Ukraine Is Winning Their Own War, Now
Which is another disaster for 'the experts'
Despite some pain involved in the shift to a corps-based system, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are the side making the slow advances, now, whereas Russian troops are virtually unable to make any headway through the grinding style of attritional warfare that defined Russian doctrine in 2024 and 2025.
The UAF have achieved this effect through the ‘deep battle’ use of drones along operational exes of advance. Small UAVs carried forward and launched by ground drones, or from mother ships, with signal repeater drones, extend the tactical range of drone ‘swarming’ effects. Drone attacks now occur regularly beyond the ‘front line’ across the ‘gray zone’, within the middle zone of Russian logistics and communications. Even getting to the ‘last mile’, where losses can reach 90 percent, is a gamble.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian long-range strike drones and missiles are crippling key infrastructure, including nearly half of Russia’s oil and gas export capacity, according to some reports. I am old enough to remember when the Biden White House tried to halt Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil infrastructure out of fear that it would raise gas prices in an election year, but then gasoline prices actually fell.
It is therefore noticeable that Donald Trump seems to pay no mind, now. The Ukrainians can blow up as much Russian oil and gas export capacity as they want without raising his eyebrow. Trump responded to the Hormuz crisis with sanctions relief for Russian fossil fuels, but he issues not a single tsk or cluck at the sight of Novorossiysk in flames. He doesn’t seem to care, which has its own virtue, for Ukraine.
Millions of drones
American weapons figure less and less in their victory equation all the time because the battlefields of Ukraine are dominated by drones that European partners help them produce in mass quantities. Whereas the 155mm howitzer shell was the most urgent shortage of 2023, in 2026 tube artillery is virtually absent, withdrawn beyond its range of fire, because drones will close in and destroy a working battery in minutes. The classic artillery duel is absent, obsolete.
Drones now account for more than 80 percent of battlefield losses inflicted by the UAF, while the UAF have proven to be far better at adapting to the drone-centric battlefield than the Russian Ministry of Defense. Taking the MoD away from Sergei Shoigu and handing it over to Andrey Belousov in 2024 amounted to handing over the corruption scheme from one set of hands to another in exchange for a promise to grift less. Russian generals are now arrested for corruption more frequently than they are lost on the battlefield.
At Chasiv Yar, Stepnohirs’k, and eastern Zaporizhzhia, Ukrainians keep cutting off Russian positions from resupply using drones. They clear paths through minefields and destroy or disable Russian drones waiting in ambush along axes of advance, using drones. They advance in stages, taking minimal casualties against Russians that are weak and hungry and thirsty.
Russian advances are fewer and slower. In Kupyansk, Russians no longer advance at all. The tactic of sending two men forward with a drone to give them coverage has met the ‘drone wall’. Ukrainian drone teams hunt for them at night with thermal cameras, find them in their hiding places, even use four or five drones to kill one Russian. Russian casualties are astronomical now, with more than 34,000 estimated in the last month alone, quite outstripping Russian recruitment, which has fallen. Ukraine is now reducing Russian formations faster than they can be filled.
Russia has no solutions
Military bloggers are complaining about the situation on Telegram, which is increasingly difficult to access in Russia. In Ukraine, Russians have so far found no real replacement for Starlink. They can provide some signal with 5G repeaters held aloft by balloons, however I have also seen too many Ukrainian drone videos of Russians caught in their final moments, installing the routers on poles, towers, or trees.
Rather than adaptation, the Kremlin response is communication crackdown. The ‘Max’ super-app is now becoming mandatory in Moscow. Designed by the security services for maximum social control of online media, Max is a totalitarian’s wet dream and likely optimized for conscription drives.
Russian defeat history shows that secrecy and information clampdowns always accompany battlefield collapse. ‘Flaming debris’ from drones that had supposedly been intercepted famously used to do most of the damage to Russian oil infrastructure, according to Russian officials who could not dare describe a successful strike by the enemy.
At this point, the UAF have used their drone range to attack so many Russian air defense systems that the excuse no longer holds. Russia is simply too big to defend against Ukrainian long-range strikes. MoD lacks the equipment. Corporate entities that were supposed to build their own defenses either constructed protective drone netting that was clearly insufficient — in fact, it was another probable source of the ‘falling debris’ excuse — or else they spent funds on (mostly Chinese) counter-drone technologies that simply do not work.
Ukraine has quite simply come to dominate every phase and level of drone warfare even while Russian soldiers in the ‘gray zone’ lack basic comms, let alone resupply of drones, or food, or water. On this new battlefield, the UAF are able to advance one objective at a time, while the Russians make little progress even with increased attritional grind.
