Russian President Vladimir Putin is skilled at escaping the optics of defeat. He came to power in 2000, projecting authority in Russia’s ongoing war against the breakaway region of Chechnya, where Russia did over time prevail. He put himself forward as a decisive leader in Georgia (via the 2008 Russo-Georgian War), in Ukraine (via the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and full-scale invasion in 2022), and in Syria (via a Russian military incursion in 2015). In none of these theaters has Putin notched a lasting success. Georgia is up for grabs, and Russia’s presence in fading away in Syria, but Putin will accept no responsibility for setbacks on the global stage. He always acts the victor.
With Ukraine, Putin can orchestrate scenes of success. He did so on May 9—Victory Day in Russia, commemorating the Nazi surrender in 1945—standing shoulder to shoulder with Chinese President Xi Jinping. They watched Russian troops marching proudly by on Red Square, sending the message that Russia is not isolated; it is unvanquished. It is Ukraine, the Russian state media tells us, that will falter. It is Europe that cannot overcome its post-national anomie. It is the United States that has bowed to Russia, acknowledging that NATO expansion caused the war, that Ukrainian intransigence has perpetuated it, and that in 2022, when the war began, President Joe Biden was the doddering man who brought the world to the brink of World War III.
But for Russia, Ukraine is not Syria, and it is not Georgia. Syria was a far-away adventure where Russia’s retreat can be swept under the carpet. Georgia is stuck in a holding pattern, vacillating between Russia and the West, which is no disaster for Moscow—whereas Ukraine is a disaster for Moscow. In Ukraine, Russia’s military is stalled while deaths and casualties mount. Putin has no way out of the war—other than to admit a version of defeat. The Kremlin can try to hide the war’s misery from Russians but only to the extent that it can tell the war’s story. Putin cannot as effectively erase evidence of a faltering economy. Nor can he offer Russians any coherent political promise other than endless Putinism. Slowly and not yet suddenly, Russia is starting to lose the war.
Long wars demand integrated efforts. Military aims rest on diplomatic capacity and economic heft, which in turn rest on political will. Russia is struggling in each of these domains. The problem for Putin is that the military and diplomatic challenges of the war compound one another, as do the economic and political challenges. Were the war going well or were it an obviously defensive war, diplomacy might be peripheral, uncertainty and economic hardship might be bearable, and political discontent could be put on hold. This was the Soviet Union in World War II. With his massive war against Ukraine, Putin is in almost the opposite position. Nor can he procrastinate by narrating his way out of this strategic cul-de-sac. With an autocrat’s toolkit, he can only postpone the eventual reckoning.
Russia faces two serious military dilemmas. One is its own inability to advance. In some technical sense, momentum is on Russia’s side, as it takes square miles of Ukrainian territory, but this momentum is going nowhere. For months, Russia has tried and failed to take the Ukrainian town of Pokrovsk. Its failure has been accompanied by enormous losses: an estimated 790,000 killed or injured since the beginning of the war (plus 48,000 missing), including more than 100,000 casualties this year alone. By the end of 2025, at this rate, Russia will have over a million casualties, and its strategic situation will not be any better than it was in 2022. Putin has no easy way to alter a trajectory that translates (if unaltered) into stalemate. Mostly war zones, the territories that Russia controls in Ukraine are of no material benefit to Russia.
Russia’s other military dilemma is Ukraine. When Russia failed to deliver a knock-out blow in 2022 and to split Ukraine down the middle, Putin had a choice between a reduced war and a war on civilians across Ukraine. He went with the war against civilians—not to be seen as backtracking and to compel Ukrainians to surrender. This decision also backfired. The brutality of the Russian occupation coupled with countless assaults on civilians and civilian infrastructure convinced most Ukrainians that they had to fight. Ukraine is poorer and smaller than Russia, not ideally suited to a war of attrition, and on the battlefield Ukraine is acting alone. These circumstances matter, of course, though not as much as Ukraine’s morale and its formidable ability to innovate (such as in drone warfare), which among other things is a function of Ukrainians’ morale.
Russia has ways to gain advantage in a long war of attrition. It could facilitate a U.S. withdrawal from the war, which would have a severe effect on Ukrainians’ morale, limit the day-to-day capabilities of the Ukrainian military and send a strong signal globally that Ukraine was unable to sustain its most important bi-lateral relationship. Were the United States to opt out, Russia could then try to pick off individual European states, pushing them either toward neutrality or toward active support for Russia in the war. By driving a wedge between the United States and Europe, Russia could do more than improve its position in Ukraine. It could move closer to its dream of a Russian sphere of influence in Europe and of a transatlantic alliance in utter disarray.
But Russia has mismanaged its diplomacy with the West. It squandered the opportunities presented by an avowedly pro-Russian Trump administration in February, March, and April, bombing its way past multiple cease-fires. This has pushed Trump toward Ukraine and Europe, and Moscow has found no way to separate Europe from Ukraine. Germany’s newly elected chancellor, Friedrich Merz, who has excellent relations with the United Kingdom, France, and Poland, is staunchly pro-Ukraine, and he has committed Germany to some half a trillion dollars in defense spending. Russian diplomacy cannot engineer a friendly or neutral West, not least because of the way Russia fights in Ukraine. Putin also prevents Russian diplomats from exploring the compromises that might save Russia from the wartime nightmare he has fashioned for his country.
Putin’s obsession with not losing in Ukraine has damaged the Russian economy. The sugar high of military spending is over, and growth has dwindled from 5 percent at the war’s start to zero. An overheated labor market has inflation running at around 10 percent. Falling energy prices due to Trump’s burgeoning trade wars and China’s slumping economy could eviscerate Russia’s state budget, which relies heavily on the sale of gas and oil. Russians, who are far from going hungry, have to be asking themselves about the wisdom of their government at the moment, about higher prices and a grim economic horizon for the sake of a stalemated, counterproductive, and unnecessary war. The only thing more dangerous to a political leader than a war of choice is a war of choice that goes badly.
Putin has asked the Russian people to trust him on the war in Ukraine. Many have, and many do. Those who do not trust Putin might encounter the repressive tactics of a police state, although Russia is not totalitarian. Its social contract is a curious mix of mobilization for the war (in parts of the country) and disengagement from politics (in all of the country)—a largely apolitical society alleged to be fighting a holy war.
Real political power is concentrated in Putin’s hands. But his dictator’s prerogative makes him uniquely the man in charge, which is as much a vulnerability as it is a strength—a strength to the degree that he can win the war and a vulnerability to the degree that he is losing it. Perhaps for this reason, after years of silence on the topic, Putin has begun to speak about a successor. As he himself may be aware, he has staked his political fortunes on a foolish war, and he is not winning.
The post Russia Has Started Losing the War in Ukraine appeared first on Foreign Policy.
