This blog post was first published on the Military Balance+ on 6 February 2025

While 2024 was a difficult year for Ukraine on the battlefield, its armed forces have managed to limit Russian territorial advances and inflict significant losses. These outcomes, achieved despite Ukraine’s acute shortage of ammunition in the first half of 2024 and manpower difficulties, show that Russia’s successes on the battlefield are certainly not decisive.

Equipped but not staffed: Ukraine’s challenge for 2025

Ukraine’s armed forces are not currently facing a critical situation with regards to equipment; however, they will likely need significantly more weapons, especially modern Western-made systems, to reliably stop Russian assaults. Launching offensives and liberating occupied territory would require considerably more materiel. If the West were to reduce or halt its support, the situation would seriously degrade in the medium term.

Three years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the first results of joint ventures, partner programmes and larger contracts between Ukraine and various defence companies and governments in the West are progressively bearing fruit. These will likely pick up steam throughout 2025. Furthermore, Ukraine’s own defence industry has been able to adapt, producing some key equipment at scale, such as the 2S22 Bohdana self-propelled artillery system at a reported production rate of 16 per month. This can be seen from the diverse range of units across the Ground Forces, National Guard and Marines equipped with the 2S22.

Nevertheless, the main challenge Ukraine currently faces is manpower, specifically with regards to management and allocation.

Several of the newly formed brigades, for example, the 152nd Jaeger and 155th Mechanised, went through a chaotic formation process, with entire battalions being detached and sent to replenish depleted frontline brigades. This resulted in longer than usual forming up periods and troops suffered from inadequate training. These newly formed brigades, such as the 150th Mechanised, were sent to parts of the frontline that were experiencing some of the harshest combat and suffered significant casualties.

Ukraine’s military has only ad hoc command formations above the brigade level, making inter-brigade communications and cooperation uneven and difficult, and in the worst cases causing gaps on the frontline. Infantry battalions’ attrition remains the highest, with reported staffing figures ranging from 20–30% of full strength. The number experienced personnel in these units is dwindling, all the while they face skilled drone pilots and artillery operators, which aggravates the problem.

These command and manpower management problems are regularly mentioned by Ukrainians as a dissuasive factor to volunteer for service. Ukraine’s most elite and prestigious units advertise and recruit directly and have fewer manpower-shortage issues. If Ukraine addresses these problems, it could noticeably improve its military capabilities. The country still has enough non-mobilised manpower to fully staff its depleted units, with its need estimated as between 50,000 and 100,000 additional personnel. The Ukrainian government’s latest nominations and proposed reforms are aimed at tackling these issues.