Ukraine Just Did Something DEVASTATING to 715,000 Russian Troops

Russia has been cut off from Starlink and Ukraine now has an edge on the battlefield. Ukraine is using that edge, counter-attacks are being launched and Ukraine is taking back territory but this isn't Ukraine's real strategy. What we're seeing now is a change in Ukraine's tactics that's going to make 715,000 Russians pay for what they've done in the country. This isn't just about retaking territory, it's about strengthening defences to the point where Russia will lose tens of thousands more soldiers trying to break Ukraine. Right now Ukraine is counterattacking against Russian forces in several regions.

These include the neighbouring oblasts of Zaporizhia and Dnipropetrovsk, both of which are in Ukraine's south-east. To the untrained observer, this looks like an obvious attempt by Ukraine to roll back some of the gains that Russia made in 2025 and potentially set up for a larger counter-offensive that could push deeper into the southeast. A breakthrough of the Russian defense sits, perhaps, and one that could lead to the liberation of a large portion of Ukraine that Russia has illegally occupied for much of the war. After all, Russia has lost access to Starlink. Now is the perfect time for Ukraine to counterattack.

And that is what Ukraine is doing. Only not for the reasons you might expect. We'll explain what Ukraine's real goal is in a few minutes. Before that, let's rewind to late January and a Russian attack that has caused an enormous change on the battlefield. On January 27th, The Guardian reported that Russian strike drones had hit a passenger train in northeastern Ukraine. This was no strike against a military target. It was a terroristic attack that left five people dead in the Kharkiv region.

In any country, a drone strike on a civilian train would be considered in exactly the same way, purely as terrorism. There is not and cannot be any military purpose in this. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky justifiably raged in the aftermath of the strike. The world took notice of the latest Russian atrocity, with one man in particular deciding it was finally time to take action. Following Russia's brutal assault on the Ukrainian civilians, Elon Musk instructed SpaceX to shut down Russia's access to the Starlink satellites that Putin's forces had likely used to attack

the train. It appears that Ukraine's Starlink terminals were added to the whitelist, ensuring that they could be used as normal. Russia's, on the other hand, either went on a blacklist or are now being highlighted as illicit terminals when Russia attempts to use them. This single move caused chaos in Russia's ranks. As David Hambling, writing for Forbes on February 6th, explains,

"...the effect on the Russians has been catastrophic, with some units reporting 90% loss of internet communications. There have reportedly been a rash of friendly fire incidents as the Russians struggle to tell friend from foe. Command and control of Russian forces has shut down in many areas of Ukraine, as the Starlink terminals that forces once relied on have become useless.

Russian soldiers are shooting each other, getting lost in the wilderness of Ukraine and frankly, falling apart across the front lines. The Staling shutdown set the stage for what Ukraine is doing now. As United24 media reported on February 11th, the Staling cut-off has left Russia's troops vulnerable to Ukrainian counter-attacks. Any alternative that Russia attempts to deploy is undercooked and nowhere near effective

enough to overcome the loss of Staling. Even Russian military bloggers are claiming that losing access to Starlink has undermined Russian frontline positions by making communications and battlefield management almost impossible. Ukraine is taking advantage of that with a push forward into some of the most vulnerable Russian positions, David Axe reports in a February 11th article for Euromaidan Press. Ukraine has amassed what Axe calls a powerful force of Ukrainian assault troops. Those soldiers are being supported by mechanized assets, including US-made tanks and infantry-fighting vehicles,

which Ukraine is using alongside Swedish armored personnel carriers. With this armor backing them, Ukraine's assault troops are sweeping through some of the occupied territories in the southeast of the country. In particular, Ukraine's assault forces are focusing on the no-man's land that exists in the Dnieper, Petrovsk and Zaporizhia regions. Their goal is to take out the small numbers of Russian infiltrators that have managed to enter these areas, transforming what have become grey zones in the war into territory that Ukraine fully controls.

