Still Think Russia is Winning? WATCH THIS Before You Speak Again

Still Think Russia is Winning? WATCH THIS Before You Speak Again

On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded 
Ukraine—confident, cocky, and certain of a three-day victory. “Kyiv will fall within 
72 hours,” they said. Russia’s military was the world’s second most powerful, or so we were told. 
The war? Just a formality. Three years later, Russia holds just 20% of Ukraine. And it’s paid 
for it with nearly one million casualties. One million dead and wounded. More than the 
U.S. suffered in two decades of the War on Terror—compressed into just three years. And 
that’s only the beginning of the disaster. Today on The Military Show, we’re dismantling the 
illusion that Russia is “winning” this war. We’ll break down the territory myths, the manpower 
crisis, the shattered economy, the propaganda, and the growing whispers that the Russian Federation 
itself may not survive the consequences of Putin’s blunder. So if you still believe the narrative 
that Russia’s got the upper hand—you’ll want to watch this to the end. Let’s start with the cold, 
brutal numbers… The Institute for the Study of War’s assessment from February 2022 states that 
“Russia captured approximately 4,200 sq km of Ukrainian territory last year, most of which was 
in the Donetsk area.” This area is only slightly larger than Rhode Island, the smallest U.S. state 
by area. Comparatively, 4,200 square kilometers is around 0.6% of Ukraine’s total territory size. 
And that’s where it gets truly mind-boggling. Forbes did some independent number crunching 
using statistics from April 2025, where Russia only took around 68 square miles of territory. 
If Ukraine maintains that level of defenses and Russia doesn’t step up on the offensive, the War 
in Ukraine would take another 230 years. That’s how long Russia would need to occupy the entire 
country, one of the surefire ways to win. The same analysis suggested that Russia would need around 
100 million casualties to achieve this, against its total 2025 population of around 144 million. 
This is far from a strategy. It’s a complete absence of one, requiring a multi-generational 
investment in war, which brings about other severe issues. But territory only tells part 
of the story. Let’s talk about the human cost of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s imperial 
delusions. According to the latest data from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, Russian forces 
have suffered approximately 975,000 casualties since February 2022. While we should approach 
any wartime statistics from Ukraine with caution, even conservative Western estimates from the U.K. 
Ministry of Defense put Russian casualties well above 750,000 at the end of last year. To put 
this in perspective, Russia lost approximately 15,000 soldiers during its 10-year war in 
Afghanistan. In just three years in Ukraine, they’ve suffered casualties over 60 times higher. 
To put it bluntly, this is not a sustainable war effort. Russia’s demographic crisis was already 
severe before the war, with a declining and aging population. The country’s fertility rate was 
crippled by the economic crisis at the fall of the Soviet Union, reaching as low as 1.2 births 
per woman by the turn of the century. While the situation got slightly better, the country is 
still far below the replacement rate. As a result, there’s a significant lack of working-age males 
younger than 30 simply because they were never born in the first place, and Russia is also 
conscripting from that same lacking demographic. Now, factor in not just the direct military losses 
but also the estimated 920,000 Russians who have fled the country to avoid conscription. That’s 
nearly 2 million working-age men removed from Russia’s economy and society in just three years 
beyond demographic shortages. In short, Russia is literally running out of people to throw into this 
meat grinder. But to understand the extent of the tragedy that is likely going to befall Russia, 
let’s roll back to the start of the invasion. Russian military planners were so confident 
they’d be celebrating in Kyiv within days that they packed parade uniforms. Combat plans shared 
with troops indicated they should prepare for light resistance followed by occupation duties. In 
fact, Russia’s military logistics were structured around the assumption that Ukraine would 
collapse almost immediately. Three years later, those assumptions look not just wrong but 
delusional. Instead of a swift victory parade, Russia got bogged down in the longest conventional 
war in Europe since World War II. Their vaunted air force failed to establish air superiority. 
