End of the Doctrine: Why even a new mobilisation will not enable Russia to achieve victory

The end of the ‘war of attrition’ doctrine

When, on 24 February 2022, Vladimir Putin sent a 120,000-strong army and armoured columns marked with the letters Z and V towards Kyiv, it was assumed that, apart from isolated pockets, Ukraine and Ukrainian forces would not mount active resistance, as such resistance would be futile. It seemed self-evident that none of Russia’s neighbours, including Ukraine, had the capacity to withstand the resource power of the ‘Russian bear’, allegedly fuelled by hydrocarbons from its boundless taiga. In this view, it was simply a question of political will in Moscow as to how far Russian tanks would advance, whether to Kyiv, Lviv, or the Polish border.

The reverse side of this conviction was the Russian army’s defeat near Kyiv, when its ‘psychological offensive’ faltered. This was, however, interpreted as a tactical miscalculation and did not fundamentally challenge the broader strategic outlook. Both in Moscow and in the West, the dominant view remained that the new scenario for the military conflict was a war of attrition, and that even a limited mobilisation of Russia’s resources would make its advance and eventual military victory slower and less triumphant, but nonetheless inevitable.

This belief remained largely intact until 2025, when Donald Trump, by depriving Ukraine of much of its American aid, made it the central argument of his negotiating strategy. Ukraine, he argued, was losing personnel and territory but unable to reverse the course of the war, and therefore Kyiv had no choice but to make concessions to Moscow. This position was presented to Volodymyr Zelensky and was based essentially on an emerging consensus of ‘military realism’.

However, concerns about the collapse of the Ukrainian front due to manpower shortages and the inevitable Russian breakthrough through massed forces, which were still very much a reality as early as the beginning of 2025, now seem to be a thing of the past. By 2025, the war of attrition had come to look like at least a two-way contest. Russia was forced to commit significantly greater economic and human resources to offensive operations than defending Ukraine, yet failed to achieve meaningful results. Economic optimism, fuelled by state investment, faded rapidly, and fiscal pressures expanded. At the same time, the rapid development of drone warfare altered the very understanding of the critical resources required for military success.

In the first half of 2026, the situation moved a step further. Ukrainian drone strikes are now hitting economic and military infrastructure across much of Russian territory, causing significant moral and economic damage. Even more importantly, it now appears increasingly likely that Ukraine's ‘drone wall’ will be capable of grinding down almost any number of enemy troops.

It is precisely this last factor that appears to mark a turning point in the course of both this war and, in a broader sense, Russian history as a whole. The capacity to mobilise vast human resources with a low sensitivity to casualties formed the core of Russia’s offensive strategy, drawing heavily on the experience and mythology of victory in the Second World War. Russian tank armies, accompanied by vast numbers of infantry with little regard for their own lives, were the primary instrument and proof of Soviet and Russian military power. Tanks have long ceased to play a decisive role, but superiority in manpower remained the central premise of Russian offensives in Donbas in 2024–2025. However, the results showed that, in the face of the ‘drone wall’, numerical superiority in manpower is no longer a critical factor for the success of an offensive operation.

The Second World War or the First?

The model of recruiting contract soldiers through financial incentives, which sustained Russia’s doctrine of attritional warfare for three years, now appears to be in crisis (→ Re:Russia: The Contract System Has Broken Down). However, this crisis is likely more systemic than it first appears. The issue is not that fewer people are willing to sign contracts, but that even if more were willing, this would probably not change the outcome. It is the doctrine of attritional warfare itself that is in crisis. Even if Putin were to announce another ‘partial’ mobilisation and recruit a further 200,000 men, this would likely allow for some tactical advances along the front line, but would probably not result in a breakthrough or any significant shift in the balance of forces. Russian losses could increase from today’s 30,000 personnel per month to 45,000–50,000. The deployed manpower would be ground down by a drone barrage within a matter of months, and Putin would simply be sending another 200,000 Russians to their deaths, without achieving the victory that might in any way justify the cost.

The likelihood of such an outcome increases the risks faced by the Kremlin in deciding whether to mobilise. At a time when public discontent with the war in Russia is visibly growing and threatens to become near-universal, throwing into the offensive not only those who have volunteered for financial compensation over the past three years, but also forcibly mobilised conscripts, and ultimately failing to achieve success, represents a significant political risk.

The public reaction to the announcement of mobilisation may also differ completely from last time. In the autumn of 2022, the Russian authorities managed to create, at least among some Russians, a sense that ‘the fatherland was in danger’. After three years of reports that ‘the special operation is proceeding according to plan’, it is unlikely that this can be repeated. But the main difference lies in the fact that, last time, the average Russian citizen did not yet realise that the military command’s entire tactics consisted of infantry assaults and overwhelming enemy firepower through the mass sacrifice of newly recruited soldiers, while the mid-level command structure was a stratum of racketeers and ruthless plunderers of their own soldiers. This perception is now widespread.

Under such circumstances, a new mobilisation for yet another offensive attempt in Donbas may become a historical echo of the Brusilov Offensive of the Russian army in the summer of 1916. That strategy similarly relied on manpower superiority (by a factor of one and a half to two times), enabling simultaneous offensives on multiple fronts. However, after initial success, the operation stalled and failed to alter the course of the war. According to many historians, its failure, combined with colossal losses (at least half a million killed and wounded), undermined the legitimacy of the Tsarist regime and initiated the breakdown of the Russian military machine, culminating in revolution and the Civil War. The myth of victory in the Second World War, which fuels the Kremlin’s propaganda discourse, may thus give way to a repetition of the history of Russia’s defeat in the First World War, caused not by external intervention but by internal fracture and a crisis of legitimacy.

Moreover, the consequences of Russia’s failure to convert its manpower advantage into victory in a war of attrition against a drone army will not be confined to the conflict with Ukraine. This may well mark the beginning of a new era in Russia’s history and in its relations with its neighbours. The image of the ‘Russian bear’ and the assumption of its indisputable military superiority in conventional warfare are becoming a thing of the past. Containing Moscow’s expansionism is increasingly becoming a matter of a renewable drone capability rather than an irreplaceable human resource. Russian militarism will no longer be able to rely on the myth of inevitable victory achieved ‘with minimal bloodshed’, a narrative used both as an instrument of external intimidation and as a marker of great power status in domestic politics.