WHY RUSSIA WON’T WIN

NOTE: Apologies for my absence, I had a brief holiday and then became unwell for most of the following week.

A great deal has happened. Russia faces, along with China, the potential eradication of yet another ally in Iran, which even as it remains under the rule of the Ayatollah’s – a prospect that this week took a turn for the unlikely as the 86 year old Khomeini, said to be devastated by the loss of so many long standing allies and commanders in Iran’s military, handed over much of his powers to the remaining leadership of the hard line Revolutionary Guard, seems unlikely to be able to to achieve very much.

That did not stop China flying in chartered 747 cargo planes belonging to Cargolux, the Luxembourg based freight company, supposedly on their way to Luxembourg, actually flying to the northeastern city of Marahbad and then back to China. What with exactly Cargolux will not say, my bet is suites of sophisticated encrypted comms to get senior command away from a clearly compromised state networks.

For Iran it’s now more about preserving power for the regime – the fight back will have to come later if at all. If the Americans involve themselves – and the temptation to do so must be profound, then what is already wrecked will be even more devastated and the regime set back a decade or more. How it contains popular anger this time will be far harder as the systems and controls have been hugely compromised.

I’ve written about this here because one cannot help but imagine that its not without possibility at some stage in the future, with Ukraine about to deploy its first domestic ballistic missile, that they could one day, through a combination of these and drones create such problems for Russia that it too, might face a similar situation. The grasp on the reins of power is surprisingly tenuous for those who only have an iron fist to hold them by.

Over the last few months there has been a general decline in the reporting of the war even by those YouTuber’s whose livelihoods depend on it. They rarely bother with a map update – which at one point was a daily feature. The reason is that almost nothing of any real significance has happened.

It may seem ridiculous to those fighting on the front lines, but lets be clear its what they are doing and what they are doing it with that has so effectively stalled the Russian advances and contributed to an almost WW1 level of stalemate, that has stymied Russia.

We in the West lived for decades under an order of delusion about Russia that was more often untrue that it was realistic.

Partly this began in the Napoleonic Era, when Russia was the first Empire to literally withdraw so far into its own depths that Napoleon sat in Moscow furious that the Czar would not meet him in battle. Napoleon was forced into an ignominious retreat that cost him 500,000 men and almost his throne. It was the Russians who worked out the best solution to defeat Napoleon – if he was suspected of being in command of an army the allies came into contact with, then don’t engage, because he always won. Fight his deputies, anyone else but not Napoleon. It was strategy that worked, proven even more so when having entered France where they could not avoid him, he fought them to a draw, but by then it was all too late. The Russian Empire was largely responsible for the defeat of and abdication of Napoleon. It was, after the burning down of Moscow, a triumph like no other and the Czar was lauded across Europe, visiting London as part of his victory tour.

That set up a vision of a remarkable army that overcome any odds. And it stuck fast in peoples minds for nearly a century, despite more than sufficient evidence to the contrary.

One hundred years to the year, later in 1914 and Britain and France, facing down the German advance of the Schlieffen Plan through Belgium and northern France, knowing that Germany had almost nothing protecting its eastern borders, expected ‘a million Russians with snow on their boots’, to enter Berlin within a matter of weeks. Their reality was somewhat different. Lack of equipment, lack of competence, lack of communications, and a small German army thrashed the Russians at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes. There would be no Russia to save the day.

In 1916 for a moment, the Russian Brusilov Offensive came within a hairs breadth of defeating the Austro-Hungarian Empire – it was literally close to collapse but Germany saved the day. After that it was just endless decline until the Czar abdicated and eventually, despite their loathing to do it, the Bolsheviks signed a peace treaty at Brest-Litovsk.

For the allies it was a disaster and yet despite it all the mystery of Russia and its new leader Stalin, who came to power after Lenin’s death, in the late 1920’s the myth was reborn. Stalin’s ruthless desecration of the Soviet peoples was little known at the time, and he was lionized as the savior of Russia. Yet his purges of the military resulted in his war with Finland in 1940 being a prime example of how not to invade anyone. The Winter War was a disaster and encouraged Hitler to attack the Soviet Union in June 1941. “All we will have to do is kick the door in and the whole house will fall down”.

For many reasons not worth repeating here, the German invasion was doomed from the day it began, it went wrong from the start even as it appeared to be a conclusive victory in the making. Russia, with allied support these days they choose to ignore, turned the tide many believe at Stalingrad, but that battle was already a failed German attempt to restore its fortunes having failed to take Moscow or Leningrad. The war was lost in the snows of December 1941, the tide turned at speed within a year and at breakneck pace all the way back to Berlin in 1945.

It was this victory that reinforced again the power of Russian military might, and convinced the west it could never be beaten, that it was always competent and resilient and well equipped. In sheer numbers it would always hold the upper hand. Russia became a military and then a nuclear super power – but unlike the United States, it was never an economic one.

Despite the shambles of the post-Soviet 1990’s, the resurgence of nationalism and the willingness to use force under Putin, against anyone who got in his way, created a degree of respect and admiration for what on paper at least, was a mature, well staffed army, filled with the latest models of equipment capable of dealing with any opponent. In 2014 it showed what it could do in Crimea and the warning flags were out, though most wanted to ignore them. The Donbas conflict began, and Ukraine slowly found its way into our attentions.

On 24 February 2022 we all learned that Russia’s invincible military machine had descended on Ukraine. I gave them seven days, some three, some five. If what we had been told about Russia’s military was right – on paper – then this would be an embarrassing walkover.

Then we saw the reality of a disorganized, badly planned, over assumed, corruption filled disaster unfold that reached new levels of military embarrassment. The rest you know.

So how have we got to the point where I can say Russia can’t win?