Stick with us as we're going to dig deeper into these goals a little later. We've already seen Ukraine make some substantial gains in Zaporizhia over the last week or so. On February 11th, the new voice of Ukraine reported that Ukrainian forces have managed to clear Russian infiltrators from the village of Kozyptseva, which is in the Zaporizhia Oblast. Soldiers conducting search and strike operations in the area had been successful, the outlet

said, and the settlement was now under Ukraine's control. This was the capper to a multi-day campaign that has resulted in Ukraine retaking several villages in the Zaporizhia region, including the settlements of Ternovata and Pridorozhne. All of these villages were liberated between February 8th and 11th, once again showcasing just how damaging the loss of Staling has been for Russia's force. With nowhere to communicate with their command centers,

the Russian soldiers who are already being sent into the kill zones that Ukraine has created with its drones are now lost, isolated, they have nowhere to go and no way of knowing if reinforcements are coming. Obviously panicked by this situation, all the infiltrators can do is hole up and hope that their comrades arrive before Ukraine finds them. Ukraine has taken the Stalingrad opportunity to reclaim some of its territory to the South-East, and it's achieving several immediate goals as it does so. The first of these goals, as we've already touched upon, is ridding the South-East regions of the infiltrators that have been causing so many problems since 2025.

Russia has been trying to tweak its tactics for months after losing thousands of its tanks and armoured vehicles to Ukraine. The massive mechanised assaults seen in the early years of the war have largely given way to an infiltration strategy that, in some cases, has even seen Russian soldiers sneak into Ukrainian territory only to disguise themselves as Ukrainian civilians. This tactic is called perfidy, a crime under international humanitarian law that allows

soldiers to carry out ambushes and causes confusion between combatants and non-combatants that can lead to tragedy as civilians face a higher risk of being targeted. That alone is more than enough reason for Ukraine to want to take out the infiltrators. And when combined with how Russia has experienced some success with this strategy, at least in the sense of sneaking soldiers into Ukrainian territory and then falsely claiming the territory is fully occupied,

Ukraine has an obvious incentive to use the weakening of the Russian military due to the Staling shutdown to handle the infiltrator issue. That's precisely what it's been doing, though the completion of this goal is the setup to something other than further pushes into occupied territory. As Axe reports, Russian troops led by the country's 127th Motorized Rifle Division had been making a slow and steady advance across the Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhia Axis before the onset of winter slowed them down. As part of this advance, Russia had even managed to capture the city of Hulia Pola, which is a Ukrainian logistical node, after forcing a retreat of Ukraine's forces

in late December. With Russia now holding positions that run for about 30 km or 18.6 miles from the north of Hulia Pola to the Donetsk-based city of Pokrovsk, its forces have been using infiltration tactics. There is now a grey zone, which is another term for no-man's land, roughly runs parallel to the Hyachur River in Ukraine's southeast that Russia was filling with infiltrators like those we mentioned earlier. Carrying limited supplies and trying to move as quickly as they can to avoid Ukraine's drones, these infiltrators had been using Starink terminal to help them navigate within the grey zone, wreaking havoc for Ukraine's defences by stretching them out as they did. Now, Starlink has disappeared for those infiltrators. They're stranded in the grey zone and they're falling, soldier

by soldier, to Ukraine's assault forces. At the cost of at least one Australian-donated M1A1 Abrams tank and one ex-Swedish PBV 302 armoured personnel carrier, the assault troops quickly ejected Russian infiltrators from five settlements, including a few on the far side of the Haichur, Axe points out. In other words, the grey zones aren't grey anymore, they belong to Ukraine. And that's what will lead into the new strategy that's going to churn through the 715,000 soldiers that Russia now has inside Ukraine.

We're about to get into what the new strategy entailed, but before we do, this is The Military Show and we deliver the complete picture, not just the headlines, so subscribe today and make sure you always stay ahead of the curve. So what is this new strategy? Stabilising Ukraine's south-east, rather than trying to push for more gains. One of Ukraine's biggest problems in the south-eastern territories is that fortifications there were relatively weak when Russia invaded, and they haven't gotten much better since.

