Ukraine Faces a Crucial Moment in the War

On May 10th of this year, with the war in a very different phase, Russia attacked again. The so-called “meat storm,” in which wave after wave of foot soldiers are sent into the line of fire—Western intelligence services estimate that the total number of Russian dead and wounded has surpassed half a million—remains a grim hallmark of Russian operations, but the military has adapted. The Kremlin has replenished the armed forces by way of a military draft and financial incentives, recruiting as many as thirty thousand new soldiers every month, and is spending a third of the national budget on defense and security. According to nato estimates, Russia produces three million artillery shells per year—more than double the number that all nato member states combined can provide Ukraine. The Russian Army has become adept at using drones and electronic countermeasures to stymie Ukraine’s own battlefield innovations, and the Air Force has retrofitted Soviet-era one-and-a-half-ton unguided “dumb” bombs with wings and G.P.S. navigation to create “glide bombs,” which are used to level troop formations and entire city blocks alike.