Ukraine Military History Institute
Russia can keep absorbing the cost, and that sets the problem
Rob Lee frames the problem around a question bigger than holding the line: how Ukraine ends the war on favourable terms. That is hard, he says, because Russia has shown a strong ability to take very heavy costs.
Manpower losses are known to be very high, and there is no political uprising and no sign of one. Coerced contract signings already amount to a covert mobilisation, and Lee sees indications of another mobilisation this autumn. If Russia can grow the force, next year could be much more difficult.
Dmytro Putiata adds a single line: a larger Russian force could open a new part of the front line. That is the backdrop Samuel Cook uses to turn to the change at the top of Ukraine's army.
A corps commander ranked the reasons for success, and technology came last
Cook's way into the new commander in chief, Major General Mykhailo Drapatyi, is a post from the commander of the Third Corps. Cook says it took him straight back to his historical studies of why some armies win campaigns and others do not.
The corps commander described the fighting around Lyman: twelve months earlier his troops were losing ground, nine months ago they stabilised the situation, and now they are retaking ground. He then gave three reasons, in order.
First, leadership: mission command, decentralisation, and trust in junior sergeants, giving even the lowest sergeants real responsibility. He called that the most important thing. Second, training, doctrine, combined arms and the culture of units. Third, drones, UGVs and robotics.
The ranking is the argument. Without the first two, he said, the third is the least important. Cook puts it as multiplication: a bad command and control structure and a bad unit culture, multiplied by technology, do not produce much.
Cook's hope is partly generational. A 43-year-old commander replacing a 60-plus-year-old one has, in his view, a real chance to work on those first two.
Putiata: the centralisation spread through the whole army
Putiata served under Drapatyi at Vovchansk, though as he points out, as a private he rarely saw his company commander, let alone a general. His view of what the new commander inherits is not about personality.
Before Oleksandr Syrskyi was removed, he says, the real question was who would be willing to take charge of the army after the last couple of years. Syrskyi built a system that worked for him. It was fully centralised, by one person, and Putiata's description of what followed is that it became a cancer all around the army, in some places not very treatable.
He refuses to make it about one man in either direction. What was good in the army was not good only because of the commander, and what is bad is not bad only because of him or his successor. It is a huge system of people with their own interests, some of whom may not be suited to the positions they hold.
His assessment of progress is bleak. The problems in front of the new general have not changed since Syrskyi arrived. Many are unsolved, and where things improved, he does not think they improved much.
Robots do not replace soldiers, they need them
Putiata is openly dismissive of one popular idea. Despite all the talk of technology and UGVs holding ground, which he calls, in his opinion, crap, Ukraine still needs men, even just to maintain the so-called robots.
This meets the corps commander's ranking from the other side. One puts technology third, behind leadership and training. The other points out that technology creates its own demand for people rather than removing it.
What the new commander needs from above
Putiata's second requirement runs upward. The new commander needs better communication with the president, and to hear something from him in terms of strategy. He suggests Syrskyi did not manage to hear that from Volodymyr Zelenskyy, while adding that he is not sure it was Syrskyi's fault.
What he asks for is ordinary planning discipline: understand where the army is moving, what it needs, do the calculations, decide what it wants to reach, and build a roadmap the way every business builds one. He also names a gap in responsibility, meaning ownership of outcomes rather than blame for a single mistake.
Russia copied the drone force and fixed its chain of command
The most specific structural point comes last, and Putiata notes that Drapatyi raised it himself that day. Ukraine's unmanned systems forces work on their own.
Russia copied the concept, he says, but placed its drone detachments, battalions and regiments under combined arms or military district command. A commander responsible for a direction can tell those units where to move and how to position.
In Ukraine, a commander can only ask, not order.
That is the corps commander's ranking in miniature. Ukraine's drone capability is not in question here. Who commands it on a given sector is.
What to watch
- Whether drone units are placed under ground commanders. Putiata's "ask, not order" is a specific structural fault, and Drapatyi raised it himself. A change in subordination would be visible.
- Whether decentralisation actually reaches sergeants. The Third Corps ranking makes mission command the first cause of success. Watch whether authority is pushed down or stays at the top.
- A Russian mobilisation this autumn. Lee sees indications of one. If it comes, Putiata's warning about a new part of the front line becomes the test.