NYT: Lost Starlink, throttled Telegram, missed recruits — Russia’s worst battlefield year since 2023

Russia's military has slowed to a crawl in Ukraine and at its current monthly rate of advance would need more than three decades to seize full control of the Donbas, The New York Times reports, citing the three main organizations tracking the front line: the Institute for the Study of War, Black Bird Group, and DeepState.

The slowdown undercuts the case Russian President Vladimir Putin has been making to US President Donald Trump that Russian troops are marching toward inevitable victory and that Kyiv should hand over the entire eastern Donbas to avoid defeat, the newspaper notes. In some parts of Ukraine, the Russian military has lost territory.

According to figures from the Finland-based Black Bird Group cited by the Times, Russia's gains over the past three months were its worst battlefield performance within Ukraine since 2023. Two of the three trackers have recorded months this year in which Russia suffered net territorial losses, although the widening "gray zone" — where troops from both sides operate without clear control — complicates the accounting. Across all of 2025, Black Bird estimates, Russia took 1,768 square miles of Ukrainian territory, an area slightly larger than Rhode Island.

Drones force a war of two-man infiltration teams

Russia has yet to solve the fundamental problem of how to make big advances on a battlefield saturated with drones, the Times writes. Mass armored breakthroughs are mostly over. Russian troops now try to slip in gradually with small teams of soldiers, often on foot or by motorcycle.

"The best they can do is these infiltration tactics and the targeting of the support networks pretty far behind the line — targeting Ukrainian drone teams and logistics support," Dara Massicot, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the newspaper. "But it doesn't lead to rapid gains. They are kind of stuck."

A 24-year-old Russian soldier who deserted last year described to the Times how his unit spent most of a month trying to take a single town outside Pokrovsk after assault troops were wiped out by Ukrainian drones. The commander then ordered the men to infiltrate in two-man pairs, day after day, keeping their distance to avoid presenting a target. The deserter said wounded soldiers were often left stranded in contested ground; he recalled trying to send water and candy bars by drone to a comrade dying of dehydration.

The newspaper reports that Russian units have also lost some of the technical infrastructure underpinning their drone war. They lost access to Starlink satellite internet that had been used to guide their drones, and the Kremlin's throttling of Telegram — part of a broader tightening of the Russian internet — has hampered soldiers' communications.

Ukraine, meanwhile, has gained the upper hand on certain parts of the front through advances in drone technology, production, and tactics, the Times writes. Russia is racing to catch up, building out a larger drone force after fielding an elite unit known as Rubicon.

Carnegie's Massicot suggested the Kremlin may have settled for slow infiltration as a deliberate choice. "I think it's a combination of not having an operational solution and the Kremlin being satisfied with this level of political risk, and hoping that peace talks will negotiate away the difficult part, which is fighting for the rest of the Donbas," she said.

352,000 Russian dead, recruiting targets missed

By the end of last year, an estimated 352,000 Russian soldiers had died in the war, the Times writes, citing figures released this weekend by the Russian outlets Mediazona and Meduza — more than six times the number of US troops killed during the Vietnam War.

US and European officials told the newspaper that Russia missed its recruiting targets in the first months of this year, raising questions about how long the Kremlin can sustain the war without another unpopular draft. Putin's approval ratings have fallen to their lowest levels since the start of the war, the Times adds, as the Russian economy buckles under military spending and as mobile internet blackouts — imposed in part to disrupt Ukrainian drone strikes — anger ordinary Russians.

At a news conference on Saturday, Putin suggested the war could be ending. "I believe the matter is coming to a close, yet it remains a serious thing," he said, while striking notes of defiance toward European nations supporting Ukraine.

The Kremlin's chief foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said on Thursday that Russia saw no point in further peace talks until Ukraine withdrew from the Donbas, the Times reports. Kyiv has refused to cede the territory, although negotiations have continued over turning it into a demilitarized zone. Even as Russia struggled on the battlefield in March, Trump told Politico that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, having previously had "no cards," now had "even less cards."

Ukraine has its own problems — a long-running personnel shortage and high rates of desertion. "Many of the things that are hindering the Russian advance are also making it difficult for Ukraine," Emil Kastehelmi, a military analyst with Black Bird, told the newspaper.

Kyiv is trying to raise the war's costs by striking oil installations and other targets deep inside Russia and by inflicting more casualties. Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov has said Ukraine's goal is to kill or seriously wound 50,000 Russian soldiers a month, up from about 35,000 now — imposing, in his words, "costs on Russia that it cannot bear" and "force peace through strength."

Ukrainian soldiers told the Times that Russian activity in Donetsk Oblast had recently picked up. Senior Lt. Maksym Bakulin said Russian infiltration had begun to improve over the past three weeks, with spring foliage providing cover and drier weather allowing motorcycle advances. There has not yet been a "massive push," he said by telephone, but "everyone is talking about it, it could happen. We must always be ready."

The slowed pace of Russia's ground advance has not translated into less violence against Ukrainian civilians. Russian missile, drone, and glide-bomb strikes on Ukrainian cities continue every day, frequently killing civilians far from the front.

Russia launched more than 800 drones at Ukrainian port infrastructure during the first four months of 2026 — over ten times the 75 UAVs fired at the same targets in the same period of 2025, Vice Prime Minister for Reconstruction and Minister of Development of Communities and Territories Oleksii Kuleba reported on Telegram.