 variants equipped with jet engines (X/@NHunter007; X/@Maks_NAFO_FELLA, April 9).
One of the Russian army’s main challenges at present is manpower. According to U.K. Secretary of State for Defense John Healey, Russia has been losing more soldiers than it can recruit into the army for the fourth consecutive month (RBC-Ukraine, April 15). According to Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, for every square kilometer (about 0.39 square miles) Russia gains, it currently loses 254 soldiers, with an average of 428 soldiers per square kilometer in Donetsk oblast (Interfax Ukraine, April 15). Significant troop losses, along with recruitment challenges that dropped by around 20 percent in the first quarter of 2026—confirmed by official Russian statements and publicly available data on payments—could pose a serious problem for manning the army in the medium term (Telegram/@hochu_zhyt, April 6; Substack/@janiskluge, April 12). This shortage could slow down the pace of the Russian offensive.
The Ukrainian military is changing its tactics in response to Russian personnel shortages and drone innovations. Having assessed the threat posed by Russian drones, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense has prioritized their destruction. Kyiv doubled the reward points in its “Army of Drones.Bonus” system and plans to create special units to hunt down enemy drone pilots (Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, April 2; Telegram/@rusich_army, April 4). Based on the experience gained from recent operations, Ukraine is combining drone and assault units, integrating aerial and ground drones with infantry into a single system (Telegram/@ministry_of_defense, April 15).
Ukraine is also upgrading its uncrewed systems. The effectiveness, frequency, and scale of Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian positions are increasing. This uptick is confirmed by casualty statistics—Ukrainian drones had 50 percent more verified hits in March than in February (Telegram/@osirskiy, April 9). Also, in March 2026, Ukraine likely surpassed Russia for the first time in the number of UAVs launched (ABC News; RBC-Ukraine, April 6). In the same month, Ukrainian Deep Strike systems struck 76 strategic military and military-industrial targets inside of Russia, 15 of which were oil refining facilities (Telegram/@osirskiy, April 15).
The AFU is reportedly deploying new types of UAVs with extended ranges. These may reach up to 100 kilometers (62.1 miles), and primarily work to disrupt enemy rear logistics, an approach previously employed by the Russian “Rubicon” unit (Telegram/@bayraktar1070, April 6; X/@wojtekfalco, April 12; Substack/@twomarines, April 15). Currently, the Russian army is unable to counter these attacks effectively, in part because of the shortage of air defense systems following their systematic destruction by the AFU and Ukraine’s depletion of its expensive, scarce ammunition (Telegram/@romanov_92, April 2, 6; X/@RyanO_ChosenCoy, April 14). This tactic creates gaps in Russian air defense coverage and allows Ukrainian attack drones to strike their targets. Ukraine is concurrently developing its “small-scale” air defense system using interceptor drones. In March, the number of targets destroyed by such drones exceeded 33,000, a 50 percent increase compared to February (Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, April 8). These trends are likely only to intensify as international partners step up their support for Ukraine’s UAV production. On April 15, the United Kingdom announced a record-breaking aid package consisting of 120,000 UAVs (U.K. Government, April 15). Germany signed a 4 billion euro ($4.7 billion) defense package with Ukraine on April 14, including hundreds of Patriot missiles and joint drone production (Telegram/@zedigital, April 14).
Ukraine is also developing its domestic long-range missile strike capabilities to combat the Russian spring-summer offensive. The AFU is continuing to develop its missile program with the support of foreign partners, including, possibly, the European company MBDA (Intelligence Online, April 13). Some Russian propagandists are seriously discussing the possibility of Ukrainian ballistic missile strikes on Moscow, particularly in the run-up to Victory Day celebrations on May 9 (YouTube/@Sternenko, April 7; X/@vital54falcon, April 13). Gustav Gressel, an Austrian military expert and lecturer at the Austrian National Defense Academy, noted that European countries should help Ukraine develop its own production of ballistic missiles, which would significantly improve its ability to strike deep into Russia, as well as enable the production of these missiles in Europe after the war as a deterrent as a response to the development of Russian Iskander short-range ballistic missiles (Ukrinform, March 8). A unique window of opportunity is opening for European countries: to develop their own weapons, namely, ballistic missiles and air defense systems, in partnership with Ukraine, reducing their critical dependence on the United States, while testing them under the real combat conditions of modern conflict.
The Russian army has so far maintained its offensive capabilities. It has quite ambitious plans for its 2026 spring-summer campaign despite its challenges with troop recruitment and increasingly frequent strikes by Ukrainian UAVs. First and foremost, the Kremlin aims to capture all territories in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, as this holds political, more than military, importance for the Kremlin. The battlefield reality, however, shows that it will be extremely difficult for Moscow to carry out these plans. This is evidenced by Moscow’s constant failure to meet its own deadlines for occupying certain settlements. There is a downward trend in the rate of Russian occupation of Ukrainian territories—less than 1 percent in 2025. Ukrainian unmanned systems will be able to create serious obstacles for the Russian offensive and, in certain sectors of the front, deny it. Middle and deep-range strikes will continue to put pressure on Russia’s strategic enterprises and the Russian economy. So far in 2026, neither side has achieved a significant breakthrough on the battlefield that would drastically alter the course of the war.
This article was originally published in Eurasia Daily Monitor.