Back in May 2024, we saw the impact of these weak fortifications in the wake of the fall of Avdivka, which is in the Pokrovsk region. As AP News reported at the time, Ukraine's soldiers have bemoaned the lack of defensive lines in the rear behind that city, which is likely a large reason why Russia claiming Avdivka allowed it to so swiftly transition into its assaults on the city of Bukrovsk. Batyar, who is a unit commander who spoke to AP News, outlined the problem succinctly. It's necessary to increase the pace of building fortifications,

so that when we retreat, we will retreat to a prepared position, Batyar told the outlet, adding, these fortifications are not enough. The situation was bad enough that Professor of Political Science at the National University of Kyiv Malaya Academy Taras Kuzio wrote an entire piece for the New Voice of Ukraine in April 2025 where he asked the question of who was to blame for Ukraine's loss of the South-East. Kuzio laid at least some of the blame for the fall of Ukraine's South-East

on Ukraine itself, writing, "...Zelensky is to blame for ignoring the infiltration of Russian agents into the SBU, appointing Ivan Bakunov, with no experience on intelligence operations, as head of the SBU, and being naive about Vladimir Putin, especially in 2019, and Russian imperialism. Zelensky did not prepare adequate defences on the Kherson-Crimea line, failing, for example, to order the installation of minefields, Pusyo claims. In other words, Ukraine hadn't done enough to prepare for what Putin had basically told

the country was coming following the annexation of Crimea and parts of the Donbass region in 2014. Sadly, Ukraine paid the price for the loss of substantial amounts of territory in the South and South-East. That brings us nicely back to the real goal behind the counter-offensives that we're now seeing Ukraine conduct against Russia in the southeast. These offensives aren't about reclaiming large amounts of territory. Frankly, Ukraine

doesn't have the manpower to reverse the extensive gains that Putin's forces made during the early stages of the invasion. But what Ukraine does have is enough soldiers to push the Russian infiltrators out of the grey zones in Zaporizhia and Dnipropetrovsk. That's precisely what it's doing, and it's doing it so that it can transform those grey zones into fortified Ukrainian territory through which Russia will have to pour untold numbers of soldiers if they are to have any chance of advancing again. This is brilliant by Ukraine. Its strategy is to attrit virus defence rather than to risk its soldiers as they try to make massive gains. French military analyst

Clément Molan explained what he was seeing in Ukraine's southeast at an ex-post. Some are talking of Uspenivka as an objective, which could be, the area is very difficult for Russia to move, we saw the impact maps, but I do not think that will happen, Molan suggested, adding, the priority is to secure Haichur River and Pokrovsk approach, this will buy time for further fortification improvements in the area, and that is Ukraine's ultimate strategy.

To right the wrongs of its faltering southeastern defences by transforming what were grey zones when Russia had access to Stalingrad into outright kill zones that will destroy Russian soldiers who attempt to infiltrate or storm through them. It may not be what many expect after seeing what Ukraine has been doing, but it's a strategy that will lead to the deaths of an enormous number of Russian soldiers, and this is why. According to the Institute for the Study of War, or ISW, the Kremlin is building up for a renewed summer offensive that will mirror the one that we saw in 2025.

That offensive failed to take Pokrovsk, which is the main strategic goal, so we can presume that this new offensive will involve Russia attempting to occupy that city before conducting a deeper push into Donetsk. Beyond signalling that Putin has no intention of ending the war he started. Despite his claims otherwise, this new summer offensive will focus on the Slovyansk, Kramatorsk and Urakiv-Zaporizhia directions, right in the direction of the grey zones that Ukraine has retaken and is now working on fortifying, if malignest to be believed. However, there is already a problem forming

with this strategy. As the ISW explains, the Russian military command is reportedly planning to deploy its likely limited strategic reserves to a planned summer 2026 offensive in southern and or eastern Ukraine. Keyword to look for here is limiting. What Russia is planning to do is launch a new offensive despite the fact that its reserves are all but gone, and those that Russia is going to be sending into Ukraine during this offensive are likely going to be the bottom of the barrel when it comes to soldiers. As United24 media reported on February 10th, the average Russian soldier is now spending as little as 10 days in training while they're

pushed to the front lines to become cannon fodder for Putin's war. In short, Russia is out of experienced or capable soldiers, simply sending meat, much of which is already being ground up as it crashes against Ukraine's defences in places like Pokrovsk. It's here where Ukraine's new fortification strategy comes into play. Ukraine could attack these weak forces and it would likely make some gains, but again there are 715,000 Russians in Ukraine right now. Even with the most skilled soldiers,

Ukraine faces a significant manpower disadvantage that would result in heavy casualties on both sides if it launched a full-blown counter-offensive. Ukraine wants the casualties to be on one side only. Creating new fortifications after liberating key pieces of territory in the south-east of the country is the way to do it. Ukraine has already been working toward what we're seeing now.