None of the objectives that Russia played up in years past has broken Ukraine. Pokrovsk has not proven decisive. Huliaipole has not proven decisive. Kupyansk is a disaster. All this prior Russian ‘progress’ avails them nothing, now. Talk of the Donbas in negotiated settlements is entirely premature when Russia is unlikely to ever control it all through military force.
Trump is not helping Russia
American aid has reduced to a trickle, but that has not given Russians any advantages. On the contrary, Elon Musk cooperatively cut them off from their best means of battlefield command and control, while nothing Trump does now actually helps Russia. Instead, Trump seems intent on reducing the regimes of Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba — strategic bastions that Russia and China had counted on to complicate and tie down American power in the event of a broader strategic clash.
The difference between Trump and Joe Biden, then, is not about hatred or love for Ukraine. The actual difference is their willingness to accept frozen conflicts. For Team Biden, supplying ATACMS while geofencing their use was clearly a strategy to manage the escalation instead of resolving the conflict. Team Biden was happy to have another frozen standoff producing ranks of experts in the foreign policy and intelligence trades.
Team Trump is happy to let Ukraine win as much as they want on their own. He gives them nothing for free, but also draws no limits. This has become the most common complaint about Trump from Ukraine-stans lately. The United States reportedly supplies intelligence to Ukraine in exchange for … well, they just don’t get it for free. The US taxpayer is not being asked to supply hundreds of billions of dollars in what seems like free aid to Kyiv, either.
I do not think Europeans or Ukrainians understand how this image of begging for free money has hurt them with American voters. Nor was it ever necessary. Instead, Trump was right that Europeans needed to step up for Ukraine.
Since the re-election of Trump, Europeans have in fact found ways to turn on funding taps for Ukraine. Ukrainians have built a military-industrial drone warfare complex in Europe. In the process, Ukrainians have become a far more powerful warfighting nation than they were even last year, and now they are advancing while Russia stalls. They did it all themselves, and from the American perspective, this is great news. We are glad to see Ukraine winning.
Russians are not happy about it
From the Russian perspective, this is all terrible news. Ukrainians are supposed to be western puppets, their resistance to peaceful brotherhood under Russkiy Mir made possible only by American and British intervention. The less actual help Americans give Ukrainians in victory, the less power this stupid canard will have, and the more powerfully true the Ukrainian national story will be.
A rational affection for Ukraine does not require much thinking about Donald Trump. I have been forced to unsubscribe and unfollow some commentators I used to respect because of their constant harping on the one politician who matters least for ultimate victory. Myths that ought to have vanished long ago persist in their deranged analyses. They cannot see past the evil orange man to recognize Ukrainian success or admit that this is their war to win, not his.
The war in Ukraine is yet another blow to ‘the experts’. People for whom the frozen conflict was a source of expertise and authority, who ostensibly support Ukraine and oppose Trump for love of Ukraine, are not so eager to see Ukrainians win without American help.
Europeans who insist that the US must resolutely stay in NATO and continue to pay all the bills on behalf of Europe are missing the vibe shift. That is visible in their affections for Cuba and Venezuela, as well as Spain and France seeking a separate peace with Iran.
The real sources of discontent
Europe is allowed to do what they want because they are Europeans. America is supposed to do what Europe wants because they are Europe. American taxpayers are supposed to foot the bill without complaint. Once you see this plain hypocrisy, it is impossible to unsee. Trump sees it.
The ‘rules-based order’ was a convenient world for ‘the experts’ to live in. Trump is too transactional, too gauche, too uninterested in frozen conflicts or gray zones and all the wonderful nuance that experts can put on display in pursuit of social power using them. This is why they hate him to the point of obsession.
The ‘experts’ who told you that Trump would be bad for Ukraine are objectively wrong. Forced to cooperate and adapt together, Europe and Ukraine are winning their macroeconomic war with Russia. Any ‘expert’ who claims that Trump is actually helping Vladimir Putin against Ukraine right now in real, material terms is not worth listening to.
Here is a simple test. Ask that sort of expert why the Europeans have not stopped buying Russian fossil fuels — because if they did, the war would end quickly — and watch nine out of ten such ‘experts’ sputter incoherently. If an ‘expert’ answers the question with Trump derangement, stop listening to that ‘expert’ anymore, and do not mistake them as pro-Ukraine.
Their priorities are not necessarily aligned with Ukrainian victory. Those ‘experts’ have another agenda that is more important to them than Ukraine. The virtue of Donald Trump’s view of Ukraine is that he doesn’t care if they win, so he won’t tell them how hard they are allowed to win.