The quality of new recruits has been notably poor, he added.

Speaking to ETV's "Ukraina stuudio" show, Väli said: "Starting from the summer, Russian army losses have exceeded recruitment intake, while the quality of new recruits has been very poor."

While Russia has advanced across 150 square kilometers on the Donbas front over the last week, Lt Col. Väli said he does not view this as a major breakthrough of any kind.

While Ukraine has incurred losses of territory, it remains resilient.

Russia on the other hand relies on high-casualty "meat grinder" tactics and the use of glide bombs.

Lt Col. Väli said: "There are two perspectives. One of these states that the Russians have achieved a breakthrough. The other, that Ukraine has been in worse situations before… Compared with 2022, the front line is actually holding out."

Russia continues to rely on a "meat grinder" approach in its assaults, he went on. "Advances have been made using meat-grinder attacks, backed up by glide bombs… losses on the Russian side have been extraordinarily high."

This is not to say they have not proved useful to the Russian side so far.

One recent conflict zone is the settlement of Selydove, which Väli described as a strategically important location which Ukraine lost with minimal resistance.

"Selydove is such a case where Ukraine needs to reflect deeply on how it was lost with practically no resistance," he added.

Selydove's fall may also impact Ukrainian defense efforts toward Pokrovsk, which lies 60 kilometers northwest of Donetsk and is a key transport hub.

Ukraine's logistical routes are thus likely to be under strain, complicating the defense of Pokrovsk.

Should Russian forces continue with their current tactics, Väli assessed that Pokrovsk could fall by the end of this year, which would grant Russia a greater bargaining tool as well as a direct route toward Dnipro.

"If Russia continues its 'meat-grinder' and glide-bomb attacks, Pokrovsk could be taken by year-end," he concluded.

In other areas, Russia has faced substantial challenges, particularly in the Kursk oblast, where Ukraine successfully launched a large-scale incursion in late summer.

Despite amassing nearly 50,000 troops there, Russia has struggled to gain tactical success against Ukraine's maneuvers there – including with troops pinned inside the "elbow" of the Seim river; the Ukrainians had destroyed bridges in the area ahead of the attack.

Väli further noted that Russia faces severe recruitment challenges, with reports indicating that in October alone, 40,000 fighters were rendered combat-ineffective, though only 20,000 were recruited.

Many new recruits are older, medically unfit, and from lower socio-economic brackets, even bringing with them a "criminal mentality, he added.

Russia conducted a large-scale mobilization over two years ago, but the use of conscripts has proven a double-edged sword.

Apart from push-back from families, Russian conscripts cannot be deployed in combat outside of Russia itself.

Recognizing this, just over a week after the announcement of the mobilization in September 2022, Russia fudged the issue by unilaterally claiming Ukraine's Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts as "Russian territory," despite only partly occupying these regions after over a decade of shadow war and full-scale invasion.

An interactive map of the Ukraine frontlines is here.

Much has recently been made of the recent arrival of North Korean troops in Russia, though it is too early to determine their exact impact.

If these troops were to experience significant combat losses, including being captured, it could lead to a unique situation.

Given that all deployable North Korean soldiers were born long after their country's last war in the early 1950s, they will not have combat experience, still less modern-day hi-tech combat experience.

Those that get captured may be interrogated, for language reasons likely by South Korean personnel on the Ukrainian or Western side, and this could offer them a stark perspective on the reality of their own country's situation compared with the broader world.

In any case, Russia has had to diversify its risk by dipping into the North Korean well, such as it is; there is also an obvious double-standard at play: Whereas there have been no concrete plans to deploy western troops in significant numbers in support of Ukraine and the idea is met with stated fears over escalation, the smaller country, Russia has been all too happy to do so with troops from a fellow totalitarian nation.

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