Russia's Weakness Offers Leverage
By Christina Harward
February 19, 2025
Executive Summary
The United States can use the enormous challenges Russia will face in 2025 as leverage to secure critical concessions in ongoing negotiations to end the war by continuing and even expanding military support to Ukraine. Russia will likely face a number of materiel, manpower, and economic issues in 12 to 18 months if Ukrainian forces continue to inflict damage on Russian forces on the battlefield at the current rate. Russia's defense industrial base (DIB) cannot sustain Russia's current armored vehicle, artillery system, and ammunition burn rates in the medium-term. Russia's recruitment efforts appear to be slowing such that they cannot indefinitely replace Russia's current casualty rates without an involuntary reserve mobilization, which Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown great reluctance to order. Putin has mismanaged Russia's economy, which is suffering from increased and unsustainable war spending, growing inflation, significant labor shortages, and reductions in Russia's sovereign wealth fund. These issues will present difficult decision points to Putin in 2026 or 2027 provided current trends continue. Putin thus is likely prioritizing breaking Western and particularly US support to Ukraine in 2025 and securing his desired end state in negotiations, letting him avoid facing the nexus of difficult problems he now confronts. US military aid to Ukraine has let Ukraine drive Russia towards a critical moment when Putin will have to make hard choices. The United States can accelerate the moment when Putin must grapple with these interlocking problems and can likely coerce Russia into making the concessions on its demands necessary to secure a peace acceptable to the United States, Ukraine, and Europe. The United States can achieve a strong negotiating position and negotiate a deal that maximizes American interests by continuing military aid to Ukraine and increasing battlefield pressure on Russia.
Russia's Problems on the Horizon
Russia will likely face several materiel, manpower, and economic constraints in the coming months that will put pressure on the Kremlin's ability to maintain its war effort in Ukraine in the medium- to long-term — if Russian forces' loss rates in Ukraine continue at the current tempo. Putin planned for Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine to last weeks — not years. Putin's false assumptions about Ukraine's ability and willingness to defend its territory led him not to prepare the Russian economy or military recruitment system for a protracted and expensive war with high losses. Putin has failed to make difficult but necessary decisions to create the systems necessary for sustaining a protracted war. Russia's protracted war and high losses on the battlefield are already causing major economic issues in Russia, and these economic problems will likely mature within another 12 to 18 months.
Russian forces have sustained vehicle and artillery system losses on the battlefield that are unsustainable in the medium- to long-term given the limitations of Russia's defense industrial capacity and Soviet-era weapons and equipment stocks. Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief General Oleksandr Syrskyi reported in early February 2025 that Russia has lost (presumably damaged or destroyed) almost 10,000 tanks since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.[1] Data from the Ukrainian General Staff indicates that Ukrainian forces destroyed or damaged 3,689 tanks, 8,956 infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs), 13,050 artillery systems, and 407 air defense systems in 2024 alone.[2] The British International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) recently estimated that Ukrainian forces destroyed 1,400 Russian main battle tanks and over 3,700 Russian IFVs and armored personnel carriers (APCs) in 2024.[3] (IISS's numbers likely differ from those from the Ukrainian General Staff as IISS data likely only accounts for destroyed vehicles.) Dutch open-source project Oryx, which uses photo or video evidence to verify Russian equipment losses, confirmed that Russia has lost at least 3,740 tanks, 5,459 IFVs, 615 APCs, 446 towed artillery systems, and 880 self-propelled artillery systems since February 2022 as of the time of this writing.[4]
Russia's defense industrial base (DIB) cannot produce new armored vehicles and artillery systems at rates that can offset Russia's current tempo of losses in the medium- to long-term. Russia is reportedly able to produce about 200 IFVs per year — far below even the more conservative figures for Russia's IFV losses in 2024.[5] Russia is reportedly able to produce about 50 artillery gun barrels per year but is unable to quickly scale up this production as Russia currently only has two factories that are equipped with the specialized machines used to produce gun barrels.[6] Russia has one factory producing new tanks — Uralvagonzavod in Nizhny Tagil.[7] Estimates vary widely for the factory's production rates, ranging from about 20 tanks per month to just 60 to 90 per year.[8] Uralvagonzavod can also reportedly refurbish about eight tanks per month, while three other repair plants can reportedly refurbish about 17 tanks per month each.[9] Еven Uralvagonzavod's higher new production estimates plus Russia's reported refurbishment rates leave the Russian DIB unable to replace Russia's continued high tank losses.
Russia has maintained its offensives by tapping its Soviet-era stocks of armored vehicles and artillery systems to compensate for these high loss rates, but this resource is finite and approaching a point of diminishing availability. IISS assessed that Russia refurbished and built over 1,500 tanks and 2,800 IFVs and APCs in 2024 — suggesting that Russia produced enough vehicles to replace all of IISS's estimated tank losses and three quarters of IISS's assessed Russian armored vehicle losses in 2024.[10] Other open-source assessments of Russian military depots using satellite imagery find that Ru...
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