Behind Ukraine’s manpower crisis lies a bleak new battlefield reality for infantry
Ukrainian soldier Oleksandr "Tsyrkul" looking onto no man's land at infantry positions in Donetsk Oblast on July 12, 2024. (Francis Farrell/The Kyiv Independent)
Editor’s Note: In accordance with the security protocols of the Ukrainian military, soldiers featured in this story are identified by first names and callsigns only.
DONETSK OBLAST – Since he first volunteered to take up arms and defend his country in January this year, 54-year-old Ukrainian infantryman Ruslan “Kalyna” has only been on one combat mission.
One 146-day combat mission.
The trees were still bare and the air bitterly cold when Ruslan, an ex-convict soldier in Ukraine’s 93rd Mechanized Brigade, made the 15-kilometer trek to zero line positions east of Kostiantynivka in Donetsk Oblast on March 11.
By the time he made it out in early August, after almost five brutal months spent in a tight dugout, under fire almost every day, Ruslan had seen the spring and the better part of summer pass by him.
Speaking to the Kyiv Independent in a cafe in nearby Kramatorsk about a week after rotating out, the soldier was jittery and emotional.
“At first I thought that we would be going in for a month, I was counting the days,” he said, “but after a month, I realized it was stupid.”
Of practically all the hundreds of thousands serving in Ukraine’s military, the job of the infantryman is as unenviable as it is important.
“Ukraine stands because the infantry stands,” read a message spread by the Ground Forces command to mark the Day of Infantry on May 6 across Ukraine, from social media to billboards.
But as of mid-2025, as Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine enters its fourth fall season, Ukraine's military is gripped by a deep manpower crisis, most acute in the ranks of its infantry.
In international discourse, Kyiv's inability to properly man its brigades is often boiled down to failures in the country's painful and problematic mobilization process.
At the same time, the battlefield itself — the environment in which the Ukrainian infantry must live, survive, and fight — is only getting deadlier by the month.
As Russian drones swarm the sky with increasing density and lethality, these parallel processes, — the failure to fill Ukraine's brigades with fit and motivated foot soldiers, and the increasing misery of conditions on the front line — augment one another and bring about not only large holes in the Ukrainian defense, but also a need to rethink how the war can be fought as a whole.
In a series of in-depth interviews, the Kyiv Independent spoke to those who live and breathe the infantry fight at every level of a brigade's command chain, from brigade and battalion commanders down to those holding the line, like Ruslan himself.
Some of the commanders interviewed asked to remain anonymous, out of fear of repercussions from higher command.
Months of isolation
On the surface of the war's visual fabric, the life of an infantryman in 2025 might still look similar to that of the first year of the full-scale war. Trenches, dugouts, firing points; an atmosphere that continues to evoke the Western Front in World War I.
The reality on the ground, however, has undergone a complete transformation, mostly due to the advent of abundant high-precision strike drones on both sides.
For 24-year-old junior lieutenant Taras “Corporal,” the difference is black and white.
“During the counteroffensive (in 2023), we could focus on normal infantry work, assaulting and defending trenches,” he told the Kyiv Independent.
“Now, most of the time, the infantryman’s focus is not only on the ground, on the enemy directly on the battlefield, but also on the sky – different sounds, the silhouettes of drones, and so on.”
Joining Ukraine's 37th Marine Brigade as an infantryman in 2023, Taras took part in Kyiv’s summer counteroffensive on the southern front line right before first-person view (FPV) drones began to dominate the battlefield.
Having first become a sergeant, he fought on the Dnipro River bridgehead in Kherson Oblast, and in the embattled city of Toretsk, Donetsk Oblast, where he was promoted to deputy company commander. Since the brigade was moved to Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Taras now leads from the rear, preparing his infantrymen for the bleak task ahead of them.
“When a soldier is about to take up a position, when he needs to move up to it, psychological support is provided to him,” Taras said.
“He is told: ‘My friend, everything will be alright. We understand that this task is a bit difficult, that it will take a lot of time to get through it, but you can handle it. We trained you for this. We are giving you everything you need so that you can go there.’”
If the infilling infantryman makes it to the zero line in one piece, the real ordeal begins, holding the position itself — usually no more than a small dugout and trench or basement — for weeks or months at a time.
While one soldier sleeps, the other is on sentry duty, looking out for attacks that mostly come from the skies.
“First they swarm us with FPV drones and bomb drops, they sometimes use gas as well,” said Khani “Khokhol,” another infantryman in the 93th Brigade’s prisoner battalion, better known as “Alcatraz.”
“Then, when everything is quiet and they think there is nobody left, they come in to clear the position. We hear their voices, it's usually two of them, and the firefight starts.”
