Ukraine’s Winning Strategy Against Russia: Attrition

Ukraine’s Winning Strategy Against Russia: Attrition | RAND Corporation | July 22nd, 2026

In a commentary originally published in The Hill, Gian Gentile and Andrew Radin explain how Ukraine has regained the edge against Russia through a war of attrition.

Gentile and Radin consider how—despite the Kremlin’s seemingly endless tolerance for casualties—Russia has begun to feel the economic pain of the war, exacerbated by long-range Ukraine drone strikes on industrial targets:

Russia’s war economy is going underwater. Ukraine continues to strike industrial targets deep inside Russia with its long-range drones. The recent Russian declaration of emergency in Crimea due to Ukrainian strikes against logistics supply lines shows the increasingly precarious position Russia is now in. Importantly, there are very real signs of unrest within parts of the population and the Russian oligarchy.

Gentile and Radin also emphasize the centrality of attrition to Russia’s present exhaustion. Despite the dislike of this strategic tool by modern militaries, attrition has been crucial to most wars throughout history, and again in the Russo-Ukrainian War:

Over the last two years, however, Ukraine has developed an effective, if not necessarily novel, strategy of attrition: kill more Russian soldiers, faster. Ukraine leaders use business principles to maximize both Russian casualties and economic costs.

The commentary also highlights Ukraine’s vigorous defense sector in maintaining Ukraine’s ability to inflict casualties, in particular through the mass production of unmanned aerial systems: drones.

Ukraine’s defense sector is making these goals attainable, including its domestic drone industry, its internally developed command-and-control systems and its training and organization of drone forces—in particular the specialization of the Unmanned Systems Forces. Fedorov’s mathematics of war initiative also collected data to improve the efficiency of attrition.

Beyond merely shifting the tide, the authors suggest Ukraine’s strategy may force Russia to the table:

But Ukraine could very well break Russia’s will to continue fighting. History offers an example of that, too. In 1918, the allied armies of France, Great Britain and the recently arrived Americans had defeated the German Spring Offensive on the Western Front. After four years of bloody attritional warfare, the German Army collapsed on the field of battle, leading to the November armistice and peace treaty that ended World War I.

Whether the Russian Army faces a similar fate will depend on Ukraine’s maintenance of its effective strategy of attrition and continuing if not increasing its long-range strikes into Russia, and the continued support of its partner nations.

Interested in more SWJ discourse on drone warfare in the Russo-Ukrainian War? See here.

For more on Putin’s “obsession” with Ukraine, read here.