I take you back not just to the YouTubers and their map reporting – or lack thereof – but the fact they have little to report. Despite their offensives Russia has captured little more since late 2022 than the state of Rhode Island in the US – most people can’t even find it on a map it’s so small. Their advances are costly and piecemeal. Someone calculated it would take them 253 years and 100 million casualties to conquer Ukraine at the current rate. That’s never going to happen so, as long as Ukraine is sufficiently supported by the west (at least Europe+), it is not going to be defeated as long as it is willing to fight.

Russia has been reduced to between 5-10% of its fiscal reserves, its facing a recession – something admitted today by mistake at the SPIEF-2025 in an open discussion by a junior minister, but long acknowledged by others and an open secret.

Its oil income is constantly reducing – a mix of market pressure and sanctions. Its domestic industries are seized up and dying off at an alarming rate. Military industries are being targeted by sophisticated Ukrainian drone strikes that are striking deep into what little military-industrial capability Russia has to produce electronics, explosives, rocket motors, drones and the supporting technologies that make war viable today.

The country was stunned – many have said it – by the Ukrainian drone strikes on its strategic bombers. They simply didn’t even imagine it was possible – and that lack of imagination is something that Russia has because of its system – the stultifying dead hand of autocracy despises free thought, prizing loyalty and obedience above innovation. The kleptocratic nature of the regime still hasn’t been purged – the army is so corrupt stories that existed in 2022 are still being repeated. Its inhumanity to its own soldiery is no recipe for creating a force to achieve victory. Only this week Ukraine has said that surrenders are at an all time high with double the POW count.

Yet more than that the signs are everywhere that things are not going well. The Russian milbloggers who are as loyal as they get for the most part and pro-war, if critical of how the war is being waged, refuse to give in to the state’s endless attempts to control their narrative. They explain that the people don’t understand what the war is about – indeed you could argue does anyone other than Dugin and Putin? That people need to be enthused about it and understand why it matters – at this stage why would anyone really care? They may not be able to say it but their private thoughts are unlikely to extend as far as enthusiasm for a war that started with no notice, almost on a whim of concocted anecdotes and revisionist history, cultural denial and a desire for enforced naturalization. The whole concept that Ukrainians don’t even exist, is in itself ludicrous.

It’s this whole lack of ideology, any sense of purpose. Only now after 25 years in power is Putin starting to understand the need for ideological indoctrination – he based the state on kleptocratic principles, he who steals most keeps most. There was no ideology other than keeping himself in power until he dies. You don’t just invent one in the middle of a major war you unleashed. Russia has nothing anyone wants culturally, not as it is now.

This is a war of attrition and to win one of those you need a major flexible and capable industrial base. Ukraine is finding it has allies that are quite suddenly beginning to deliver the aid they promised after years of investment and construction. Ukraine is building its own industry in cooperation with its partners, and a stunning speed. Its innovation rate is far higher, its willingness to embrace a good idea and develop it at speed has confounded the Russians who just cannot work at that pace in a system that was never designed that way.

Russia’s own strategic behavior is already showing that its position is not just morally bankrupt, it is militarily broken. Huge resources are being spent on bombing Ukraine every day – but it isn’t going to change the war’s outcome and despite the fact they have global history available to them that shows just that, they still persist. Yet even that is driving Ukrainian technologies. Better radars, laser based interceptors, and vitally a big increase in drone interceptors using cheap one way optical drones with an IR eye. At the rate Ukraine is progressing the Russian will be launching a thousand Shaeed’s per day and 999 will be blown up before they do damage. Ukraine finds answers to every Russian generated problem.

Its artillery position has gone from 10:1 against it at the start of the war to around 1.9:1 – a result that has left Russia with a pile of shells and nowhere near enough guns of the right type to use them. Who would have expected that? Russia can barely manufacture new gun barrels for its new artillery, never mind fix the droopy, exploding mess that has worn out or more likely, been destroyed by Ukraine’s drone hunters.

The very quality of the Russian army is itself a problem they haven’t even tried to fix – that willingness to simply accept it as it is extraordinary despite its gargantuan obvious failure to win the war.

If another two years is to elapse, I see a time where Ukraine and its allies have equipped it with sufficient offensive weapons too actually break the Russian army and create another 2022 level of rout. If Russia lasts that long, which I doubt.

In 1918 the Germans went from the cusp of victory to complete collapse in eight months. The blockade was crippling, food scarce, industry was no longer able to produce what was needed fast enough, financially the shell game of fiscal irresponsibility had run out of moves. Everyone knew it was over, even its ally was suing for peace. Millions were dead and there was nothing to show for it. Russia faces just such a bleak end if it insists on carrying on. It won’t be the same or in the same circumstances but it demonstrates that when war economies break they fail at a spectacular level that’s rapid and dangerous.

Russia cannot win. The winners will be Ukraine and China. China will have Russia or what’s left of its eastern federation as a client state. Kazakhstan has already begun making significant approaches to the EU and redirecting its trade focus away from Russia – it even signed a UK-Kazakh trade deal recently that included deals to work more closely on stopping contraband reaching Russia. When your friends start abandoning you, you must know the end is nigh. They can see it, why can’t you?

Because you don’t want to, is just going to make it harder. It’s even worse when the Americans offered you a way out and you literally bit off the hand that fed you a semi-palatable deal at worst. You deserve what’s coming Russia. Everyone knows who you are now, what you can – and cannot – do. We’re bothered about what you might do but we’re not afraid. And we can do it with Europe+ and not even bother with America. We will see Ukraine win – and you’ll be begging for Trumps deal just as it’s all too late to actually get it. I can’t wait to see how it all ends.

The Analyst

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