This daily routine, permanently on edge, extends for however many weeks or months the infantryman must hold their position for.
“At first, soldiers are afraid,” said Andrii, a battalion commander in another Ukrainian brigade, who requested not to disclose his unit.
“He doesn’t move forward; he hears the drones and may panic. By about the fifth day, he begins to understand what is happening. He learns the terrain, recognizes where the FPV drones are, where the Mavic drones are, and where the supply points are. In other words, he adapts to the environment and to the realities of war.”
Since spring 2025, the increasing reach and coverage of Russian drone teams means that almost all essential supplies, from food, water, fuel, and ammunition are brought to infantry positions by drones: either heavy bombers or unmanned ground vehicles.
According to Ruslan and Khani, Russian forces’ success in destroying even these logistics drones means that shortages of basic supplies like food and water on positions are common.
“Psychologically, yes, it affects a person,” said Valentyn “Validol,” the commander of the Alcatraz battalion. “Not everyone is ready for such long stretches at the positions, especially when the only means of communication is the radio.”
“The person is cut off from civilization. They don’t exactly become savage, but they perceive the world differently when they come back from rotation.”
Chronic crisis
In the context of Kyiv's overall infantry crisis, the existence of the Alcatraz Battalion gives the 93rd Brigade the rare luxury of being able to properly man its defensive lines.
Though declining to disclose official numbers, Valentyn said that thanks to the battalion's high reputation and consistent flow of volunteer prisoners, the 93rd has more combat-effective infantry than almost any other standard mechanized brigade in the country.
“Our brigade is generally considered one of the best in the Armed Forces in terms of defensive resilience, because we have the manpower — the infantry — backed by the competent, well-considered decisions of our commanders,” he said.
Almost all other brigades in the army, though, even hardened units with sterling reputations, are far less fortunate.
The manpower crisis is impossible to boil down to just one problem, instead manifesting as an equation that begins with mobilization in Ukraine's cities and villages, goes through training, the reorganization and allocation of mobilized men into the Ukrainian military, and finishes on an increasingly deadly battlefield.
Exacerbating the situation further, Ukraine’s overstretched army means that very few opportunities exist for entire brigades to be peeled off the front line to recuperate, as there are no strategic reserves to replace them with.
Ultimately, Ukraine’s infantry is a force mostly made up of forcibly mobilized men, many of whom are in their 40s and 50s, less able to sustain the physical burden of trench warfare.
“If you were raised in a Ukrainian family with Ukrainian traditions, in a spiritual household, then those people went to fight on Feb. 24 (2022),” said Andrii of the wave of initial volunteer fighters at the start of the full-scale war.
“But now, in 2025, many of those arriving are what we call ‘bussified’ (forcibly taken away in buses by recruitment officers) — they lack the will to fight, they have no purpose.”
Whether in fear of having to go through the deadly ordeal of infantry work or trying to escape it once already inside the military, these men often turn to going AWOL as a means of escape.
According to figures from Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office obtained by Ukrainska Pravda, over 110,000 cases of soldiers going AWOL were registered in the first seven months of 2025 alone, over half the total of 202,997 cases opened since Russia's full-scale invasion.
All these factors lead to Ukraine's brigades and battalions often fighting while running on fumes when it comes to infantry.
Several battalion commanders who spoke to the Kyiv Independent reported fewer than 10 combat-effective infantrymen in their entire battalion, with the number sometimes as low as zero.
“Right now, I am receiving the same orders as I did in 2022, but there is only one difference: I currently have no infantry,” said Andrii.
“In place of infantry, I have drivers, artillerymen, and cooks.”
Gaping holes
The combination of Ukraine's dire infantry shortage and the increasing saturation of the sky with Russian drones have dramatically changed the tactical picture of everyday fighting in Ukraine over the past year.
Riddled with large holes, Ukraine’s defensive lines are often difficult to call lines anymore, instead looking like a string of sparsely-placed holes in the ground.
According to commanders interviewed, it is common to have only around a dozen or even fewer infantrymen covering a kilometer of front line.
With individual positions now usually manned by only two or three people, this means that there are often hundreds of meters between two adjacent positions.
Russia's ability to exploit these gaps with refined small-group infantry infiltration tactics is considered to be one of the main reasons behind Russian territorial gains in 2025.
This problem was on full display during the dramatic breach operation near the town of Dobropillia in Donetsk Oblast in early August, when a few hundred Russian infantrymen pushed over 15 kilometers behind Ukraine's zero line in a matter of days.
While the battlefield is similarly deadly for Russia, Moscow's seemingly endless supply of single-use contract soldiers is what gives it the edge in its offensive campaigns, commanders said.
