Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
The battle between the two sides is not confined the battlefield.
War drives innovation, as the soon-to-be four-year-long conflict in Ukraine has shown again and again.
Both sides are in an arms race to counter the opponent’s latest inventions, and innovation is visible in every aspect of the war.
Last Tuesday, January 6, 2026, a number of images showing Russian forces dressing their equipment in a new type of camouflage resembling rubble from destroyed buildings surfaced on social media — and this shows us a number of things about what to expect from the war in 2026.
Note that the pictures have not been independently verified.
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Getting ready for urban warfare
First of all, the new kind of camouflage shows that the Russians are constantly trying to counter the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ use of drones.
By dressing equipment and soldiers in rubble-looking camouflage, the Russians hope to make them harder to spot with UAVs, increasing Russia’s chances of infiltrating Ukrainian lines.
And this brings us to the next point.
The Fortress Belt
Some analysts expect Ukraine’s Fortress Belt — a 50-kilometer-long stretch in eastern Ukraine made up of four cities and several villages — to see some heavy fighting in 2026.
For the past 11 years, Ukraine has invested both time, money, and resources into making the belt as impenetrable as possible, with significant defense-industrial capacity and military infrastructure being created.
Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets expects Russian losses to increase during 2026, when Russian forces attempt to take the highly fortified Fortress Belt — and this brings us to the third point.
Infiltration instead of full-frontal assaults
In its update on the war on January 8, 2026, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) noted that Russian strategy shifted in 2025 from relying heavily on assaults to focusing on infiltration instead.
The infiltration attempts are conducted by sending small units against Ukrainian lines in an attempt to get behind Ukrainian defenses.
Ukraine is countering these infiltration attempts by using UAVs to spot and eliminate infiltrators, including in urban areas.
The new rubble-inspired Russian camouflage could be a sign of more infiltrations to come and that they will target urban areas, where rubble from destroyed buildings is more prevalent than the grass and flora of open fields.
Sources: Social media posts, Institute for the Study of War, Ukraine’s Armed Forces, Telegram
