Below Senior Fellow Can Kasapoğlu offers a military situation report about the war in Ukraine.
Executive Summary
• The United States agreed to supply the Ukrainian Armed Forces with antipersonnel land mines, which will significantly enhance Ukraine’s defensive capabilities.
• Ukraine set ambitious goals for its drone program in 2025.
• The Russian military continued to press on multiple fronts, focusing on Velyka Novosilka and Kurakhove.
1. The United States Will Equip Ukraine with Antipersonnel Land Mines
The Biden administration has decided to send a $725 million military assistance package to Ukraine. This presidential drawdown authority package will include anti-drone systems, 105mm- and 155mm-class artillery rounds, anti-tank systems, interceptors for National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS), rockets for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), nonpersistent antipersonnel land mines, and other assets to help Ukraine sustain the fight.
The land mine package will likely include 155mm area denial artillery munitions (ADAMs), Modular Pack Mine Systems (MOPMS), and M136 Volcano vehicle-launched scatterable mine systems. These weapons will allow Ukrainian combat formations to rapidly deploy land mines across sizable contested areas. This will significantly enhance their defensive capabilities and deter Russian offensives.
Open-source intelligence suggests that mines have played a significant role in helping the Ukrainian military fend off Russian assaults. Given the infantry-centric character of the war and the favorable force-on-force and force-to-terrain ratios that Russia enjoys, antipersonnel mines could give Kyiv an additional lethal capability. The possibility that North Korea could combat deploy additional troops to Russia, discussed during Russian Minister of Defense Andrei Belousov’s recent visit to Pyongyang, renders Ukraine’s need for antipersonnel mines even more urgent.
2. The Ukrainian Drone Program Sets Ambitious Goals for 2025
Ukraine’s progress in robotic systems continues to provide hope for Kyiv and lessons in emerging and disruptive technologies for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
In an interview with Reuters, Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, indicated that Ukraine plans to boost its production of unmanned ground vehicles in 2025 to augment its land warfare capabilities. This year Ukrainian defense companies have produced around 1.3 million drones, mainly of the first-person-view (FPV) variety. Fedorov indicated to Reuters that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has set a production goal of 30,000 strategic deep-strike drones to hit targets deep inside Russia. Fedorov also stated that the Ukrainian military will start to field autonomous drones with high-end artificial intelligence features next year.
Fedorov’s remarks came as both Ukraine and Russia intensified their tactical drone warfare efforts. Recently, both belligerents have increased their use of FPV drones connected to fiber-optic cables to defeat electronic warfare countermeasures. These systems’ apparent success will likely prompt both Kyiv and Moscow to manufacture more of them in the coming months.
Drone-on-drone warfare has also been on the rise as Ukrainian FPVs target some of Russia’s most important robotic assets, including its Lancet kamikaze drones. Should Ukraine field larger quantities of autonomous solutions, as Fedorov suggested it will, drone-on-drone engagements could rise considerably in 2025.
3. Battlefield Assessment
Following Russia’s capture of the Ukrainian city of Vuhledar, the Kremlin has focused its offensive maneuver warfare efforts on the town of Velyka Novosilka in Donetsk Oblast. Ukrainian defenses in the area, often enveloped and flanked by Russian units, have struggled to hold territory. The Russian military has also been squeezing the logistics routes to the town for some time, depriving Ukrainian troops of key supplies.
Kurakhove has also seen rapid Russian advances, and Ukrainian forces are struggling to hold the line. While Ukraine’s 71st Brigade has been spotted using drone warfare assets to disrupt an armored column there, tactical achievements like this may not be sufficient to prevent the town’s fall.
While the Russian offensive made incremental territorial gains near Pokrovsk, the Ukrainian military made progress at the tactical level in Chasiv Yar. Ukraine has also defended the area around the Oskil River near Kupiansk to prevent Russian forces from conducting river-crossing operations there.
In the Russian region of Kursk, the Kremlin’s forces have been on an offensive footing for months. As a result, Ukraine has lost roughly 40 percent of the territory it secured at the outset of its raid into Russia. In contrast to the small, infantry-based clashes that have characterized other fronts, Russian forces in Kursk have centered their operations around mechanized warfare. This strategy has saddled Russia’s heavy armor with mounting losses from Ukrainian artillery systems, mines, and drones.
The Russian military also continued to launch large volumes of Iranian Shahed drones at Ukraine’s population centers and energy infrastructure, as it has in previous winters. Ukraine will need more robust air defenses to weather these assaults in the freezing months ahead.