“The enemy does not count its losses, and that is why it achieves success,” said Serhii Shatalov, commander of the 37th Marine Brigade where Taras serves.
“If it keeps attacking you relentlessly and pays no attention to its casualties, literally stepping over the bodies of its own comrades, then eventually there will be a breakthrough, and nothing will stop it.”
Due to the ever-present danger of being spotted and targeted from above, infantry often ordered not to fire unless the enemy is almost on top of them.
“The troops keep as quiet as possible; their main task is to spot for our own drones. They act, so to speak, as observers,” Taras said.
Ukraine's war of 2025 is one defined by a core paradox: commanders remain committed to the philosophy that infantry cannot be completely replaced by drones, but meanwhile, many sectors of the front line are already being held with front-line positions effectively empty.
“Drones have defeated us,” wrote Serhii Churikov, an infantry officer of Ukraine’s 100th Mechanized Brigade, on Facebook in June.
“It is time to admit it — the infantry (officially the mechanized forces) is ceasing to be the main branch of the Armed Forces.”
Retake, retake
When asked how to improve the infantry crisis on the battlefield, commanders pointed to the need to get the basics right: supporting their rank and file with well-organized logistics, well-prepared positions, and proper training in the field.
Especially crucial is the role of drones, both for rolling surveillance of the area around the zero line and for eliminating Russian assault groups at a distance, long before they approach Ukrainian positions.
But beyond factors more within their own control, many commanders pointed to systemic issues in the culture of the Ukrainian military's higher command that, by their very nature, unnecessarily exacerbate the infantry crisis on a regular basis.
Specifically, this refers to a well-documented reluctance of Ukraine’s General Staff to approve a withdrawal from any position, instead ordering commanders on the ground to hold even the most unfavorable of positions at all costs.
“The first thing that happens (after withdrawal) is not regrouping or planning how to assume a better defensive position,” said Andrii. “It’s immediately: retake, retake, and retake, a million times over.”
“If you don’t have enough infantry, you are ordered to ‘redistribute,’ which means sending in tankers, logisticians, medics, or even assign someone to the position as infantry.”
As a result, in a practice that only worsens the situation, commanders are incentivized to lie about the tactical reality, endangering both their own and neighboring units.
According to Andrii, it is not uncommon for a commander lacking infantry to properly man a line to mark fake positions on the map, which are not actually occupied by Ukrainian soldiers.
These practices, often described under the umbrella label radianshchyna (“Sovietness”) systematically lead to excess losses that only snowball the manpower problem.
“The principle of ‘not one step back’ — that is, holding ground at any cost and placing infantry in the kill zone just to mark territory as controlled — leads to questionable results and heavy losses in front-line units, especially in the infantry,” wrote Churikov.
“By defending unfavorable lines ‘to the last man,’ we then simply do not have the manpower to hold advantageous ones. In the end, we lose both the people and the positions.”
Frontier of free Ukraine
For now, Ukraine's overstretched and porous defensive lines are holding. Although Russia is making steady gains, no collapses or major operational breakthroughs have been achieved by Russian forces in 2025.
The concerning breach around Dobropillia was contained after hardened units, including the 93rd Brigade, backed by the command of the Azov Corps, were sent in to reinforce the area.
But in the meantime, Ukraine's manpower crisis is showing no signs of improvement in the long term, while stints out on positions that stretch into months increasingly give Ukrainians the idea that service in the infantry is a one-way trip.
For brigade commander Shatalov, the modern Ukrainian infantryman should indeed only be expected to go through the trial of a shift on positions once.
“A serviceman who has been under constant attack — say, for 40, even 90 days at the positions — and then comes out of there, he is a hero,” Shatalov said.
“But he is unlikely to go back again. Let’s be honest about it. Even if he has only suffered light wounds, or even none at all, he is simply not ready — morally or physically — to go through that once more.”
Ruslan, as a serviceman in an ex-convict unit, will likely remain in the infantry until the end of the war.
But with a daughter waiting for his return and pardon, his motivation to continue is far from faltering.
“There is no way we could get anywhere without infantry,” he said, “sometimes out there you can go crazy thinking 'why are we sitting here?' but we know we are essential.”
“I wanted to become a hero, and I believe I did.”
Note from the author:
Hi, this is Francis Farrell, cheers for reading this article. This was an important one for me, coming a year after we had a chance to actually embed with infantry on the zero line. Now that is not possible anymore, which means nobody is showing the war through the eyes of those carrying the heaviest burden. Things are moving fast on the front line, and not in the direction we would like, but whatever happens, we are dedicated to continue being Ukraine's voice to the world, no matter how dangerous and dark this war gets. Please consider supporting our reporting.
