Russia Has Lost The Ukraine War. There Will Be Consequences
Ukraine can't win, but Russia has already lost. It failed to take Ukraine. It also showed its military to be a Potemkin village, irreparably harming its status. Putin will soon face the music at home.
NOTE: Americans tend to think in terms of absolute victory and unconditional surrender. That rarely happens in the real world, even in American history, and it won’t happen in Ukraine, where Russia will surely hold onto some territory it did not before 2014. But its war aims have been completely defeated.
Russia wanted to conquer Ukraine whole (and within a week!). Three years later, that will clearly never happen. It also sought to prove it was still a great power, but its performance has proved the exact opposite: without nuclear weapons, no one would now take its military seriously at all.
All of this will have stark post-war consequences inside Russia. George Friedman explains. — RDM
by George Friedman
March 4, 2025
I have come under criticism lately from those who challenge my view that Russia is in decline and is not a threat for the foreseeable future. It can certainly revive, but that was unlikely even before the war, and revival after a war does not happen quickly.
At the heart of the criticism is my claim that Russia has lost the war in Ukraine and the associated belief that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s control is in peril.
The first and most important question is whether Russia has lost the war. Wars are fought with an intent formed by an imperative. A prudent leader has to take steps to avoid the worst possible outcome, and Putin, as a prudent leader, prepared for the possibility that NATO would choose to attack Russia. He expressed this fear publicly so the only question was how to block an attack if it occurred. He needed a buffer zone to significantly impede a possible assault.
That buffer was Ukraine, and he on several occasions expressed regret that Ukraine had separated from Russia. The distance from the Ukraine border to Moscow, on highway M3, is only about 300 miles (480 kilometers). Russia’s nightmare was that Germany could surge its way to Moscow. Three hundred miles by a massive force staging a surprise attack is not a huge distance. He rationally needed Ukraine to widen the gap.
I predicted years before the war that Russia would invade Ukraine to regain its buffers. That Russia wanted to take the whole of Ukraine is confirmed in its first forays into the country. The initial assault was a four-pronged attack, one thrust from the east, two from the north and one from the south via Crimea. The two northern prongs were directed at the center of Ukraine and its capital, Kyiv.
Had Russia wanted only eastern Ukraine, it would have simply deployed its forces there. Russian forces concentrated in the east could easily have taken the small area now claimed as Moscow’s only goal. But that is not what Moscow did. It split its total force into four simultaneous thrusts.
The attack was clearly an attempt to take Ukraine as a whole and, failing that, to create a new Ukrainian boundary, west of Kyiv. The military operations the Russians carried out falsify the claim that Russia sought only a small piece of Ukraine in the east.
The thrust toward Kyiv failed because of logistics. Recall the pictures shortly after the war began of a long line of Russian tanks standing still for days while descending a hill. These tanks, in no position to defend themselves, were easy prey for Ukrainian artillery. The problem was that they had mechanical problems and had run out of fuel, so the army was unable to maintain the column. With Russia obviously unable to take the capital, Ukraine held.
The other southward thrust, while modestly more successful, was nonetheless a failure too. Its fundamental problem was that it consisted of infantry supported by artillery. Urban warfare is the bloodiest warfare imaginable. Taking a city that has a defending force multiplies the power of defenders, who are familiar with the city and can ambush an enemy accordingly. Urban warfare cost the Russians many lives and much materiel.
At several points on this front, the army ran out of artillery. At this point, the Wagner Group, a mercenary outfit run by a close friend of Putin, publicly and viciously attacked the Russian high command for withholding munitions from this central force. Elements of this group, led by its leader, mounted an insurrection against the Kremlin. But Putin retained control, and a plane carrying Wagner leaders crashed a while later.
On the eastern front, the resistance blocked the Russian advance, and though the results have been more mixed than on the other fronts, it succeeded in preventing Russian troops from breaking out into the rest of the country.
This four-pronged strategy shows that Russia sought more than the eastern portions of the country. It was a classic strategy whereby four forces break resistance in their respective areas of responsibility. Once that happens, the eastern force moves westward while the central one holds its ground. The remaining forces are, in theory, crushed by the pincers. But instead, the central and western thrusts failed, and the eastern gained only 20 percent of the country’s territory after three years of fighting.
The map above shows the areas under attack and occupied by Russian forces by March 2022, just a few weeks into the invasion. They were engaged and occupying Ukraine in many areas around the perimeter in the north and the south. Again, this does not support Putin’s current claim that Russia was interested in only the eastern part of Ukraine.
It is clear that the Russians intended to take all of Ukraine. They made minor gains in the east, but their northern penetration failed, as did any attempts to turn westward. It is true that they have gained territory in Ukraine, but it is far from what their initial war plan was designed for. Now their argument is that they never wanted more territory in other parts of the country.
To call this a Russian success is false, and to call a failed war plan a defeat is reasonable. The war was meant to gain a buffer against NATO, and in that, Moscow failed. But it was also intended to be a demonstration that Russia was still a great power. After three years, a major commitment and, by most reports, close to a million dead Russian soldiers, Russia has little more than 20 percent of Ukraine. It also failed to demonstrate the power of the Russian army. Therefore, except for its nuclear capabilities, it is not a military threat or a great power.