Their tank forces were decimated by portable anti-tank weapons and drones. Their elite units 
suffered catastrophic losses in the early phases, forcing Russia to resort to poorly trained 
conscripts, convicts, and foreign mercenaries. The Center for Strategic and International Studies 
(CSIS) published a damning report in September 2024 titled “The Russia-Ukraine War: A Study 
in Analytic Failure.” The conclusion was that Russia’s military planning represented perhaps the 
most significant intelligence failure of the 21st century. This sentiment was shared by the French 
Institute of International Relations (IFRI), which posited that Russia forewent its traditional 
logistical channels due to the erroneous belief that the war wouldn’t last more than a few 
weeks. In short, Putin maintained the illusion that Russia was a great military force, but the 
military didn’t have the planning or logistics to back that illusion up. Due to the secrecy behind 
the plans involved in the invasion, many higher officers were caught unaware of the true extent 
of the invasion and failed to properly stock up on supplies before the war began in earnest. This 
led to severe supply shortages in the crucial first few months of the war when Russia maintained 
the initiative. After the initial rebuttal at the Hostomel Airport, which was essentially Russia’s 
Hail Mary to conquer Ukraine with minimal losses, Russia failed to properly follow up, with 
a significant lack of adaptability that has become a necessity in modern warfare. Soon enough, 
Ukraine took back most of the territory it lost to the initial invasion, and the conflict devolved 
into one of attrition. Russian propaganda channels still peddled the idea that the war is a foregone 
conclusion, celebrating minor tactical gains of a few square miles. But in truth, Russia is losing 
a war to itself by running out of money to fund the war effort. On paper, Russia retains the 11th 
spot on the list of the world’s largest economies. But strip back the veneer, and the situation 
is problematic at best. Western sanctions have decimated Russia’s high-tech sectors, crippled 
its banking system, and isolated it from global markets. By the end of 2024, the ruble had lost 
23 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar, with the exchange rate between the two currencies 
fluctuating daily to create incomprehensible uncertainty of the country’s real economic status. 
But the most devastating economic impact comes from Russia’s pivot to a war economy. According 
to an analysis by Meduza, Russia now spends an estimated 40 percent of its governmental 
budget on defense—a level unsustainable for any modern economy. Worse yet, a third of it 
is hidden under “secret projects” related to the military-industrial complex, indicating an 
unprecedented level of propaganda and paranoia surrounding the Kremlin. What makes this situation 
even more dire is that Russia’s primary source of income—energy exports—faces long-term decline. 
The European Union has reduced its dependence on Russian gas by over 30% since 2022, and oil sales 
to China and India are being negotiated at steep discounts. The dependence on oil and gas, which 
constitutes between 30 and 50% of the government’s revenue, means that the country’s already-lacking 
workforce is increasingly turning to the one single profitable industry (the energy sector). 
This makes Russian manufacturing increasingly rely on imports, especially from China, as well 
as the entire country needing to import the workforce to meet its increasing demands. With 
Russia losing both militarily and economically, it has a few options beyond simply continuing 
as-is and accepting that war is the new status quo. None of them is good. Option one (but not 
likely to happen) is a massive escalation. Some hardliners in the Kremlin have pushed for using 
pretty much everything Russia has to win the war, going so far as to propose the use of tactical 
nuclear weapons. This wouldn’t be the first mention of nuclear warfare, as Putin himself 
has saber-rattled on the topic more than two dozen times. But this scenario would ultimately 
backfire. While a limited nuclear deployment (such as destroying Kyiv or vital military sites) 
might create short-term tactical advantages, NATO would be basically hard-pressed to answer 
with nuclear weapons of their own. In response, Russia would need to use its supplies of weapons 
on NATO countries, plunging most of the world into a nuclear winter. And even that escalation 
wouldn’t solve Russia’s core problems. Russia desperately needs both the land and the people 
in Ukraine. Bombing them to oblivion makes the region uninhabitable, and the country would lose 
the potential 40 million citizens, which would be used to prop up the failing demographics and 
workforce instead of resorting to immigration. The second option is withdrawing from Ukraine. Russia 
would likely only use this as a last resort, as it represents a devastating political defeat for 
Putin’s regime, which has staked its legitimacy on this war. A withdrawal from Ukraine without 
achieving core war aims would likely trigger elite fragmentation within Russia and potentially 
regime collapse. Putin’s government is a carefully built house of cards, hinging on the fact that 
Putin has been able to get what he wants for the past two decades. Annexing Crimea and fueling 
discourse within NATO have been key geopolitical wins for the Russian president. If the situation 
turns around, it will send a clear signal that the country’s top echelon of government is 
actually not nearly as powerful as it seems. This explains why, despite catastrophic losses, Russia 
continues to pour resources into this conflict. The alternative—admitting defeat—is viewed as an 
existential threat to the current power structure. The third option is a peace deal, even in a 
limited form. While this might seem most rational after three years of basically trench warfare 
with drones, no side can reach an agreement on it. First, Ukraine has little incentive to negotiate 
away territory after successfully defending its sovereignty for three years. President 
Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s peace proposal demands full territorial restoration, possibly including 
Crimea, as well as security guarantees from NATO. Even if Ukraine cedes territory, Zelenskyy has 
put NATO reassurance as one of his top priorities, even if he needs to step down as president in 
the process. Russia, meanwhile, cannot accept any agreement that doesn’t legitimize its territorial 
conquests. And international geopolitics and relations are further complicating the matters. 
