Transcription
For Putin, the spring of 2026 was supposed to be the start of a major offensive that would have finally allowed him to claim that his so-called “special military operation” was a success. But it isn’t working out that way. Ukraine’s counteroffensive is steamrolling Russian forces. Putin’s war is collapsing after Ukraine blinded the Russian army and then pulled off a massive shift the likes of which nobody expected. This is liberation. It’s de-Russification. And it has led to Ukraine breaking records all over the place, starting with the largest liberation of Ukrainian territory that we’ve seen since the 2023 counteroffensive.
Over the first two months of 2026, Ukraine has managed to reclaim a startling 100 square miles of its territory, much of which is in the Zaporizhzhia region, along with other southern regions of the country, from Russia. That’s according to United24 Media, which says that this de-Russification of so much territory represents not only the most land that Ukraine has liberated since 2023, but also the first time since the counteroffensive launched in that year that Ukraine has managed to gain more ground than it has lost to Putin’s forces. This marks a significant shift in the Ukraine war and its battlefield dynamics, indicating that, for the first time in almost three years, Ukraine has finally gained momentum on the ground. The slow push of Russia’s forces has been halted across most of the frontlines, and Ukraine has taken advantage of its new position to push back into territory that Putin thought was safe.
That push has had more than a small helping hand from SpaceX and Elon Musk’s decision to finally cut off Russian access to the Starlink network that Russia had previously been able to access via illicit terminals that it was providing to its soldiers. In a move that some would argue was a long time coming, SpaceX created a whitelist for Ukraine’s Starlink terminals that simultaneously served as an automatic shutdown for the illicit Russian terminals being used in Ukraine. The result was chaos throughout the Russian lines. And this is where things started to shift in Ukraine’s favor. The Ukrainian advance into Zaporizhzhia was triggered by the complete communications breakdown that occurred in the wake of the Starlink shutdown. In an instant, Russian infiltrators that had snuck into Ukrainian territory and bedded down as they waited for reinforcements were no longer getting any information. Isolated and with no idea what is going on, those infiltrators have been getting picked off by Ukraine’s search-and-destroy squads, which in turn has forced Putin’s already tenuous grip on vast swathes of Ukraine’s southern territory to loosen. Russia is still very much in a weakened position when it comes to its command-and-control, even as it desperately scrambles to find alternatives to the shutdown Starlink terminals that it can no longer use.
This couldn’t have come at a worse time for Putin. As he has for the last few years, Putin and his Kremlin cronies were preparing for a spring offensive that would likely drag deep into the summer, and perhaps even the fall. Striking the fortress belt in Donetsk and taking more territory in Ukraine’s south were goals of this offensive. But as Ukraine’s forces continue their advance, the Kremlin is being forced to reassess those goals as Russia’s troops have been placed on an unexpected defensive posture that is the exact opposite of what they’re supposed to be doing this spring. United24 Media reports that no less than Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has said that the counteroffensive that is yielding enormous results for Ukraine was designed specifically to disrupt that spring offensive. And even as Russia tries to amass forces near key targets, such as the settlement of Huliaipole, it is having to do so after two months of constant losses that left every plan the Kremlin had made in tatters. This was supposed to be the spring to set up Russia’s victory. Instead, all we’ve seen so far is a sustained offensive by Ukraine as it de-Russifies more of its territory. What seems to have started as a localized counterattack sparked by Russia’s loss of Starlink has evolved into something much more. Even as the winter weather clears in Ukraine, which should have set the stage for the offensive that Russia wants to launch, it’s still Ukraine making gains as it defends well against the forces that Putin has amassed.
