When the Trump administration disengaged from the war in Ukraine, there was a sense that Russia’s victory was slow but inevitable. If the US walked away from supporting Ukraine, they would be force to make a deal quickly to avoid the inevitable conclusions where Russian tanks were rolling into Kiev.
But according to two experts who study Russia’s battlefield progress for AEI and the Institute for the Study of War, that doesn’t actually seem likely to happen at this point. If anything, Russia’s progress seems a bit over-hyped.
The Kremlin’s claims that Russian forces are about to break through and overrun the fortified cities in Donetsk oblast — or any other region of Ukraine for that matter — are bluster. Data we track at the Institute for the Study of War bear this out. And military leaders we spoke to during a recent trip to Ukraine were increasingly confident they can continue to keep the Russians at bay as long as Western aid continues to flow.
Currently, Russian forces occupy 19.4 percent of Ukrainian territory. They had taken about 7 percent of Ukraine during the first phase of the war in 2014, and came to occupy a total of 26.8 percent shortly after the full-scale invasion began in 2022. Subsequent Ukrainian counteroffensives left the Russians holding only about 17.9 percent of Ukraine in November that year. Since then, Russia has seized only 1.5 percent more Ukrainian land while suffering over 1 million casualties in total. Let that sink in: Russia has needed three and a half years to seize 9,318 square kilometers, an area smaller than Lebanon or Los Angeles County. President Vladimir Putin’s supposedly inexorable march to victory has been proceeding, as others have noted, more slowly than at a snail’s pace.
And the cost of this progress? Not just the 1 million casualties but several million men fleeing the country to avoid conscription and a struggling economy. The most recent battlefield results are even worse for Russia.
Russian weekly gains this year are below their highs from last year. Indeed, Ukraine liberated more land than Russian forces seized the last two weeks of February.
Part of this recent shift, as I described here, probably comes down to a single decision by a single person. In response to a request from Ukraine’s defense minister, Elon Musk shut down Russia’s access to Starlink terminals. Russia had been illegally importing and using the terminals for their own battlefield efforts but Musk shut down all the terminals and then only turned back on the ones put on a whitelist maintained by Ukraine’s military. The result was a sudden and dramatic decline in Russian attacks on Ukrainian positions. The Russian frontlines lost communications and couldn’t remote pilot drones with precision any longer, but the Ukrainians still could. If progressives still cared about this issue they’d own Musk a big apology, but of course this is like 3 or 4 central concerns ago now. They have all moved on to Gaza and from Gaza to ICE and from ICE to Iran now. Anyway, the man progressives hate the most (after President Trump) is single-handedly helping Ukraine keep Russia at bay.
The Russian claim that victory is inevitable is a negotiating tactic.
The Russian negotiating position is based on a bluff and a lie. The bluff is that the Russians will overwhelm Ukraine and take what they want anyway. The lie is that they will be satisfied with less than what they continually demand: complete political control over Ukraine, the withdrawal of NATO forces from all states admitted after 1997, restrictions on U.S. weapons and exercises in Europe, and an end to NATO’s open-door policy.
Beyond the battlefield, it’s not clear how much longer Russia can keep this up. There were signs last month that Russia’s economy, after four years of war, was finally starting to struggle. This week there are more signs that’s the case.
In Russia, where the lion’s share of all industrial goods is transported by rail, freight volumes have long served as a key gauge of economic health.
Russian Railways said on Monday that cargo shipments fell 3.2% in February to 84.2 million metric tons.
Aside from a brief stabilisation in October last year, cargo volumes have been falling year on year since October 2023. The broader backdrop is a cooling economy: the Russian economy grew just 1% in 2025 and growth is expected to continue to slow.
Germany’s intelligence service has accused Russia of fudging the numbers for the true cost of the war.
Germany’s intelligence service on Wednesday accused Moscow of hiding the true cost of the war in Ukraine, saying Russia’s budget deficit in 2025 was more than 2.36 trillion roubles ($30.45 billion) higher than officially stated…
The BND put Russia’s federal budget deficit at 8.01 trillion roubles compared to the official figure of 5.65 trillion that equates to 2.6% of GDP. It did not divulge detailed calculations on how it arrived at the precise figure, and did not immediately reply to a request for further comment.
Several indicators not point to a long recession in Russia’s immediate future:
The composite leading indicator signaling the economy’s entry into recession has exceeded 0.44 since November 2025, well above the critical threshold of 0.12. At the same time, the symmetric indicator signaling exit from recession fell to 0.05 in November 2025, down from 0.10 in October and far below the critical level of 0.35. Analysts say this indicates not only a high probability of recession but also extremely low chances of a rapid recovery, warning of a potential downturn lasting more than a year.
The industrial sector continues to deteriorate. The S&P Global manufacturing PMI for January 2026 remained below 50 points, in contraction territory. Profitability in industry has fallen from 20% in September 2024 to 12% and continues to decline.
Consumer sentiment is also collapsing. According to the Levada Center, the population’s economic expectations index fell to 113 points in January 2026 from 140 in 2024. The consumer sentiment index has returned to levels last seen in late 2022 — 98 points — reflecting prevailing pessimism among Russians.
Attacks on Russia’s shadow fleet of oil tankers are also raising costs for them. Can Russia survive another year of this? They are bankrupting the nation for very marginal gains on the battlefield. That can’t continue indefinitely.
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