Below Senior Fellow Can Kasapoğlu offers a military situation report about the war in Ukraine.
Executive Summary
• Russian drone strikes: The Russian military launched its largest drone salvo against Ukraine since the outset of the war, employing Iran-designed Shahed loitering munitions against civilian and military targets. Ukraine scored high interception rates against these projectiles.
• North Korean troops: North Korean formations have resumed their combat operations in Kursk. They have also begun to use Bulsae-4 anti-tank guided missiles.
• Russian war crimes: A Financial Times report revealed that the Russian military has conducted systematic extrajudicial killings of Ukrainians.
• Prohibited chemical weapons: The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons identified the use of weaponized riot control agents in Ukraine in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention.
1. Battlefield Assessment
The Kremlin launched its largest drone salvo since it began its full-scale invasion three years ago. The strike package included 267 Iran-designed Shahed loitering munitions and decoy platforms alongside Iskander ballistic missiles and North Korean KN-23 tactical ballistic missiles. Ukrainian air defenses and electronic warfare assets intercepted most of these munitions.
Russia launched its projectiles from multiple positions, including some in occupied Crimea and its embattled Kursk region. As previous editions of this report have detailed, Russia’s use of Shahed drones, which has increased significantly since late 2024, is made possible by the growing production capacity of the joint Russia-Iran drone plant in Tatarstan. Since September 2024 Russia has launched at least 1,000 Shahed drones each month. In both November 2024 and January 2025, the Kremlin fired over 2,500 loitering munitions at Ukrainian population centers.
On the ground, battlefield trends continued to favor the invaders. Russia maintained an offensive footing on every front, incrementally gaining territory in multiple locations. In Pokrovsk, Russian units secured tactical gains. Russian forces in Kurakhove pressed forward with mounting attacks from multiple axes of assault. The Russian Ministry of Defense also claimed that its combat formations captured the tactically important village of Ulakly. Further clashes raged in Chasiv Yar but produced minimal change in territorial control.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military has been fighting with gritted teeth to hold the line. Ukraine’s 71st Brigade recently repelled a Russian push near Pokrovsk, inflicting heavy material losses and casualties on the invading forces. Last week, the Ukrainian 47th Mechanized Brigade also turned back a large-scale attack from the Russian 155th Marine Infantry, a formation notorious for committing war crimes during the initial stages of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Both parties launched separate tactical offensives in parts of the Russian region of Kursk, currently occupied by Ukrainian forces. Yet while the Ukrainian push there seems to have paused, Russian forces continue their attempts to recapture lost territory. As in previous weeks, heavy drone warfare activity surged across Ukraine, with social media platforms littered with visuals of drone engagements.
North Korean forces also continued to operate in theater. The United Kingdom’s Defence Ministry reported that North Korean personnel have returned to their combat posts following a rotation period in which they suffered thousands of casualties. Open-source intelligence suggests that the North Korean military has combat deployed Bulsae-4 mounted anti-tank guided missiles in Kursk. A non-line-of-sight (NLOS) weapon with an estimated range of 6.5 miles, the Bulsae-4 is particularly dangerous against heavy armor.
Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine continues to highlight new models of distributed military capacity-building for the digitalized information environment of the twenty-first century. Recently, the Georgian Legion, a volunteer formation predominantly manned by ethnic Georgians, launched an online crowdfunding campaign to procure Kaspar S2 jammers. Anti-Kremlin Chechen units fighting alongside the Ukrainian Armed Forces have also resorted to campaigns on YouTube and X to raise money for their drone program. Ukrainian brigades and battalions have written the playbook for future generations of fighters on how to use social media to generate funding and improve public communications.
2. New Revelations of Russian War Crimes Emerge
More evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine continues to surface. A recent study from the Financial Times found that Russia’s extrajudicial killings of Ukrainian prisoners of war stem from a policy propagated by the highest echelons of the Russian military. The Russian high command has also condoned and directed the deliberate shelling of churches, schools, and hospitals, the abduction of Ukrainian children, and the systematic torture and oppression of Ukrainian citizens living in occupied territories.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) also released the report from its recent visit to Ukraine. The organization’s findings confirm that riot-control agents have been used throughout the war, though the group’s mandate does not allow it to identify by whom. States signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) are required to declare all riot control agents possessing toxic chemicals, and the CWC prohibits the use of riot control agents in a conflict.
The OPCW’s findings reinforce recent reports that Ukrainian border guards captured Russian quadcopter drones equipped with K-51 chemical grenades filled with CS gas, a chemical compound used as a tear gas and riot control agent. K-51 was the principal riot control grenade used by the Soviet Red Army. The K-51 that the Russian military possesses is more powerful than police-grade variants of the compound and can be lethal. This report will continue to monitor Russian war crimes and reports of chemical weapons in Ukraine.