This isn’t how it was supposed to go for Russia. Putin wanted to spend the winter bombing Ukraine’s energy infrastructure into the ground in the hope that he could force an early submission. That strategy failed. Ukraine withstood the aerial assault, and it came back stronger than Russia could have ever expected during a winter that was supposed to see it collapse. And as the weather clears, the de-Russification has continued. Russian military bloggers are losing their minds right now. That’s according to the Institute for the Study of War, or ISW, which reported in its March 25 assessment of Putin’s invasion that military bloggers are now poking holes in the infiltration strategy that Russia relied upon for much of 2025 and that it is still attempting to leverage even as Ukraine’s search-and-destroy squads eliminate those infiltrators. Russia can’t make any worthwhile advances with these kinds of tactics, its military bloggers are declaring. There can be no fundamental victories achieved by Russia unless there is a wholesale reformation of the entire force structure that includes a move away from infiltration and back toward larger mechanized assaults that batter Ukraine’s defenses. “The milblogger stated that Russian forces would take around 100 years to seize the rest of Ukraine, similar to ISW’s assessment that Russian forces would take 83 years to seize the remainder of the country should they be able to continue their pace of advance from February 2025,” the ISW reports. An entire century seems a long time to wait for a victory that was supposed to be coming at some point in 2026.
And somehow, it has gotten even worse for Putin as he attempts to respond to Ukraine’s de-Russification of so much of its territory. Russia tried to escalate the situation. It failed. According to a March 22 ISW report, the Russian military command deployed Spetsnaz forces into southern Ukraine with the goal of stopping the Ukrainian counteroffensive in its tracks. Those forces headed in the direction of Oleksandrivka, where Ukraine has made some of its most impressive gains. But these supposedly elite operatives have managed to achieve the grand total of nothing at all since their deployment. Russia is still relying on the infiltration tactics that Ukraine has been countering so effectively. It’s also struggling to set up consistent aerial reconnaissance, the ISW reports. And we haven’t seen a single reversal of any of the gains that Ukraine has made over the last couple of months. Putin has sent his best, only to discover that not even they are good enough to stop the sweeping de-Russification that is happening throughout Ukraine’s southern regions.
But here’s where things get really serious for Putin. Even as he can see his defenses crumbling in the south, Putin is a man who sticks to the plan no matter how ridiculous it has become. That’s what he has done with the spring offensive, as he has ordered his already weakened forces to march against Ukraine’s defenses even as they’re losing ground in the south. Donetsk is still the main target, though Zaporizhzhia isn’t far behind, and Russia’s attempts to push in those directions are leading to even more records being broken. Sky-high casualties are now being recorded among the weakened Russian forces, and these losses are climbing so high that both Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, are claiming that Russia’s recruitment efforts aren’t strong enough to match the losses. We just mentioned another record being broken. On March 19, The Telegraph reported that Russia had lost 1,710 soldiers two days ago, which is the largest single-day casualty rate that Russia has experienced in 2026 so far. Ukraine’s unmanned system forces played a big role in this achievement, as they took out 900 of Putin’s patsies in about a day and a half, the outlet adds. Devastatingly for Putin, these massive losses are the surefire sign to Ukraine that the spring offensive has officially started. Russia isn’t gaining massive chunks of territory or unleashing a new strategy that Ukraine never saw coming. It’s just feeding more of its cannon fodder into the meat-grinder than it has been over the last few months, and Ukraine is happily chewing those Russian soldiers up and spitting their mangled remains right back into Putin’s face. This is all that Russia has – a manpower-focused strategy in which it sacrifices soldiers for paltry gains. Countering that strategy is Ukraine’s, which is all about targeted and intelligent moves against Russia’s weak embedded forces. Ukraine is getting more back than it’s putting in, while Russia is losing soldiers by the bucketload for practically no real returns.
And it’s not like the record-breaking day was a one-off for Putin’s forces. Now comes attrition for Putin’s forces after Ukraine spent the last two months pushing them back and tearing through Russia’s reserves. According to another ISW report, this one from March 23, Russia lost 6,090 of its soldiers during the four days between March 17 and March 20. That’s an average casualty rate of 1,520 per day, and it was the precursor to a week beginning March 17 that saw Ukraine inflict 8,710 casualties on Russia. This isn’t sustainable for Russia. But it’s the reality of the spring offensive. Ukraine’s campaign of de-Russification in the southern regions of its territory has been remarkably effective. Still, Russia is trying to respond, both on the battlefield and to the Starlink shutdown that we discussed earlier. Putin hopes that will change everything, but he’s wrong. However, before we get into that, this is why we make The Military Show – to explain how power really moves on the battlefield. If you want to see more, remember to subscribe to the channel.
