Land Warfare

"One of the challenges the Ukrainians have," says Dr Jack Watling, senior research fellow in land warfare at the Whitehall thinktank the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), "is that the Russians can choose where they commit their forces. It's a very long front line and the Ukrainians need to be able to defend all of it."

Military analysts say the drop-off in aid not only contributes to battlefield hardship now, but also makes it difficult for Ukraine to make plans to try to recapture military momentum. “It’s a dual challenge — to stabilize the current front line, and put in place significant defenses so the Russian advances this year are blunted,” said Matthew Savill, the director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, a British defense and security think tank.

Looking toward the rest of the year, "casualties will spike if there is another pitched battle as with Avdiivka or Bakhmut where both sides decide to hold their ground over a town or city, or a defended area," said land warfare analyst Samuel Cranny-Evans, an associate fellow with the U.K. think tank, the Royal United Services Institute.