TIP0002 – Prediction: Ukrainian army collapsing soon

Losing the will to fight

Wherever you stand on the war in Ukraine, you have to admit and admire: the Ukrainian army has made an incredible stand, even if losing overall. The last year, Russia stepped up their offensive, taking 7 times more ground than the previous year. And still, Ukraine kept counterattacking at every step, never giving up. That the Russian in them, I suppose. Think about World War 1, where for years huge armies battled in very bloody battlefields. The soldiers kept that up for 4 long years, even as they became very tired and extremely weary. Look at the art and poetry coming out of the last year of that war, in particular the chilling ‘Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori’, by war poet Wilfred Owen… Soldiers can endure an almost inhumane amount of suffering, and often an outside spark is needed to break their will to keep fighting.

In a separate article, I will explore the current situation in that war, discuss the official numbers of casualties, the problems with those statistics, the tactics employed, the real story about the Kursk Front, and several other factors of interest and importance.

For now, here is the short story: Russia has been grinding away at Ukrainian positions, and made progress at significantly increased rates since September-October 2024, stopping just about all Ukrainian counter-offensive actions. Keep in mind: Russia has been on the offensive in the initial month of the war, in March 2022, and was largely in full defensive posture for the whole of 2023 (with the exception of the Wagner PMC capturing Bakhmut, and some very small actions by a few units such as in Velyka Novosilka). In 2024, Russia slowly ramped up their offensive actions, in very small local actions, seemingly haphazardly across the front: now a few kilometers here, the next few days over there.

France 24 gave the following update: “Much of the Russian gains came in the autumn, as they took 610 square kilometres in October and 725 square kilometres in November. Those two months saw the Russians capture the most territory since March 2022, in the early weeks of the conflict.

Russia's advance slowed in December, coming to 465 square kilometres in the first 30 days of the month. But it is already nearly four times bigger than in the same month of the previous year and two-and-a-half times more than in December 2022.”

The Russian advance slowed down again in January, but seems to be picking up again in the last week (source graph: Newsweek).

Russia is methodologically chipping away at the Ukrainian defenses, slowly creating ‘pockets’ of operational encirclement, and then make sudden gains when those pockets collapse. The areas fought in now are the more densely populated regions. As the American based Institute for the Study of War points out in their Jan 26, 2025 assessment: “Russian advances in the Toretsk direction have historically been slow as Russian forces fought through built-up urban areas, but Russian forces may begin to advance relatively more quickly once they break out of Toretsk into the more open fields west of the settlement.”

The near capture of Pokrovsk is similarly strategically very important, as it sits on a major logistical hub, where 3 major roads converge, as well as 6 railroad lines. This will break the eastern front in two for the Ukrainians making resupply that much more complicated and slower.

Stories keep popping up of sudden captures of otherwise very well build defensive positions: Ukrainian units, often heavily undermanned, simply gave them up. What good does a perfectly laid out defensive network do when you don’t have the necessary manpower to operate the interlocking firing positions? Other stories that only fairly recently started to surface, are those about mass desertions among the Ukrainian soldiers. This article by the Guardian describes the growing disillusionment, and AP, already in November 2024, wrote “Facing every imaginable shortage, tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops, tired and bereft, have walked away from combat and front-line positions to slide into anonymity, according to soldiers, lawyers and Ukrainian officials. Entire units have abandoned their posts, leaving defensive lines vulnerable and accelerating territorial losses, according to military commanders and soldiers.”

The office of the Ukrainian General Prosecutor even gave an official statement, and said that “[m]ore than 100,000 soldiers have been charged under Ukraine’s desertion laws since Russia invaded in February 2022.” Other officials, including a member of the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, even speak of over 200,000 cases of desertion.

“Many deserters don’t return after being granted medical leave. Bone-tired by the constancy of war, they are psychologically and emotionally scarred. They feel guilt about being unable to summon the will to fight, anger over how the war effort is being led, and frustration that it seems unwinnable.”

Both AP and Reuters confirm that the situation is so dire at the front, that whole units, even when not deserting, still defied orders, abandoning positions all over the front-line. The stories of the shortages of troops and their abysmal morale are staggering: “The 72nd was already stretched thin in the weeks before Vuhledar fell. Only one line battalion and two rifle battalions held the town near the end, and military leaders even began pulling units from them to support the flanks, the officer said. There should have been 120 men in each of the battalion’s companies, but some companies’ ranks dropped to only 10 due to deaths, injuries and desertions.”

It gets even worse, as the reality starts to become admitted and leak out: ““People cannot psychologically cope with the situation they are in, and they are not provided with psychological help,” said attorney Tetyana Ivanova (discussing the topic of defending soldiers charged with desertion). Soldiers acquitted of desertion due to psychological reasons set a dangerous precedent because “then almost everyone is justified (to leave), because there are almost no healthy people left (in the infantry).”

