OPINION — On February 14, 2022, with Russia poised to invade Ukraine, I questioned whether or not Vladimir Putin’s reign to that time had revealed him to be a strategic grasp or a strategic failure. Almost 4 years later, the decision is much more obvious. Putin, assured in his strategic calculus that the West would supply solely token help to Ukraine, which might rapidly fold beneath the load and violence of Russian army would possibly, fatefully launched his assault days later with disastrous penalties for Russia. The nation he leads is now even poorer, extra remoted, brittle, and dependent (on China) than earlier than. Putin grossly underestimated Ukrainian will, overestimated the competence of his personal army and intelligence equipment, and misjudged Western cohesion. By the Fall of 2022, it was apparent even to Putin that his anticipated fast victory was unattainable. This was absolutely a bitter capsule to swallow, however he rapidly pivoted to a “wait and win” warfare technique of grinding attrition, calculating that via sheer mass and perseverance–and Western impatience–time could be on his aspect. Most pundits, even these within the West, have tended to agree with him, a lot as they did in 2022 in regards to the chance that Russia would rapidly roll over Ukraine. This mindset, however–that time is on Russia’s side–risks a strategic misreading no much less profound than his unique blunder, as a result of there’s a robust argument to be made that Putin’s attrition technique is eroding key foundations of Russian energy sooner and extra deeply than it’s eroding the Ukrainian entrance traces.
Up to now Russia has managed to maintain a excessive degree of warfare spending, however there are rising indicators of pressure. Russia’s numerical troop benefit over Ukraine is maintained virtually solely via terribly excessive monetary incentives, however these are beginning to drop steeply resulting from rising finances shortfalls, significantly in regional budgets on which such spending disproportionately falls. New contracts for troopers in April-June 2025 had been lower than half the extent of the identical interval in 2024, signaling a major weakening within the effectiveness of monetary inducements.
And it’s not simply the cash. The dying toll for Russian troopers is accelerating. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged in July of this yr that the variety of Russian lifeless for the primary half of 2025 alone exceeded 100,000. This has probably contributed to a pointy enhance in desertions, estimated to have doubled in 2025 with roughly 70,000 desertions, or roughly 10% of the power in Ukraine. Russia is more and more reliant on coerced recruits, harsh punishments for desertion, together with torture and extrajudicial executions, all indicators of a army struggling to keep up sustainable, motivated troop ranges. Whereas tactical diversifications have allowed Russian forces to regain some initiative on the battlefield, they relaxation on a manpower mannequin that burns via human capital, i.e., human beings, at a tempo no nation with Russia’s demographic profile can lengthy maintain.
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Because the warfare drags on, Russia can be changing into even extra depending on China. Submit-2022 commerce patterns present a Russia more and more locked into an uneven partnership through which Russia humiliatingly depends on China for crucial imports of know-how, whereas Beijing features leverage via discounted vitality purchases and management over provide chains, making Moscow more and more weak to Beijing’s whims over time. For a pacesetter obsessive about sovereignty, the long-term trajectory Putin has launched into incorporates a obvious paradox: the longer he fights to maintain Ukraine out of the Western orbit, the extra he locks Russia right into a subordinate place in China’s. Discuss strategic irony.
These monetary strains and deepening dependence on China are compounded by the continued tightening of worldwide sanctions on the Russian vitality sector, a common lower within the value of oil and gasoline on which Russia is so closely dependent as the worldwide financial system cools, and the heavy depletion of Russia’s “wet day” sovereign wealth fund, which has dropped by virtually 60% and now principally consists of Chinese language Renminbi and gold, having exhausted its exhausting forex holdings. Sustaining present protection spending will thus more and more require both greater borrowing from home banks or seen cuts in social spending and civilian tasks, additional eroding residing requirements and stoking well-liked warfare fatigue.
Putin’s war-of-choice with Ukraine has solely intensified Russia’s pre-war weaknesses. Russia’s financial system, already underperforming relative to its useful resource base and human potential, should now take care of everlasting warfare spending and sanctions-induced inefficiencies. Its demographics, already fragile, are being additional hollowed out by horrific warfare casualties and the emigration of expert staff. Russia’s civic life, already stunted, is being additional smothered by wartime repression. Lastly, Putin’s invasion not solely failed to revive a pliant Ukrainian “little brother”, it locked Russia right into a expensive wrestle towards the second largest nation in Europe, after itself, and one that’s furthermore extra anti-Russian, higher armed, and extra deeply built-in with the West than earlier than.
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And now, by slow-rolling negotiations to finish the battle, Putin misreads the trajectory of this warfare in the identical method he misinterpret its opening act. He underestimates the cumulative impact of casualties and penalties of financial distortions and social fatigue inside Russia; he overestimates the diploma that assist of the Western democracies for Ukraine will collapse beneath the load of their debates and divisions; and he additionally, once more, overestimates his capacity to interrupt Ukraine by army power. In analyzing the arc of Putin’s rule, the warfare in Ukraine shouldn’t be an aberration from Putinism, however its logical end result. In strategic phrases, it represents a transition from a situation of continual underperformance to certainly one of lively and acute self-harm. Almost 4 years after his determination to invade Ukraine, which greater than the rest will outline his reign, Putin shouldn’t be outplaying historical past on a grand chessboard by doubling down on the warfare, he’s sacrificing Russia’s future for the sake of victories and imperial fantasies that can’t be gained, a lot much less sustained. That is the definition of strategic failure.
As a self-proclaimed pupil of Russian historical past, Putin could be clever to recollect the setting of Russia’s unique regime-toppling “coloration revolution,” the February Revolution of 1917. This was the spontaneous Russian well-liked rebellion that led to the abdication of the Tsar and formation of a Provisional Authorities, not the following Bolshevik coup d’etat later that yr. Whereas well-liked discontent with the monarchy had lengthy been rising, it was the collected privations of warfare that introduced occasions to a boiling level. As with that warfare, time on this one shouldn’t be on Putin’s aspect.
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