Why His Conflict of Attrition will Sink Russia – The Cipher Temporary
OPINION — On February 14, 2022, with Russia poised to invade Ukraine, I questioned whether or not Vladimir Putin’s reign to that time had revealed him to be a strategic grasp or a strategic failure. Almost 4 years later, the decision is much more obvious. Putin, assured in his strategic calculus that the West would supply solely token help to Ukraine, which might rapidly fold underneath the load and violence of Russian army would possibly, fatefully launched his assault days later with disastrous penalties for Russia. The nation he leads is now even poorer, extra remoted, brittle, and dependent (on China) than earlier than. Putin grossly underestimated Ukrainian will, overestimated the competence of his personal army and intelligence equipment, and misjudged Western cohesion. By the Fall of 2022, it was apparent even to Putin that his anticipated fast victory was unattainable. This was certainly a bitter capsule to swallow, however he rapidly pivoted to a “wait and win” conflict technique of grinding attrition, calculating that by means of sheer mass and perseverance–and Western impatience–time could be on his aspect. Most pundits, even these within the West, have tended to agree with him, a lot as they did in 2022 concerning the chance that Russia would rapidly roll over Ukraine. This mindset, however–that time is on Russia’s side–risks a strategic misreading no much less profound than his authentic blunder, as a result of there’s a robust argument to be made that Putin’s attrition technique is eroding key foundations of Russian energy sooner and extra deeply than it’s eroding the Ukrainian entrance traces.
Up to now Russia has managed to maintain a excessive stage of conflict spending, however there are rising indicators of pressure. Russia’s numerical troop benefit over Ukraine is maintained nearly totally by means of terribly excessive monetary incentives, however these are beginning to drop steeply as a consequence of rising price range shortfalls, notably in regional budgets on which such spending disproportionately falls. New contracts for troopers in April-June 2025 had been lower than half the extent of the identical interval in 2024, signaling a big weakening within the effectiveness of economic inducements.
And it’s not simply the cash. The demise toll for Russian troopers is accelerating. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in July of this 12 months that the variety of Russian useless for the primary half of 2025 alone exceeded 100,000. This has seemingly contributed to a pointy enhance in desertions, estimated to have doubled in 2025 with roughly 70,000 desertions, or roughly 10% of the pressure in Ukraine. Russia is more and more reliant on coerced recruits, harsh punishments for desertion, together with torture and extrajudicial executions, all indicators of a army struggling to keep up sustainable, motivated troop ranges. Whereas tactical variations have allowed Russian forces to regain some initiative on the battlefield, they relaxation on a manpower mannequin that burns by means of human capital, i.e., human beings, at a tempo no nation with Russia’s demographic profile can lengthy maintain.
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Because the conflict drags on, Russia can be turning into even extra depending on China. Submit-2022 commerce patterns present a Russia more and more locked into an uneven partnership through which Russia humiliatingly depends on China for crucial imports of know-how, whereas Beijing features leverage by means of discounted vitality purchases and management over provide chains, making Moscow more and more susceptible to Beijing’s whims over time. For a frontrunner obsessive about sovereignty, the long-term trajectory Putin has launched into incorporates a evident paradox: the longer he fights to maintain Ukraine out of the Western orbit, the extra he locks Russia right into a subordinate place in China’s. Speak about strategic irony.
These monetary strains and deepening dependence on China are compounded by the continued tightening of worldwide sanctions on the Russian vitality sector, a basic lower within the worth of oil and gasoline on which Russia is so closely dependent as the worldwide economic system cools, and the heavy depletion of Russia’s “wet day” sovereign wealth fund, which has dropped by nearly 60% and now principally consists of Chinese language Renminbi and gold, having exhausted its laborious foreign money holdings. Sustaining present protection spending will thus more and more require both increased borrowing from home banks or seen cuts in social spending and civilian tasks, additional eroding residing requirements and stoking fashionable conflict fatigue.
Putin’s war-of-choice with Ukraine has solely intensified Russia’s pre-war weaknesses. Russia’s economic system, already underperforming relative to its useful resource base and human potential, should now take care of everlasting conflict spending and sanctions-induced inefficiencies. Its demographics, already fragile, are being additional hollowed out by horrific conflict casualties and the emigration of expert employees. Russia’s civic life, already stunted, is being additional smothered by wartime repression. Lastly, Putin’s invasion not solely failed to revive a pliant Ukrainian “little brother”, it locked Russia right into a expensive wrestle towards the second largest nation in Europe, after itself, and one that’s furthermore extra anti-Russian, higher armed, and extra deeply built-in with the West than earlier than.
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And now, by slow-rolling negotiations to finish the battle, Putin misreads the trajectory of this conflict in the identical manner he misinterpret its opening act. He underestimates the cumulative impact of casualties and penalties of financial distortions and social fatigue inside Russia; he overestimates the diploma that help of the Western democracies for Ukraine will collapse underneath the load of their debates and divisions; and he additionally, once more, overestimates his capability to interrupt Ukraine by army pressure. In analyzing the arc of Putin’s rule, the conflict in Ukraine shouldn’t be an aberration from Putinism, however its logical fruits. In strategic phrases, it represents a transition from a situation of continual underperformance to one in every of lively and acute self-harm. Almost 4 years after his determination to invade Ukraine, which greater than the rest will outline his reign, Putin shouldn’t be outplaying historical past on a grand chessboard by doubling down on the conflict, he’s sacrificing Russia’s future for the sake of victories and imperial fantasies that can’t be received, a lot much less sustained. That is the definition of strategic failure.
As a self-proclaimed scholar of Russian historical past, Putin could be smart to recollect the setting of Russia’s authentic regime-toppling “shade revolution,” the February Revolution of 1917. This was the spontaneous Russian fashionable rebellion that led to the abdication of the Tsar and formation of a Provisional Authorities, not the following Bolshevik coup d’etat later that 12 months. Whereas fashionable discontent with the monarchy had lengthy been rising, it was the gathered privations of conflict that introduced occasions to a boiling level. As with that conflict, time on this one shouldn’t be on Putin’s aspect.
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