Meanwhile, the official number Ukraine has put out about the number of their own soldiers that have been killed in the whole war are preposterous: “Ukraine has lost 45,100 soldiers on the battlefield since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with U.K. journalist Piers Morgan published Feb. 4,” the Kyiv Independent wrote. Add to that 390,000 wounded, over the course of the whole war, since February 2022, almost 3 years to the day. The Ukrainian estimates of Russian casualties are quite different: 350,000 killed, and 600-700,000 wounded Russian soldiers.

More sensible estimates by people who have followed the war in high detail since the beginning would agree with the number of Russian casualties, but place the Ukrainian losses much higher: up to 1 million killed in action, and over 1 million up to 2 million wounded. All the stories about the complete fire superiority of the Russian army, even to ratios of 50 Russian shells fired per 1 Ukrainian shell, make the official Ukrainian number of KIA ridiculously low. The biggest killer is artillery, so how could Ukraine have a 1 to 7 kill ratio vs the Russians, when the Russians have at least a 10 to 1 superiority in artillery pieces, not even mentioning the lob-sided supply of artillery ammunition? What about the stories about the completely undermanned units all over the Ukrainian army? As AP noted, there are even units with a paper strength of 120 that are mustering only 10 soldiers? No, the true number of Ukrainian soldiers killed is much, much higher, and I tend to believe the estimate of 1 million...

Which would explain why Ukrainian army recruiters are struggling to fill their quotas, resorting to kidnapping men from the streets. The videos showing this, at times with the women defending their men, are all over the internet. Just this week, however, a new report came out, published by Reuters. “Ukraine's army chief condemned on Monday a spate of violent attacks on draft officers, rallying in defence of a national call-up effort that has fuelled anger among some Ukrainians and struggled to generate sufficient frontline manpower. The incidents, including the fatal shooting of a draft officer and explosions at two draft offices in three days, pile pressure on an already-troubled national campaign to draft civilians despite faltering enthusiasm for service.”

The Ukrainian people don’t have access to Russian desinformation and propaganda, given that Zelenskyy has effectively banned most media, only keeping state media and media loyal to him in business. Their apprehension towards military service stems from the stories they hear from relatives and friends, of the situation on the frontlines, and the many deaths. They know. Where at first they were content with fleeing the country, or bribing the recruiters, Ukrainian men later started to hide, and now, very importantly, they start to actively resist and attack the army recruiters. This is a watershed moment, signalling the disposition of the Ukrainian population towards the war efforts.

The lack of troops is so acute, that even aircraft mechanics are sent to the front, and reports fear that drone operators, as valuable as they are, risk being sent to the front as well: “FPV pilots face being redirected to infantry positions when mobilization efforts prove lacking to replenish infantry needs.” (Source)

This brings us to another report, this time about possible mutiny among the ranks of the Ukrainian army. “The Russian state news agency RIA Novosti has published a video of a Ukrainian POW saying that the Ukrainian Armed Forces could revolt on the territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic. According to the fighter, it is noticeable how the morale of the AFU units has fallen. “I think we should probably start a revolt. I would accept it positively. Because the government is completely unfit. It has stolen the country, sold everything. Maybe it will continue, maybe it will happen. Because patience is not unlimited”, said the soldier.”

The desillusion of the soldiers is palpable, and can be seen from multiple sources. What is interesting is that the idea of mutiny is now coming up. The article gives this interesting piece of historical information that checks out: “The Ukrainian prisoner of war shown in the RIA Novosti report claims that the mutiny in the AFU could start in the lands of Donbass. However, historical experience shows that those who are deployed far from the front are the first to revolt.”

Now, notice how aircraft mechanics were being sent to the front. There are thousands of troops, in the army, police, local national guard units, etc. that are stationed deep inland, and don’t see combat. They guard border crossigns, warehouses, training centers, logistical hubs, etc. Many of the soldiers placed in those ‘safe’ non-combat units have bribed their way into those units. What if a desperate high command starts to mobilize those units for front duty? It’s not unthinkable that a mutiny would start there, lighting the fuse across the whole army.

In a war of narratives, the actual casualty numbers cannot be divulged, of course.
Meanwhile, the CEPA (Center for European Policy Analysis) maintains that Ukraine is not losing the war, at all. “Ukraine, supported by its partners, demonstrates superior performance across multiple domains and shows no signs of imminent collapse. This year will just simply underline those trends.” No signs of imment collapse? Even if the actual death toll is impossible to prove, the admitted number of desertions and the population’s stance towards the recruiters tell a different tale altogether.

