Human resource as front #1: why 2026 could decide the war in Ukraine

The war of attrition in Ukraine is entering a phase where not only hardware but also people are decisive. By early 2026, chronic personnel shortages, mobilization failures, increased desertion, and declining trust in the replenishment system come to the forefront. According to military observers, these factors could most significantly affect the resilience of the defense and whether Kyiv can hold the thousand-kilometer front line for another year.

In one episode that spread across social media, the commander of a Ukrainian assault unit in a cramped bunker shakes hands with the soldiers one by one before they go on a mission. In the frame are mobilized men, mostly over forty, in standard camouflage and with typical weapons. The reaction is almost emotionless, looking forward as if “by instruction.” Against the backdrop of the fifth year of full-scale war, this visual detail is read not as a routine but as a marker of general fatigue and personnel shortage.

One of the symbols of the new army reality has become the 425th Assault Regiment, known as “The Rock.” The unit is associated with the formation of separate assault forces, which are actively used in the hottest spots and quickly redeployed to “extinguish fires” after Russian breakthroughs. In 2025, “The Rock” established a reputation as a rapid response unit.

But this model has a downside.

Critics within the army point to the risk of “expensive” assault operations, where the mobilized are used as expendable resources. This creates consistently high losses precisely where there is already a shortage of people, and regular mechanized brigades remain without full replenishment. At the front level, this turns into tension between those who attack and those who hold the defense — and irritation in the rear when society sees not only heroism but also chaos.

In winter, the pace of offensive actions traditionally decreases, but in spring and summer, the intensity of battles returns. The problem is that the Ukrainian army approaches the active season with the same chronic personnel shortage — and this is noticeable even in strong, “elite” units.

In the protracted war of attrition, Moscow simultaneously tries to undermine Ukraine’s ability and will to continue resisting. Russia’s strategic goal is to break independent Ukraine by exhausting its armed forces. And even with continued external assistance, increased domestic production, and adaptation to infrastructure strikes, the basic “support” of defense remains the same: people who daily cover the front.

The Ukrainian army is physically overloaded with the need to hold and defend a contact line over a thousand kilometers long year after year. Meanwhile, the enemy maintains superiority in firepower, resources, and the ability to constantly deploy assault infantry as expendable material. If the chain of dozens and hundreds of units proves insufficiently numerous, trained, or motivated, even the extremely tough goals of the Kremlin may become achievable.

In some directions, the defense holds precisely due to a combination of strong brigades, dense work of drone units, and competent corps management. In such sectors, it is difficult for Russia to achieve a result that can be called an operational breakthrough: attacks “burn out,” and the cost of advancement becomes too high.

But in 2025, the opposite trend increasingly manifested: “weak spots” open up on the front line, and sectors that have been held by stable defense for years begin to sag.

Individual episodes illustrate how a shortage of people and management failure turn into a real threat. Where the defense is carried out by understaffed, poorly equipped, and weakly managed units, the risk of chaotic retreats, loss of strongholds, and even capture of command posts with equipment and documents increases. As a result, the enemy gains not only territory but also informational advantage, while Kyiv faces new dilemmas: how to cover gaps if reserves are limited and new lines of tension arise in different areas.

A broad discussion within the country often reduces the problem to one word — mobilization. Should more and younger people be called up? This decision is politically toxic, and tension around forced mobilization is growing. Simultaneously, conflicts in society are intensifying — up to attacks on TCC employees, which sometimes receive approval on social media not from “bot farms,” but from real people. This is a crisis of trust: the fear of mobilization among part of the population begins to outweigh the sense of existential threat.

However, mobilization is only half of the picture.

Equally critical is how the army uses the existing human resource: who goes where and after what kind of training. The portrait of the “average” mobilized person at the start of 2026 is increasingly described grimly: a man over forty, with increased health risks, without strong ideological motivation. Turning such people into a sustainable combat-ready force is possible, but it requires serious changes — in training, conditions, command culture, and distribution.

Distribution of the mobilized among units is called one of the problems that can be corrected the fastest.

In an interview on December 29, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Oleksandr Syrsky, essentially acknowledged the unevenness of replenishment and explained why this happens: with the current intensity of battles, it is impossible to simultaneously meet the needs of all units, so priority is given to those fighting in the hottest spots and suffering the greatest losses. The logic is understandable, but the consequences are dangerous: if people are sent to “priority” units after weak training, and service and life protection conditions remain insufficient, this provokes an increase in AWOL and desertion.

A telling fact from public data: in the first ten months of 2025, 165,200 criminal cases were registered for unauthorized absence from service — comparable to the total figures for the entire period of full-scale war until 2025, before the department stopped publishing these numbers. Against the backdrop of combat losses and mobilization problems, this dynamic looks not just alarming, but strategically unstable: it is impossible to hold the front on this trajectory for too long.

By early 2026, the balance of forces on the battlefield remains a key factor for any scenario of ending the war. A consolidated, managed, and staffed Ukrainian defense strengthens Kyiv’s position and forces Moscow to choose between stopping the war and further overstraining its own system. Chaotic defense, accompanied by retreats and “gaps” along the front, on the contrary, improves Russia’s position — and increases the risk of imposed negotiations on terms of capitulation or defeat on the ground.

From the very beginning of the full-scale war, Ukraine’s main advantage has been its people. In 2026, it seems that the human resource will become decisive: either it will strengthen the defense and hold the country, or it will open the way to a larger breakthrough. To stop the crisis, comprehensive solutions are needed — from more honest and understandable mobilization and real training to reasonable distribution and command culture that prioritizes not reports, but the preservation of life and effectiveness of the fighter.

In this sense, the question “who will win” increasingly sounds like the question “who will better organize people” — at the front, in the rear, in the system of trust and responsibility. This is the line Ukraine will defend in 2026 no less than cities and positions on the map. NANews — News of Israel | Nikk.Agency