\n<\/p>\n
The Ukrainian soldier stared at the Russian tank. It was destroyed over a year ago in the country\u2019s east and now sat far from the front line. He shrugged and cut into its rusted hull with a gas torch.<\/p>\n
The soldier was not there for the tank\u2019s engine or turret or treads. Those had already been salvaged. He was there for its thick armor. The metal would be cut and strapped as protection to Ukrainian armored personnel carriers defending the embattled town of Avdiivka, around 65 miles away.<\/p>\n
The need to cannibalize a destroyed Russian vehicle to help protect Ukraine\u2019s dwindling supply of equipment underscores Kyiv\u2019s current challenges on the battlefield as it prepares for another year of pitched combat.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cIf our international partners moved faster, we would have kicked their ass in the first three or four months so hard that we would have gotten over it already. We\u2019d be sowing fields and raising children,\u201d said the soldier, who went by the call sign Jaeger, in keeping with military protocol. \u201cWe\u2019d be sending bread to Europe. But it\u2019s been two years already.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Ukraine\u2019s military prospects are looking bleak. Western military aid is no longer assured at the same levels as years past. Ukraine\u2019s summer counteroffensive in the south, where Jaeger was wounded days after it began, is over, having failed to meet any of its objectives.<\/p>\n
And now, Russian troops are on the attack, especially in the country\u2019s east. The town of Marinka has all but fallen<\/a>. Avdiivka is being slowly encircled. A push on Chasiv Yar, near Bakhmut, is expected. Farther north, outside Kupiansk, the fighting has barely slowed since the fall.<\/p>\n The joke among Ukrainian troops goes like this: The Russian army is not good or bad. It is just long. The Kremlin has more of everything: more men, ammunition and vehicles. And they are not stopping despite their mounting numbers of wounded and dead.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But the soldiers\u2019 joke had another certain truth to it. Neither side has distinguished themselves with tactics that have led to a breakthrough on the battlefield. Instead, it has been a deadly dance of small technological advances on both sides that have yet to turn the tide, leaving a conflict that looks like a modernized version of World War I\u2019s Western Front: sheer mass versus mass.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It is that tactic that provides Russia the advantage as it pushes to secure Ukraine\u2019s eastern Donbas region, Moscow\u2019s primary war aim after its defeat in 2022 around Kharkiv, Kherson and the capital, Kyiv. Russia has a population three times the size of Ukraine\u2019s, and its military industrial base is operating at full tilt.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Russian advantage at this stage is not decisive, but the war is not a stalemate,\u201d said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who recently visited Ukraine. \u201cDepending on what happens this year, particularly with western support for Ukraine, 2024 will likely take one or two trajectories. Ukraine could retake the advantage by 2025, or it could start losing the war without sufficient aid.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n For now, Ukraine is in a perilous position. The problems afflicting its military have been exacerbated since the summer<\/a>. Ukrainian soldiers are exhausted by long stretches of combat and shorter rest periods. The ranks, thinned by mounting casualties, are only being partly replenished, often with older and poorly trained recruits.<\/p>\n One Ukrainian soldier, part of a brigade tasked with holding the line southwest of Avdiivka, pointed to a video he took during training recently. The instructors, trying to stifle their laughs, were forced to hold up the man, who was in his mid-50s, just so he could fire his rifle. The man was crippled from alcoholism, said the soldier, insisting on anonymity to candidly describe a private training episode<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThree out of ten soldiers who show up are no better than drunks who fell asleep and woke up in uniform,\u201d he said, referring to the new recruits who arrive at his brigade.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Kyiv\u2019s recruiting strategy has been plagued by overly aggressive tactics<\/a> and more widespread attempts to dodge the draft. Efforts to rectify the problem have spawned a political argument between the military and civilian leadership.<\/p>\n Military officials reinforce the need for wider mobilization to win the war, but the office of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine is apprehensive about introducing unpopular changes that could end with a drive to mobilize 500,000 new soldiers. That number, analysts say, takes into account Ukraine\u2019s staggering losses and what is likely needed to push back the Russians.<\/p>\n While Ukrainian casualties remain a closely guarded secret, U.S. officials over the summer estimated deaths and injuries to be well over 150,000<\/a>. Russian forces have also taken huge numbers of casualties, according to those officials, but the Kremlin\u2019s forces still managed to repel a concerted Ukrainian counteroffensive, regroup and are now assaulting in frigid winter conditions.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re tired,\u201d a Ukrainian platoon commander said, speaking anonymously given the sensitivity of his comments. \u201cWe could always use more people.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The shortage of troops is only one part of the problem. The other and currently more pressing issue is Ukraine\u2019s dwindling ammunition reserves as continued Western supplies remain anything but certain. Ukrainian commanders now have to ration their ammunition, not knowing whether every new shipment might be their last.<\/p>\n At the end of 2023, members of a Ukrainian artillery crew from the 10th Brigade sat inside a bunker nestled into a bare tree line in the country\u2019s east, their Soviet-era 122-millimeter howitzer draped in camouflage netting and leafless branches.<\/p>\n Only when a truck carrying two artillery shells arrived could the crew get to work for the first time in days. They quickly loaded the shells and fired toward Russian soldiers attacking Ukrainian positions three miles away.<\/p>\n \u201cToday we had two shells, but some days we don\u2019t have any in these positions,\u201d said the crew\u2019s commander, who goes by the call sign Monk. \u201cThe last time we fired was four days ago, and that was only five shells.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The shortage of ammunition \u2014 and the shifting battlefield momentum \u2014 means the gunners are no longer supporting Ukrainian attacks. Instead, they only fire when Russian troops are storming Ukrainian trenches.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can stop them for now, but who knows,\u201d Monk said. \u201cTomorrow or the next day, maybe we can\u2019t stop them. It\u2019s a really big problem for us.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Near Kupiansk, a deputy battalion commander from the 68th Brigade, who goes by the call sign Italian, echoed Monk\u2019s concerns.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI have two tanks, but only five shells,\u201d said Italian, as he walked through a denuded tree line splintered by shelling about 500 yards from Russian positions in the Luhansk region. \u201cIt\u2019s a bad situation now, especially in Avdiivka and Kupiansk.\u201d<\/p>\n This ammunition imbalance has been felt across much of the more than 600-mile front line, Ukrainian soldiers said. The Russian units are in a position similar to the summer of 2022, where they can simply wear down a Ukrainian position until Kyiv\u2019s forces run out of ordnance. But unlike that summer, there is no longer a frantic scramble in Western capitals to arm and re-equip Ukraine\u2019s troops.<\/p>\n And unlike that summer, drones have assumed a much larger presence in the arsenal of both sides \u2014 especially the FPV racing drones affixed with explosives and used like remote-controlled missiles.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n These drones have supplemented traditional artillery as both Russia and Ukraine wrestle with stockpiling enough shells to wage a protracted and bloody war. In the past nine months, the FPV drone numbers have surged by at least 10 times, and more casualties are caused by drones than artillery on some parts of the front, Ukrainian soldiers said.<\/p>\n