President Donald Trump’s administration’s erratic approach to Ukraine has undermined consistent 
diplomacy. In February 2025, Trump met with Zelenskyy directly to propose a peace plan 
that would have ceded significant Ukrainian territory to Russia, contradicting the stated 
position of his own State Department. It caused a near complete breakdown in relations between 
the two countries, ultimately resulting in Ukraine requesting revisions of mineral deals 
and the U.S. backing out of peace discussions between the warring parties. Even worse, Russia 
has publicly stated, multiple times at that, that it wants to find a peaceful solution, going 
so far as to accept probationary ceasefires. None of them worked, with the 30-hour Easter 
ceasefire resulting in Ukraine claiming Russia broke it nearly 3,000 times. So Russia is caught 
in a strategic trap of its own making—unable to win militarily, unwilling to accept defeat, and 
incapable of pursuing a diplomatic solution. Let’s zoom out and look at the bigger picture. What has 
Russia actually achieved through this catastrophic military adventure? Before the invasion, NATO 
was an alliance searching for purpose, with many questioning its relevance in the post-Cold 
War world. Trump himself criticized the alliance, as most members failed to meet the basic 
requirement of using 2% of their GDP on military. Today, it’s revitalized and expanded, 
with Finland and Sweden as new members. The 800-mile border between Finland and Russia 
practically doubled the NATO-Russia border, significantly curbing Russia’s ability to actually 
defend itself in a theoretical conflict against the economically larger, demographically stronger, 
and militarily more modern alliance. Specifically, the biggest changes came to countries that can 
hold large sway in the alliance. Germany, one of the world’s largest economies, instituted new 
funding incentives for national defense. Poland, which was once a member of the Warsaw Pact, 
plans to create the largest standing army in Europe. Sweden and Finland have pushed their 
military industrial complexes to the limit, sending prototypes of vital equipment to Ukraine 
and partnering with the U.S. and U.K. contractors to deliver deadlier weapons. Diplomatically, 
Russia has transformed from a respected if difficult global power into a pariah state with 
limited international options. Russia’s largest trading partner switched from the EU to China, a 
country that is even more dependent on resources and can significantly undermine Russian policies 
to get access to them. All of these issues came from a single problem that Russia failed to 
account for: the glaring gap between its projected military power and actual combat performance. 
Before February 2022, Russia’s military was widely considered the world’s second most formidable 
fighting force. Military analysts routinely cited its 1,320,000 active-duty personnel, 
2 million reservists, 6,000 tanks, and 4,000 aircraft as evidence of overwhelming strength. 
Annual military parades showcased supposedly cutting-edge equipment like the T-14 Armata tank, 
Su-57 stealth fighter, and hypersonic missiles. The Global Firepower Index consistently ranked 
Russia second, only to the United States. Western military planners built entire defense strategies 
around countering this perceived threat. And when the second-largest military invaded a smaller 
neighbor, it turned out none of the statistics really mattered. Instead of the feared Russian 
colossus, we saw: Elite paratroopers dropped into Hostomel Airport without proper support, resulting 
in a complete failure to establish the air tunnel necessary to win the invasion 40-mile-long armored 
columns running out of fuel just miles from their own borders Tanks deployed without infantry 
support, making them easy prey for Ukrainian anti-tank teams Russia resorting to sending 
human wave attacks, a tactic considered fit for World War I Logistics trucks with commercial 
tires that failed in off-road conditions Aircraft unable to effectively suppress Ukrainian 
air defenses Museum pieces like the T-62, T-55, and possibly even the T-34 (from all the way 
back DURING World War 2), making their way to the frontline Perhaps most damning was the so-called 
modern equipment itself. Those supposedly advanced T-90M tanks? Many were found with what should’ve 
been “reactive armor blocks” filled with sand and cement instead of explosives. The feared 
attack helicopters and fighter jets? Plagued by navigation systems so unreliable that pilots 
taped commercial GPS units to their dashboards. And what about those next-generation weapons that 
caused so much concern in Western defense circles? The T-14 Armata tanks made a brief appearance in 
2023 before being withdrawn. They either failed miserably or were too expensive to get blown up 
by cheap drones. The Su-57 stealth fighters have conducted only limited strike missions from safe 
distances within Russian airspace, lobbing glide bombs (the one saving grace of Russian military 
tactics, which also harken back to its Cold War weapon stores). But how could Russia’s military 
leadership so catastrophically misjudge both their own capabilities and Ukrainian resistance? 
