Ukrainian Brains vs Russian Brawn

2026 has been a good year for Ukraine. Or perhaps more precisely, it has been even worse for Russia. That is how you win a war.

The most immediate reason for the Ukrainian successes is their increasing advantage in the drone war. They make more, better, cheaper and more accurate drones than the Russians. Especially the surgical strikes against oil infrastructure far into the vastness of Russia have impressed the world. The people of Moscow and St Petersburg are getting used to the sight of smoke pillars.

But the Ukrainians are also winning on the battlefield. Though casualty figures are secret, some estimates suggest a 1 to 8 kill ratio favoring Ukraine. Even if the real number was only 1 to 2, it would still be a huge advantage. Ukraine’s more defensive tactics are paying off, while the Russian human wave attacks are not.

But drones alone cannot explain this. Ukraine is learning. Russia is not. But why is that? The short answer is freedom. More specifically, freedom of information.

Ukraine is a democracy. That means that information flows up and down the hierarchy, and from side to side. If something goes wrong, soon everyone knows about it. Failures cannot be hidden, to the embarrassment of the people in charge. But it also means that the failures are fixed.

Russia is an autocracy. That means that information mainly flows down the hierarchy, with subordinates obeying their superiors. If something goes wrong, generally only the ones immediately involved learn about it. Often that means that they die. But even if they survive, it is often better for them personally to shut up about it

This is also reflected in the choices both sides have made in how to conduct the war. The Ukrainians are more careful with their troops. They do not send them on cannon fodder suicide missions, and for the most part they are on the defensive, slowly withdrawing when they have to. They slowly trade land to save their soldiers, no romantic last stands.

The Russians are doing the opposite. Poorly trained soldiers are herded like cattle against Ukrainian positions, sometimes for no better reason than to reveal where the machine gun nests are. Most of these are from the Russian slave peoples in Siberia, rather than the Muscovites themselves. Injured soldiers are sometimes executed to avoid the cost of caring for them.

Curiously, these different strategies were not entirely intentional. At the start of the war, there were still plenty of Ukrainian officers with the old soviet thinking where human lives are just resources. There are many stories of Ukrainian officers giving stupid orders causing the annihilation of entire battalions. But this grew politically unsustainable before it grew militarily unsustainable – the public would not accept it. Strategies changed, and the officers who did not adapt were removed. In autocratic Russia, incompetent, corrupt and vicious officers remain in place.

Even today the battle between Soviet and western military thinking is not entirely settled in Ukraine. This explains that recent conflict between defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov and commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi. Though the 35-year-old drone enthusiast Fedorov ultimately lost his job, the fact that people were demonstrating in the streets in his favor means that his work will live on. Syrskyi, who goes by “the Butcher of Bachmut” for the number of Ukrainians he got killed there in 2023, will have to adapt or be replaced.

[Edit: On 21 July, Oleksandr Syrskyi was dismissed].

It is hard to learn if you are dead. But if you stay alive, you will learn more and more and get better at staying alive. This creates a positive feedback-loop for the Ukrainians. They now have an army of veterans, most of whom have been at war for over four years. There is even a small but important core of veterans from 2014, who are the most experienced soldiers in the world at the moment.

The Russians cannot match this, since their soldiers don’t live long enough. Even if the Ukrainians didn’t have the technological edge, it would still be a fight between poor Siberians on their first day on the job and professional soldiers with years of experience of killing poor Siberians.

The only Russians who are safe and likely to have long careers are the officers comfortably behind the lines. But since they are never held personally accountable for their mistakes, they never learn. For them, corruption and pleasing their own bosses is more important than the lives of their troops. Nobody dares to bring bad news.

It is often claimed that democracies can’t fight, that we are too soft. This belief is what tempted Russia to start the war in the first place. It is certainly true that there is less enthusiasm for war in democracies. But once war becomes an accepted reality for the electorate, democracies are quite capable of defending themselves. Especially long term, when their more intelligent and adaptable social systems start paying off.

Jakob Sjölander