The image that Vladimir Putin tries to convey to and to the rest of the world is that of a Russia moving towards an inevitable victory in Ukraine. But on the ground, reality is beginning to look very different.
The Russian army continues to gain territory Yes, but increasingly slowly, with enormous human losses and trapped in a war completely transformed by drones.
To the point that a 24-year-old Russian deserter soldier has described to the New York Times scenes that seem taken from a futuristic and desperate war at the same time: soldiers isolated for days, units unable to rescue the wounded and drones used to throw bottles of water and candy to dying comrades trapped between both fronts.
“We were trying to send water and chocolates with drones to a colleague who was dying of dehydration”says the soldier, who fought in Donbas before deserting last year and whose testimony has been collected by the American newspaper.
War no longer looks like war
is that it has not yet found an effective way to advance on a battlefield where practically any movement is detected from the air.
The times of great offensives with armored columns seem very distant. Now war works differently.
Small groups of two soldiers advance on foot, hiding among trees, ruins or improvised trenches while they try to infiltrate Ukrainian positions little by little. Many times, separated from each other to avoid becoming an easy target for enemy drones.
As the former Russian soldier explains, his unit spent weeks trying to take a single town near Pokrovsk. First they sent assault groups that were eliminated from the air. Then the minimal infiltrations began: pairs of soldiers entering every day until they consolidated a small presence.
Thus was born what both armies now call the “gray zone”: huge areas of the front where no one really controls the territory and where wounded and corpses are left abandoned for days.
Putin sells victory, but Russian advance slows
The New York Times report also dismantles one of the big arguments that Moscow has been conveying to Washington for months: that Ukraine is close to total collapse.
According to several independent organizations monitoring the front, the Russian advance has slowed enormously in 2026. In fact, some months Russia has even lost territory.
At this rate, the American newspaper calculates, it would take Moscow more than thirty years to completely conquer the Donbas, precisely one of Putin’s great demands to negotiate the end of the war.
The problem for the Kremlin is twofold.
On the one hand, the losses remain gigantic. The estimates published this weekend by independent Russian media The number of Russian soldiers killed since the beginning of the invasion now stands at around 352,000. More than six times the American casualties in the entire Vietnam War.
On the other hand, the Russian economy is beginning to show clear signs of exhaustion after years of massive military spending, while internet restrictions and mobile blackouts to stop Ukrainian attacks are beginning to generate unrest within the country itself.
The drone war changes everything
The main protagonist of this new phase of the conflict is no longer tanks or heavy artillery. They are the drones.
Ukraine has gained an advantage in several areas thanks to its technological capacity and the mass production of FPV drones, capable of locating and attacking soldiers practically in real time.
Russia tries to respond by creating specialized units and adapting its tactics, but the underlying problem remains: advancing is extremely slow and extremely dangerous.
“The best option they have now is infiltrations and attacking enemy logistics”analyst Dara Massicot of the Carnegie Endowment explains to The New York Times. “But that doesn’t lead to rapid progress. They’re stuck.”
Still, in Ukraine no one dares to relax.
The Ukrainian authorities warn that Russia is preparing new offensives taking advantage of the summer, the vegetation and the better climate, which allow troop movements to be better hidden from drones.
Because although war has become something very different from what it was two years ago, it is still just as brutal. Or maybe more.
