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Russian units fighting in Ukraine that were previously considered “elite” are now becoming “increasingly obsolete” as a result of Russia’s strategy of throwing waves of troops into battle, which has turned the front line into a ” meat grinder,” said a top war monitor. .

Army formations that once carried out specialized tactical tasks in their assault on the Ukrainians are now “underpowered” and rely on infantry-led attacks that fail to carry out any “unique tactics”, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said.

Once considered “elite”, the units “function essentially as underpowered motorized rifle units, relying on infantry-led frontal assaults to achieve tactical gains rather than using any sort of doctrinally unique tactics”. the US think tank said. an update on Thursday.

The use of North Korean troops in “highly attrition” infantry-led attacks also creates difficulties in integrating Kim Jong-un’s troops into the Russian military.

Russia’s strategy, particularly on the eastern front, has been described by some military experts as a “mincer” tactic, in which huge numbers of troops are sent to attack Ukrainian defenses and die by the hundreds for the sake of relatively incremental advances.

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The UK Ministry of Defense figures that Russia averages over 1,000 soldiers killed or wounded every day. This is almost twice as much as during Ukraine’s counter-offensive in the summer of 2023.

As a result of “the way Russia conducts its war”, “the differences in quality between the various Russian formations that existed before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine have become increasingly obsolete,” ISW said.

Russia has been slowly advancing into eastern Ukraine for months, with many of their attacks focused on the Donetsk region, as Russian President Vladimir Putin tries to seize as much as possible before US President-elect Donald Trump, who has claimed that will try to end it. the war in Ukraine within a day of taking office – re-enters the White House in January.

On Thursday, Russia used a new ballistic missile in Ukraine, which Putin said was a response to the UK and US allowing missiles they supplied to Ukraine to be used to strike targets in Russia.

In a televised speech, Putin said: “We consider ourselves entitled to use our weapons against the military installations of those countries that allow their weapons to be used against our installations.”

This came after UK-based Storm Shadow long-range missiles were used by Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk region, while US ATACMS long-range weapons were also fired at targets in Russia.

Putin claimed Russia tested the new intermediate-range weapon in an attack on the Dnipro in response. The Kremlin said on Friday that the missile launch was a “warning” to the West.