This article was written on January 17, 2025, by Alina Frolova, a former Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Defence of Ukraine (2019–2020). An earlier October 25, 2024 article by CEPA, by Doug Livermore, was more candid: “If Ukraine remains on its current strategic trajectory, Kyiv could lose the war sometime in 2025. This is an avoidable outcome if action is taken now.”

Even the BBC starts to admit the reality: “Ukraine is losing the battle on the ground. Many of its soldiers are tired and exhausted after three years of fighting. The question – can the country endure another year of war?” In that article, the soldiers they interview are ‘volunteers’. A picture shows a unit patch of Right Sector: those volunteers are members of one of the Neo-Nazi organizations that have been incorporated into the Ukrainian army and government.

Here I want to make a prediction:

The total collapse of the Ukrainian army and front-lines is very close. The Ukrainian soldiers are already completely spent, months ago. This has only become worse since November. But where those soldiers were able to keep going, only speaking about ‘frustration that it seems unwinnable’, as the propaganda machine in the West keeps hiding the real numbers of soldiers killed, of losses, of the lack of will in the West to really step up, and many lawmakers in the US, even after Trump got inaugurated, who talked about ‘having their back’ and promising billions more in support. Who could lose, with the US on the side?

Trump has completely deflated that balloon. He is in peace negotiations with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Not just the European leaders have been left out of those negotiations, but even Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is kept away from the negotiation table! Trump gave a scathing view of Zelensky, basically accusing him of being an unpopular dictator who refuses to hold elections. Whether or not those allegations are true (is for another article), the message is very clear: the United States no longer support Zelensky, and openly criticize him. Europeans and others in the US accuse Trump of having given in to Russian propaganda. Again, whether or not that is true is irrelevant: the Ukrainian soldiers are aware of this, and this must be an enormous blow to their morale. Where before the war ‘seemed’ unwinnable, it now must look lost, with Trump negotiation with Putin, talking about surrendering the territories Russia has conquered, and ending the war.

Even if a Ukrainian soldiers believes those stories or not, the writing is on the wall: the war will be over soon. Why die now, with months, or perhaps even weeks to go? WWI tells a different story, where even on armistice day commanders on both sides that morning on November 11, 1918 ordered troops into battle, only to stop fighting at 11am... The gains made, at the cost of more blood and lives, was measured in yards that could have been walked in peace only a few hours later. Completely senseless, as is the killing that is going on right now in Ukraine.

The already exhausted soldiers have done an incredible job, keeping the Russian advances slow, fighting back in courageous counterattacks, even as many are deserting because of complete exhaustion and shell-shock. Even deserters feel guilt, as they cannot muster the will to go back to the front. damaged by PTSD. Wanting to, but their willpower (not their courage) eroded to nothing by months and even years of constant fighting, without breaks, without pause, without proper rotations.

Whatever it was that caused them to hold on, even by a thread, that is now gone. The US is no longer supporting Ukraine and is even talking about surrendering Ukrainian territory. It’s over. What have they been fighting and dying over? Why go on?

(Shell-shocked Ukrainian soldier, source AP)

The deplorable state of the soldiers provides bone-dry kindle. The moment that spark of complete despair catches on, it will spread like wildfire among the combat units all along the front. Lines will crumble, and Russian soldiers will be ready to advance, this time with speed. Target? The Russians, my guess would be, would advance all the way to the Dniepr river, and likely also take over Odessa, which has been claimed as a Russian city multiple times by Russian leaders, including Putin. This would give them an extra buffer against NATO and Europe, and leave Ukraine as a rump state, giving the Russians the added benefit of another warmwater port in Odessa, completely isolating and controling Ukraine.

If this collapse happens before the conclusion of the peace talks, it would considerably alter the balance even more in favor of Russia. As to why Russia would want such a maximalist position and gain, consider the hundreds of thousands fallen on Russian side, at least 150,000, likely higher, around 300,000, according to some even half a million killed. Russia will likely want very solid guarantees and results, as the price to be paid for so much blood. In Ukraine, whole generations are gone or severely mutilated. All because the West insisted to shackle and ‘hurt’ Russia, denying peace proposals multiple times (see my series on this war here). As the American Conservative summarized the position and statements of many American leaders, “The U.S. and Europe continue to support Kiev. But not, it seems, to make peace. Rather, the allies are prepared to back the Zelensky government as long as it fights Moscow to the last Ukrainian—which has always been the West’s approach to Kiev.”

I might be wrong and underestimate the absolute power of the Ukrainian soldiers. But the reports of desertion and refusal to fight have been so numerous and mind-boggling, and the reversal of the narrative by Trump so complete and shocking, that this, in my view, will be the last straw that will break their will to go on.

May peace come quickly, and this horrendous war end.