According to military analyst Michael Kofman, Russia will remain the main destabilizing factor in Europe even in case of defeat in the war against Ukraine. If NATO were to be satisfied with the fact that Moscow had failed in Ukraine, it could encounter a completely different force in a possible war. Why would the alliance against Russia face heavy losses?
Kofman in extensive analysis for Foreign Affairs points out that the future of European security does not depend only on the outcome of the war in Ukraine. According to him, even in the event of Russia’s defeat, Moscow will remain a state that has the ability and political will to disrupt the security arrangement in Europe. Although Russia faces a stagnant economy, unfavorable demographics and an authoritarian system, its armed forces remain the Kremlin’s most important instrument of power.
Part of the Western assessments are based on the idea that the Russian army is in ruins after huge losses and will not be able to threaten Europe in the long term. However, Kofman warns that such a conclusion can be dangerously simplistic. “The restoration of the Russian army after the war is not a question of if, but when,” writes the analyst.
According to him, Russia will not just restore the pre-war numbers of soldiers and equipment after the war. A larger army will be sought with a higher number of drone units, precision strike systems, artillery and infantry. Moscow’s goal is to return to the ability to conduct large-scale offensive maneuvers, not just a repetition of the positional trench warfare that dominates the Ukrainian front.
Kofman reminds that the assessment of the renewal of the army cannot be measured only by a return to the pre-war tabular conditions. He refers to the analyst Dara Massicotová, according to whom recovery is “the process of regaining combat functions, capabilities and abilities” necessary for conducting operations. A different force would be needed for a limited incursion into the Baltics, and another for a major war against Poland or a wider conflict with NATO.
The Russian armed forces increased in number during the war. Before the invasion, they had approximately 850,000 active members, today they are supposed to be around 1.3 million. At the same time, President Vladimir Putin raised the upper age limit for service from 27 to 30 and pushed the official target for the size of the army to about 1.5 million active soldiers. However, Kofman points out that Moscow is unlikely to achieve this status due to demographic problems and labor shortages.
Russia’s losses are extremely high. Kofman states that at least 400,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine, while a British intelligence report from the end of May says almost 500,000 dead. Another 600,000 to 800,000 were to be seriously injured. Despite this, Moscow has created a system of replenishment, which from 2023 allows it to recruit more than 400,000 contract soldiers annually.
At the same time, Russia lost a huge amount of technology. According to open sources, by the beginning of May 2026, more than 14,000 armored combat vehicles, 2,100 pieces of artillery and thousands of other assets were lost. Ukrainian strikes are also increasingly destroying Russian air defense systems, which may increase Moscow’s short-term vulnerability to NATO air power and Western long-range precision weapons.
However, these losses do not mean that Russia is left without reserves. The military industry restored or remanufactured thousands of vehicles and parts, and North Korea supplied more than 300 pieces of artillery. According to the analysis, the Russian army today probably has about the same or even slightly higher number of armored combat vehicles, including tanks, than at the beginning of the war, although in general it is not an equally modern technique.
The production of new weapons is also growing significantly. Russia is estimated to produce more than 200 T-90M tanks a year, the most advanced tanks in its arsenal. At this rate, they could make up half of Russia’s tank fleet in seven to eight years. At the same time, Moscow produces millions of tactical drones a year and has significantly increased its production of guided and ballistic missiles.
Of particular importance is the increase in the production of large unidirectional attack drones. Russia produced more than 70,000 of them in 2025 and has contracted for at least another 100,000 units for 2026. He releases an average of 6,500 per month against Ukraine. According to Kofman, Russia may have a stockpile of millions of tactical drones and hundreds of thousands of larger attack unmanned systems several years after the end of the war.
According to the analysis, the Russian army has also improved in dynamic target search, precision strikes and connecting reconnaissance with fire in real time. It better integrated drones into combat operations and was able to partially reduce the effectiveness of Western systems, which initially had a large psychological and operational effect. Kofman cites the US HIMARS missile systems as an example, where he says Ukraine has already exploited much of the initial advantage of surprise.
At the same time, it is not a linear story of successful modernization. According to Kofman, the Russian army remains an uneven and often low-quality force. It lost a large proportion of the officers and trained soldiers needed to conduct major combined operations. From 2024, he increasingly fights in small groups, first in attack teams of six to eight men, later even sending one or two soldiers to infiltrate Ukrainian positions.
The Russian problem also remains in the culture of command. Kofman describes overly centralized decision-making, punishment of initiative, distrust between soldiers and commanders, falsification of reports, and a weak NCO corps. Corruption is said to be widespread to the extent that some soldiers pay to avoid participating in attacks. It is these weaknesses that may limit Moscow’s ability to take full advantage of technological improvements.
The state of the Russian economy will also complicate the renewal of the army. According to economist Alexandra Prokopenko, Russia spends 40 percent of its budget on the military, i.e. approximately eight percent of GDP. This is approximately twice as much as before the war in Ukraine. However, the economy stagnates from 2025, regional deficits grow and the state borrows more. Analyst Alexander Kolyandr summed up the situation by saying: “The army needs men to fight. Armories need men to supply it.”
According to Kofman, this is a clear warning for NATO. The alliance has superiority in air force, navy, intelligence, precision weapons and force quality, but it lacks Ukraine’s experience of a battlefield saturated with drones, continuous reconnaissance and cheap precision strikes. According to the analysis, exercises in which Ukrainian drone units took part with NATO forces in the last year showed that the allies are not prepared for an environment in which drones significantly outnumber soldiers and equipment.
Kofman therefore calls on the United States and European allies to start addressing the Russian threat now. According to him, NATO needs more short-range mobile air defense, cheaper anti-drone systems, larger drone units, electronic warfare and a combination of high-end and low-cost sensors and weapons. It is not only about increasing defense budgets, but also about painful decisions: which traditional units to reduce or eliminate in order to create the capabilities needed for the new battlefield. Without such a change, according to the analysis, the alliance could suffer much higher losses than would be necessary in the first days of a possible conflict with Russia.