According to the Defense Post in a January 29th article, the Ukrainian Association of Developers has already built about 2km or around 1.2 miles of defensive infrastructure along the Eastern front, which links 12 underground positions with communication routes, all with the goal of strengthening Ukraine's defences. While it's unknown if something similar will be built in the grey zones that Ukraine controls, we're almost certain to see trenches being dug,

dragons' teeth being placed, mines being laid, barbed wire strewn all over, and of course the inevitable FPV drones that will turn the region into a kill zone. These are enhanced fortifications, the likes of which hadn't existed before. 2025 has taught Ukraine that it can inflict massive losses on Russia using these kinds of defences. The Atlantic Council notes this, stating,

"...there has been a pretty important change in Ukraine's defensive approach that we started to see in 2025. Ukraine is building nodes of small-scale fortification it's using to funnel Russian soldiers into pre-designated hill pockets, where the soldiers are battered with drones and artillery.

By creating choke points for Russian troops, Ukraine aims to maximize Kremlin casualties and capitalize on its inbuilt advantages as the defending party in a war of attrition. It seems likely that this is what Ukraine plans to create in the Zaporozhye and Dnipropetrovsk regions, and the country knows that this approach will be effective. 2025 was a terrible year to be a Russian soldier. For much of the year,

Putin's only strategy seemed to be to throw soldiers at Ukraine's defences in the hope that those defences would break. We've seen how that's played out in Bukrovsk, as Russia is more than half a year overdue in taking that city, based on what Putin wanted. By the end of the year, Russia had absorbed an estimated 415,000 battlefield casualties, according to the national interest, all in return for a tiny portion of Ukraine's territory. This is the impact that Ukraine's fortifications have, and the beginning of 2026 hasn't been any better for Russia. According to the Ukrainian military's commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Sierskiy,

Russia lost 31,700 soldiers in January, which is about 9,000 more than the country was able to recruit. Ukraine has also set itself the target of increasing these numbers to 50,000 per month, which will lead to it shredding through the 715,000 soldiers that Russia has in Ukraine. What we're now seeing in Zaporizhia and Dnipropetrovsk is Ukraine building on a strategy that it knows will work. Russia has no plan B. It barely has a plan A. For Ukraine, it's a case of if it builds it, the Russians will come. Only the it, its death-dealing fortifications and the Russians who arrive will never see

the light of day again. Some, including Seth G. Jones, who is the President of the Defense and Security Department at the Harold Brown Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, or CSIS, says that Russia has been long trying to hide its real casualty numbers. In a separate report, the CSIS has also stated that it's conceivable that the casualty count for the Ukraine war could reach 2 million when combining both sides, but it's Russia that will bear the brunt of those losses. It is the attacking side. Ukraine is defending and with its new strategy, it's making its defence more effective than it's ever been before. The only tactic Putin

has left is to send cannon fodder soldiers into Ukraine. In Zaporizhia and Dnipropetrovsk, that cannon fodder is going to run into renewed fortifications that will destroy them. And with Stalinglink still down and no suitable replacement incoming, the odds are that we're going to see Ukraine making more advances in the coming weeks all in service of its new fortification strategy. 2026 won't be the year of Russia's victory. It will be the year that 715,000 Russian soldiers pay for Putin's failures. Another thing that we're seeing in Ukraine is a mindset shift within the country's military.

Where Ukraine was once focused solely on survival, it's now ready to take the initiative Another thing that we're seeing in Ukraine is a mindset shift within the country's military.

Where Ukraine was once focused solely on survival, it's now ready to take the initiative against Russia. That's dangerous for Putin's weakened forces and you'll learn why if you check out our video. And if you enjoyed this video, remember to subscribe to the Military Show for more insights into Ukraine's battlefield strategies.

into Ukraine's battlefield strategies. And thank you for watching.