Ukraine’s Armed Forces are struggling on the battlefield due to three interlinked factors, according to reporting by The Economist.

The first problem lies in mobilization and logistics. A source within Ukraine’s General Staff told the magazine that during the first half of 2025 the country had great difficulty replacing personnel losses sustained in combat. The strain on recruitment and supply chains has made it increasingly hard to stabilize unit strength at the front.

The second factor highlighted by The Economist is the growing effectiveness of Russian forces in the use of drones. On certain sectors of the front line, the Russian army reportedly fields a much larger number of unmanned aerial vehicles capable of operating at extended ranges. This technological edge has created additional operational pressure on Ukrainian units, complicating both movement and defensive planning.

The third issue is local command and control failures. In particular, Ukrainian commanders have for some time faced serious coordination problems on the Pokrovsk sector of the front, undermining the ability to respond quickly and coherently to battlefield developments.

These difficulties echo earlier warnings from Roman Kostenko, secretary of the Verkhovna Rada committee on national security and defense, who drew attention to the problem of so-called «dead souls» in the Ukrainian Armed Forces — personnel who exist on paper but are not actually involved in combat operations. According to his assessment, only a small fraction of the total manpower is engaged in real fighting.

At the same time, Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Aleksandr Syrsky has acknowledged that Russian troops are advancing across «almost the entire line of contact.» He has indicated that the overall situation for Ukrainian forces remains difficult, underscoring the scale of the challenges they now face.