Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he plans to increase his armed forces’ lethality as part of a strategy to disarm Moscow and turn a deadlocked negotiating table.
“The task of Ukrainian units is to ensure a level of destruction of the occupier at which Russian losses exceed the number of reinforcements they can send to their forces each month,” he told military personnel on Monday.
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“We are talking about 50,000 Russian losses per month, this is the optimal level,” he said.
Video analysis, Zelenskyy recently said, showed 35,000 confirmed kills in December 2025, up from 30,000 in November and 26,000 in October. But on Monday, he clarified that the 35,000 were “killed and badly wounded occupiers”, who would not be returning to the battlefield.
His commander in chief, Oleksandr Syrskii, conservatively estimated “more than 33,000” confirmed kills in December.
Ukraine believes it has killed or maimed 1.2 million Russians since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies recently estimated that Russia had suffered 1.2mn casualties, including at least 325,000 deaths, and Ukraine up to 600,000 casualties, with as many as 140,000 deaths.
Al Jazeera cannot confirm casualty estimates from either side.
The war is currently stalemated, with Russia struggling to make meaningful territorial gains.
Russia held just more than a quarter of Ukraine a month into its full-scale war, in March 2022, according to geolocated footage.
The following month, Ukraine pushed Russian forces back from a string of northern cities – Kyiv, Kharkiv, Sumy and Chernihiv – leaving Russia in possession of one-fifth of the country.
In August and September 2022, then-ground forces commander Syrskii masterminded a campaign to push Russian forces east of the Oskil River in the northern Kharkiv region, and Russia itself withdrew east of the Dnipro River in the southern region of Kherson, leaving it with 17.8 percent of the country.
In the last three years, Russia increased that number to 19.3 percent.
For almost six months, Russia has struggled to seize two towns it has almost surrounded with 150,000 troops in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
“In Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad, the Ukrainian Defence Forces continue to contain the enemy, which is trying to infiltrate the northern districts of both cities in small groups,” Syrskii said last week.
Russia claimed it had captured the northern city of Kupiansk last month, but Russian military reporters say Ukrainian forces have retaken control of the town and surrounded the Russian assault force within it.
The engine of war
Zelenskyy’s strategy involves increasing domestic drone production and honing the skills of drone operators, because drones now hit 80 percent of targets on the battlefield.
“In just the past year alone, 819,737 targets were hit – hit by drones. And we clearly record every single hit,” he said on Monday.
The military has instituted a point system, rewarding drone operators for the number and precision of their hits.
That reflects a system put in place in April 2024, offering financial rewards to ground troops for destroying Russian battlefield equipment, culminating in $23,000 for capturing a battle tank.
Zelenskyy appointed Mykhailo Fedorov as defence minister this month, who previously served as digital transformation minister and deputy prime minister for innovation, education, science and technology.
Last week, Fedorov began to appoint his advisers. They include Serhiy Sternenko, who last year created Ukraine’s largest non-state supplier of military drones, to step up drone production. Fedorov’s former deputy at the digital transformation ministry, Valeriya Ionan, was put in charge of international collaborations, thanks to her experience with Silicon Valley giants like Google and Cisco. Fedorov also appointed Serhiy Beskrestnov as technological adviser. Beskrestnov is an expert on Russian drone and electronic warfare innovation.
Russian assaults pound Ukraine
Zelenskyy’s war aims stem in part from the fact that Russia refuses to give up its campaign to seize more of Ukraine.
Despite US President Donald Trump’s efforts to bring about a ceasefire, talks remain deadlocke