Russian recruits typically die within 20-30 minutes after arriving at the war in Ukraine, said John Ratcliffe, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), at the Defense and Innovation Summit in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, July 15. "Our intelligence aligns with some reports from open sources that you may have seen in Ukraine," Ratcliffe noted. According to him, soldiers find it harder to survive because "AI drones have become specialized and inexpensive killing machines." Ratcliffe emphasized that Ukraine's adoption of new technologies has become a "powerful factor leveling the playing field," leading to a decline in the pace of the Russian army's advance. ## ## CSIS: Russian Casualties in Ukraine Increased Fivefold Due to Ukrainian Drones The Russian army in 2026 began losing eight times more personnel than the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), analysts from the Washington-based think tank CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies) claim. Overall, since the beginning of the full-scale war in February 2022, approximately 2 million military personnel have been killed, wounded, or missing, with 1.4 million attributed to the Russian side, according to the organization's research. If the loss ratio between Russia and Ukraine was mostly 2:1 or 3:1, it is estimated to have risen to 8:1 in the first half of 2026. According to some reports, over 90 percent of Russian losses are attributed to drone strikes rather than direct combat engagements.