The answer reveals something fundamental about Putin’s Russia. Russian intelligence services 
believed that Ukrainian forces would immediately collapse and that most Ukrainians would welcome 
Russian troops as liberators. This wasn’t just a military miscalculation—it was a fundamental 
failure to understand reality, driven by the very propaganda machine Putin had created to maintain 
his grip on power. One of the fatal flaws of the authoritarian regime that Putin created in Russia 
is that it completely depends on Putin’s image as a leader. Brookings maintained that this is only 
tenable so long as the autocrat stays in power, which can severely damage the longevity of the 
country as a whole. Former Kremlin advisor Gleb Pavlovsky, now in exile, explained it more bluntly 
in his April 2022 interview: “This is all Putin’s own personal decision… Nobody, including myself, 
realized just how maniacally obsessed he must have been with Ukraine. We underestimated the extent 
of decay of the Russian government.” Remember, this interview was only a month and a half into 
the invasion, and the same sentiment rings true three years later. The Russian military itself 
became a victim of this distorted reality. Corruption was endemic but hidden from official 
reports. Training exercises were choreographed performances rather than realistic preparations. 
Equipment maintenance existed on paper while actual hardware deteriorated in storage. This is 
underscored by a closer examination of Russia’s military doctrine. As a holdover from Soviet 
times, Russia’s perceived biggest risk was a NATO invasion. To that end, Russia created operations 
and strategies to defend the motherland rather than invade. Its concentrated command structure 
would help it shore up weaknesses in defenses, but it also opened itself up to rampant corruption 
and power reshuffling once Putin came into power. With Russia losing momentum, there’s a possibility 
that Putin himself could be “ousted” from the Russian throne. After all, he would be quickly 
found solely responsible for the disaster, and power-hungry politicians in the Kremlin 
would need to save face by removing him. However, Brookings succinctly analyzed that Russia’s 
current political structure doesn’t really have a viable candidate to succeed him, and that 
the entire regime might not survive a leadership change. This opens up a chance that Russia itself 
could collapse. This would happen in a few stages, but they would progress rather quickly 
or even coincide with one another. First, there’s the economic breakdown. Russia’s war 
economy is already showing severe strain, with defense spending crowding out essential 
services. As casualties mount and sanctions bite deeper, this becomes unsustainable. 
Critical infrastructure—already suffering from underinvestment—begins to fail more frequently. 
Second, political fragmentation. Regional governors, especially in resource-rich areas like 
the Far East, begin asserting greater autonomy from Moscow. Initially presented as an economic 
necessity, these moves gradually acquire political dimensions. Third, military disintegration. As 
the professional army is ground down in Ukraine, Russia increasingly relies on poorly trained 
conscripts and ethnic minorities from peripheral regions. Unit cohesion breaks down. Desertion 
rates skyrocket. Military equipment fails without replacement parts. Finally, the central 
authority collapses. Whether through palace coup, popular uprising, or simply the inability 
to project power to Russia’s vast regions, the Moscow government loses effective control over 
significant portions of Russian territory. The consequences would be catastrophic, and not just 
for Russia but for global security. The Federation would likely collapse into a series of states, 
resembling the breakup of Yugoslavia or the fall of the Soviet Union itself in the 1990s. The core 
of the country, Moscow and Saint Petersburg, would likely attempt to relocate Russia’s nuclear weapon 
reserves and proclaim itself the successor state, saber-rattling with the arsenal much like Putin 
did during the war. Scores of immigrants would try to enter the EU again, going after the successes 
seen by former Warsaw Pact members like Romania and Poland. China might swoop in and occupy swaths 
of resource-rich territory in Siberia for itself to fuel its bottomless industry. So the next time 
someone confidently tells you that “Russia is winning in Ukraine,” you just need to go back 
to the beginning: After three years of what was supposed to be a war that lasted a few days, 
Russia controls just 20% of Ukraine, has suffered casualties approaching one million, has devastated 
its economy, destroyed its international standing, reinvigorated its adversaries, and has no viable 
path to actual victory. The truth is that Russia isn’t winning—it’s trapped in a strategic disaster 
entirely of its own making, with no good options and no clear exit. The longer this war continues, 
the more catastrophic the consequences will be for Russia itself. But what do you think? Thanks 
for watching, and leave your comments below.

Russia thought Ukraine would fall in 72 hours. Three years later, it’s lost nearly a million troops, crippled its economy, and still holds just 20% of Ukraine.

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