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. Practically 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 burden 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 certainly a bitter tablet to swallow, however he rapidly pivoted to a “wait and win” struggle technique of grinding attrition, calculating that by way of 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 concerning 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 sturdy argument to be made that Putin’s attrition technique is eroding key foundations of Russian energy quicker and extra deeply than it’s eroding the Ukrainian entrance strains.
Up to now Russia has managed to maintain a excessive stage of struggle spending, however there are rising indicators of pressure. Russia’s numerical troop benefit over Ukraine is maintained virtually fully by way of terribly excessive monetary incentives, however these are beginning to drop steeply because of rising price range shortfalls, notably 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 said in July of this 12 months that the variety of Russian useless for the primary half of 2025 alone exceeded 100,000. This has doubtless contributed to a pointy improve in desertions, estimated to have doubled in 2025 with roughly 70,000 desertions, or roughly 10% of the pressure 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 take care of sustainable, motivated troop ranges. Whereas tactical variations have allowed Russian forces to regain some initiative on the battlefield, they relaxation on a manpower mannequin that burns by way of 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 struggle drags on, Russia can also be changing into even extra depending on China. Put up-2022 commerce patterns present a Russia more and more locked into an uneven partnership through which Russia humiliatingly depends on China for vital imports of know-how, whereas Beijing features leverage by way of discounted power purchases and management over provide chains, making Moscow more and more weak to Beijing’s whims over time. For a frontrunner obsessive about sovereignty, the long-term trajectory Putin has launched into comprises 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 power sector, a basic lower within the worth of oil and fuel 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 arduous foreign money 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 initiatives, additional eroding residing requirements and stoking well-liked struggle 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 cope with everlasting struggle spending and sanctions-induced inefficiencies. Its demographics, already fragile, are being additional hollowed out by horrific struggle casualties and the emigration of expert employees. 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 pricey battle 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 struggle in the identical means 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 help of the Western democracies for Ukraine will collapse beneath the burden of their debates and divisions; and he additionally, once more, overestimates his means to interrupt Ukraine by army pressure. In analyzing the arc of Putin’s rule, the struggle in Ukraine shouldn’t be an aberration from Putinism, however its logical fruits. In strategic phrases, it represents a transition from a situation of persistent underperformance to one in all energetic and acute self-harm. Practically 4 years after his resolution 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 struggle, he’s sacrificing Russia’s future for the sake of victories and imperial fantasies that can not be gained, a lot much less sustained. That is the definition of strategic failure.
As a self-proclaimed scholar of Russian historical past, Putin could be sensible to recollect the setting of Russia’s unique regime-toppling “colour 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 next Bolshevik coup d’etat later that 12 months. Whereas well-liked discontent with the monarchy had lengthy been rising, it was the gathered privations of struggle that introduced occasions to a boiling level. As with that struggle, time on this one shouldn’t be on Putin’s aspect.
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