Now, how is Russia trying to respond? On the Starlink front, Russia is attempting to create its own version of the satellite system that SpaceX has yanked out of its grip. According to a March 24 report by the Centre for Eastern Studies, the previous day saw a Russian Soyuz-2.1b launch vehicle carry 16 satellites that will be part of the Rassvet low-Earth-orbit broadband communications system Russia is trying to create into orbit. The coming years will see hundreds of these satellites being launched, says Bureau 1440, which is the company behind the system. But this initiative has been in development since 2020, and not even hundreds of satellites, never mind the 16 that Russia just sent into space, are a match for what Starlink provided to Russia’s forces. SpaceX's satellite constellation is over 10,000 units strong, giving it global coverage. Russia may argue that it only needs to have coverage over Ukraine’s territory, but what we see here is a feeble attempt to mimic a communications system that is vastly superior to this nascent Russian version in every single way. Still, some satellites are better than none at all for Russia. They won’t help the fact that the Kremlin is banning the use of Telegram on the frontlines, which is only feeding into the communications issue that the loss of Starlink created. But those satellites will be there, providing internet access to Russian troops who can’t use that access in the way that they need to if they’re to stand any chance of making Russia’s spring offensive a success.
Russia is also attempting to put the gains that Ukraine has made to the test. As Ukraine continues to push forward on the back of the momentum that it has built since late January, The New York Times reports that Russia is amassing troops at locations that it believes will be key to the spring and summer offensive. It carries comments from a Ukrainian commander in Zaporizhzhia, Lieutenant Colonel Vitaliy Gersak, who says, “They are massing in these places and want to push us again.” Putin’s goal, it seems, is to retake the land that Russia just lost to Ukraine’s sweeping liberations, allowing it to re-Russify what has just been de-Russified. We’re seeing something similar happen in the Huliaipole direction, which we mentioned earlier is a region where Russia is building up its forces. Those forces are now attacking in greater volume than they have at any other point during 2026. Syrskyi confirmed this, stating on March 15 that “the intensity of offensive operations in the Huliaipole area is significantly higher compared with that in other sectors.” Pravda also confirmed these comments, noting that the intensity of the offensive actions in that particular direction is higher than anywhere else across the frontlines. Huliaipole is in the Zaporizhzhia Oblast, so it’s clear what Russia is trying to achieve here, based on where the majority of Ukraine’s counterattacks have taken place in February and March. RBC-Ukraine adds that the first 10 days of March saw Russia’s forces launch 1,400 assaults. That’s another indicator that the spring offensive has begun, as the monthly average was 1,800 between September 2025 and February 2026. If Russia continues at this sort of rate, it will have launched more than 4,200 assaults by the end of March. It’s like we said before. Putin’s only strategy is to push more meat into the grinder. It is these attempts by Russia to counter Ukraine’s de-Russification of its territory that have led to the massive casualty counts we’ve seen in the days that followed the launch of this new offensive.