The issue now is whether Russia, assuming it agrees to some kind of negotiated settlement, can launch another war. Here it’s important to note that while Putin is powerful, he is not an absolute ruler. He cannot govern Russia the way, say, Stalin did. Under Stalin, Moscow ruled Russia down to the smallest homes in the smallest villages. He ruled not only through military and law enforcement but also through the rank-and-file members of the Communist Party who drew benefits from their membership in return for vigilance. They reported misdeeds, real and imagined, to the internal police, which was controlled by the party, which was controlled by the Politburo, which was controlled by Stalin. Later iterations would be slightly less deadly, but the instruments of oppression were always there.
The collapse of the Soviet Union meant the collapse of the Communist Party. The structure of terror no longer functioned.
Putin’s goal was to resurrect Russia. But with the Communist Party gone, the state structure was also gone. Putin had to find a new base. He had only one source of power: the oligarchs. Between Mikhail Gorbachev and Putin, the party’s assets were sold off to private citizens on the basis of their relationship with the government. The agreement was simple: Putin and his subordinates distributed vast industries and other things of value to the new oligarchs, who pledged to support the regime with money and deference, as well as a network of political and economic relationships that gave them significant influence.
Putin handled the politics — and apparently was well paid. The oligarchs became fabulously wealthy, and for most Russians life improved, as the new arrangement ended the terror and created employment. Disagreement was no longer a capital offense, and the media was comparatively independent and reliable. It was not long before the new private enterprises started entering the global market.
Putin was in charge at first, but in short order power was transferred to the oligarchs who underwrote the regime. They depended on access to European markets for their revenue, and many lived outside of Russia and expected Putin to facilitate trade. But when Putin’s initial invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 failed, many of the most lucrative markets closed their doors to the oligarchs and Western investment cratered. Putin ordered the oligarchs to return to Russia, which many did. However, some of the oligarchs were not happy with their former patron and left Russia permanently, or until the political and economic environment would shift. That this has gone on for three years has created serious problems for them. They wanted the war over and a settlement reached long ago.
This raises several questions: Is Putin in control? Are the oligarchs of one mind? And what happens when the war ends? The oligarchs don’t want the regime to fall. But whether they want Putin at the top is another matter.
Putin cannot turn against the oligarchs without accepting a massive economic downturn. The companies they control are indispensable to the country. If Putin nationalizes their firms, it will disrupt production. If he throws the oligarchs in jail, the already weak financial system will collapse. The oligarchs like Western banks, and Russia’s liquid wealth is not all in Russia. Could Putin survive a failed war and a depression? Or could a new president reopen the trade routes for the oligarchs? That is more likely.
Putin is a creature of the oligarchs as much as the reverse is true. But their patron has failed them, and he can please them only by ending the war and reopening trade and investment. If he does not, business failures will surge, and the oligarchs will go to the countries where they stashed the money they didn’t need for investments in Russia.
Further, the Russian public is much more volatile than under the Communists. Patriotism has held Russian society together during the war, as it would in any country. But a new generation has been born since the last regime fell, one that hasn’t lived under the communists. They are not intimidated. The internet is alive and well, if as irrational as anywhere.
Putin must end the war and hope for the best. The best way to end a failed war is to declare victory and go home. Putin is declaring victory by saying he got all he wanted. But only Americans believe that. The Russians know they lost. The question is not how Putin will suppress dissent. It is how he will deal with the devils he created, and how the country responds if he doesn’t. A reign of terror might help, but there is no mechanism to carry it out now, and later is too late.
U.S. President Donald Trump knows the game that is playing out. The one who blinks loses. It won’t be Trump. He will take every bit of power and every cent he can from Putin’s weakness. Like a good hedge fund manager, one moment he says he is Putin’s friend, the next moment he will walk away from the deal. Then, after the borrower really starts sweating, he will come back. Trump holds the cards in this business. And he wants some of Putin’s economic and geopolitical power.
The latest act was a preposterous yelling match with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy staged in front of the media. Putin hates Zelenskyy, and now it seems so does Trump. Right now Putin is trying to save himself by cutting a new deal with the oligarchs. Trump wants to be under attack domestically as well. The weaker Trump looks, the faster Putin will want to make a deal. Trump is in no rush, hoping that Putin’s domestic issues mature and weaken his position.
The conventional view is that Putin’s only concerns are Ukraine and the West. I think he has another dimension on his mind: his domestic situation. That will certainly shape his negotiating position and the U.S. negotiating strategy.
— This essay originally appeared at Geopolitical Futures.
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You’re deluded
Well, George, Russia has the most nuclear weapons in the world, United States is second. It’s in the best interest of the world for the two nations which have 90% of the nuclear arsenal to have a good relationship, not a bad one. So to those warmongers who want to continue to fund an unwinnable war, that’s a deluded and irrational position, which only pushes Russia closer to China increasing the likelihood for World War III. The best chance for peace, prosperity, and liberty in the world is for the United States and Russia to normalize relations.