But for as much as Putin is trying to force his 2026 plans to come to fruition, they’re destined to fail. Although Ukraine’s counteroffensive is a big enough problem for Putin to deal with, behind it lie several larger issues for which Russia has no solution. The first is the tactics that Putin is being forced to use on the battlefield. Despite Russian military bloggers screaming out for Russia to switch away from the infiltration tactics that it used for much of 2025, the 2026 spring offensive is being characterized by yet more attempts to sneak small units of Russian soldiers behind Ukraine’s lines. Russia has to take this approach because Ukraine has filled the battlefield with so many FPV drones that attempting armored assaults using tanks and armored vehicles is out of the question along large portions of the frontlines. These slow-moving vehicles make easy targets for Ukraine’s drone operators, and Russia is already dealing with having lost over 11,800 of its tanks and 38,800 of its armored vehicles, per Ukraine’s Ministry of Finance. Putin’s forces were already running out of equipment, and with even more drones in the skies, using what they have left is a fool’s errand. Infiltration may work in the sense that it creates confusion behind the combat lines. But if Russia is to make any significant gain in 2026, it has to introduce some armor into the mix. A handful of troops sneaking into poorly defended hidey-holes behind the lines only goes so far. It’s this very tactic that Ukraine has so successfully turned on its head during its counteroffensive, yet Putin seems to think that something that hasn't worked anywhere near the scale that he needs it to work is going to be the answer in 2026. It isn’t. Ukraine will make sure of it. And it’ll do it by deploying yet more of the FPV drones that we mentioned a moment ago. As The Kyiv Independent reported on December 24, Ukraine’s armed forces were on track to receive a total of three million FPV drones by the end of 2025. That gives you an indicator of the sheer scale of the FPV drone army that Ukraine has amassed to deal with Russia’s attempts to advance, and it doesn’t account for the long-range drones Ukraine uses to hit Russia or the mid-range drones that it has introduced into its arsenal to attack the Russian near rear in the occupied territories. This army of FPV drones has been used to create lethal kill zones all across the front lines, especially in the regions that Russia wants to target with its spring campaign. And by the way, Ukraine pushing Russia’s forces back as much as they have over the last months offers the benefit of being able to create these kill zones in territory that Russia thought it would be holding when it launched its spring offensive. What Ukraine does with these FPV drones is force Putin’s hand when it comes to the infiltration strategy that he will be using in 2026. The small Russian units are trying to sneak through these kill zones. Those who make it through may be waiting around for support, but they’re not going to get anything substantial. The kill zones cut Russia’s infiltrators off from the frontlines, choking them off from supplies, reinforcements, and everything else that they might need to hold the weak positions that they gain. In the early months of 2026, we’ve seen the result of Russia’s approach. Ukraine has been systematically destroying these infiltrators as it de-Russifies throughout the south. So, the fact that Putin is going to be relying on the same strategy again this spring tells Ukraine that Russia’s leader has no new ideas. Ukraine knows how to counter this strategy. Record-breaking days and weeks of Russian casualties in 2026 prove it.
What this all means is that Putin’s spring offensive is collapsing before it’s ever gotten off the ground. The ISW says that the offensive certainly isn’t going to achieve what Putin really wants in 2026. The fortress belt is going to survive the year, the ISW says, and the best that Putin can hope for this year is a handful of tactical gains that will come at a high cost to the Russian military. Again, we’re seeing an early sign of what those costs might be from the casualty figures that are starting to come through at the beginning of the spring offensive. Those casualties are already causing Putin to get desperate. According to RBC-Ukraine, Putin may be forced to deploy mobilized troops from Crimea into Ukraine as early as April. That’s already an issue in the sense that losing those mobilized forces in Crimea means that Russia weakens its position in the illegally annexed peninsula. But what this also tells us is that Ukraine’s campaign of de-Russification has worked in the sense that it forced Russia to burn through soldiers that it intended to use as part of the spring offensive. Those soldiers are now gone, and the territory they held is back in Ukraine’s hands. Russia has also lost thousands of soldiers in the early stages of the spring offensive, and it may have even lost elite Spetsnaz operatives in the south. Ukraine has been steamrolling Russia’s forces for two months. Now, we’re starting to see the results of that play out as the Russian spring offensive has gotten off to such a stumbling start that it’s not even out of the blocks yet. Another huge contributor to all of this is that Ukraine has developed the ability to strike deeper into the occupied territories, which is wrecking Russia’s command centers and military nodes. The middle-strike drones are flying and, as Russia’s elite drone unit Rubicon discovered, they’re dangerous and destructive. Find out more in our video. And if you enjoyed this video, make sure you’re subscribed to The Military Show so you catch more of our coverage of the Ukraine war.