Putin is losing the weirdest war in 150 years
October 30, 2025 in Columnists, News by RBN Staff
*RBN Note: This story appears to be ‘enemy propaganda’ but is presented for informational or educational/tactical purposes.
Source: TheTelegraph.co.uk
The Ukraine conflict has descended into farce. But behind the fog, Russia’s desperate state is becoming ever clearer
Lord Palmerston is famously said to have joked of the 1864 Danish-German war that only three people ever understood the reason behind it: one who had died, one who went mad, and the third who had forgotten. If that conflict once felt like the apex of strategic absurdity, the Russia-Ukraine war has somehow raised the bar.
Consider the behaviour of the main parties.
First up is team Putin, which hoped to showcase strength and strategic mastery by seizing Ukraine. So how did that turn out? Well, the bubble of 19th century Kremlin yes-men turned out to know so little about the ways of the real world that Moscow’s sphere of influence has contracted across the Middle East, Central Asia and Europe, with Finland and Sweden joining Nato, and Russia drifting closer to becoming a de facto Chinese vassal state. Moscow has been losing its Western oil markets, while its supposedly mighty army has only managed to gain control of a fraction of Ukrainian territory. This has come at vast human and economic cost, with no persuasive case as to why the world’s largest country needed those extra square miles.
Then there is Ukraine and president Zelensky. There is, of course, nothing bizarre about Kyiv’s heroic fight to drive back the Russians. If only the same could be said about its efforts to keep America in the fight. Ukraine has tended to frame the case urgently: help now, or the consequences would be dire, including the threat of Moscow starting a world war. But today’s Russia is a dwarf next to the US in every respect besides the nuclear bombs that even Putin knows he cannot use. Exaggerating Russia’s strength has not helped Ukraine in the court of American opinion.
Next comes Europe. For years, many European countries disarmed while deepening energy dependence on one of their main adversaries, while ignoring explicit warnings from countries like Poland and Ukraine. They lectured about principles while buying Russian oil, thereby funding the very war machine they condemned. Despite the war in Europe and their own sclerotic economies, European leaders continue to moralise as if they are somehow sitting on top of the best recipe for peace and prosperity on the planet.
Finally, there’s the US and its president. Donald Trump’s opening gambit in his attempt to achieve peace in Ukraine was to push for Moscow’s desired end-state (telling Ukraine to cede stolen ground and ditch its hopes of joining Nato even before sitting down at the negotiating table). Then came the Tomahawk episode: for a few days, Trump brandished the threat of giving Ukraine these long-range missiles. Just as the threat seemed to work – when the Kremlin reached for the phone – it was oddly withdrawn. So leverage was first applied and then removed in a heartbeat.
All of this makes this conflict feel so odd that it can drive anyone who prizes logic and consistency a little mad.
Yet despite all the frustrating backsliding, the forces of reason might just be winning out. Inch by inch, Europe and the United States are, for the first time, pushing back in concert in a significant way. Europe is rearming; its energy dependence on Russia is falling; frozen Russian reserves are being explored as a way of funding for Ukraine; and recent US policy moves have tightened the oil squeeze. Chinese and Indian energy firms appear to be acting more cautiously than before while, seemingly not without reason, afraid of second tier sanctions. The West continues to supply Ukraine with crucial technological, logistical and intelligence support.
Perhaps most significantly, the myth of “Great Power” Russia may at least be about to be punctured. This myth let the Kremlin swagger, and encouraged Europe to act like cowards. It allowed appeasers and Russian apologists to demand that Ukraine “adapt to the facts” – conveniently ignoring the equally important facts about Russia. Here are a few:
Russia’s war-economy is overheating
Year-on-year inflation ran about 8pc in September (Russian source), with prices re-accelerating into the autumn. This is a classic symptom of a state-directed wartime splurge, not durable strength. The Russian central bank has set interest rates at almost 17pc – a banana-republic number.
Guns are crowding out butter
Moscow’s 2025 plan lifted defence to roughly a third of total spending and around 6pc of GDP – levels that squeeze everything else and lock in future austerity.
Moscow is bleeding manpower
Estimates vary, but some credible sources put Russian deaths at more than 200,000 (Feb 2022 – Aug 2025), while total casualties (deaths and wounded) are thought to have exceeded 1.1 million by October 2025; Nato has estimated that around 100,000 Russians have died in 2025 alone. However you slice it, losses are highly likely to be dwarfing sustainable replacement.
Economic growth is an illusion built on war outlays
Russia has been posting positive GDP figures, but these have been driven by state orders and price spikes, fuel for today’s inflation and tomorrow’s hangover. Even senior Russian bankers are now warning about the economic situation, as softer oil assumptions and Ukrainian refinery strikes erode profits from Russia’s core asset.
The labour supply is being squeezed
Unemployment sits at historic lows because workers are scarce; almost a million Russians are thought to have left after 2022, deepening shortages.
This has exacerbated the brain drain
The Russian people are among Europe’s poorest and unhealthiest (the average life span for males is around ten years lower than within EU countries). Freedom of expression? A joke that is not only a human but also an economic tragedy. Understandably many of the brightest and richest have left the country for greener pastures – taking both their brains and capital with them.
Russia’s dependence on China is deepening
Around 35-40pc of Russia’s trade now runs through China; Beijing is by far the top buyer of Russian energy, but trade growth has been hampered by Chinese payment hurdles, underscoring Moscow’s weaker hand. The fact that Russian business has no straightforward access to any competitive market economy is another hardly envious position. This is starting to hit home in all sorts of respects. For example, aviation safety has deteriorated as carriers “cannibalise” grounded planes for parts; more than half of Western-built aircraft could be parked by 2026 without spares. That is what high-tech isolation looks like.
Return fire is now hitting deep inside Russia
Even without Tomahawks, Ukraine’s deep-strike capabilities – long-range drones, Storm Shadow/SCALP, Atacms – are now regularly hitting air bases, refineries, logistics hubs and the Black Sea coastline. The Russian Black Sea Fleet has been degraded, dispersed, and pushed east; Crimea, once a sanctuary, is a firing range. The war has been brought to the Russians.
None of this argues for rewarding aggression with land – or for the idea that Russia can “comfortably fight for years”. It argues for tightening the screws that actually matter: enforcing the oil price cap and hitting shippers/insurers, choking off machine-tool and dual-use inputs, and allowing even deeper Ukrainian strikes on Russia’s logistics aorta. Thankfully, all this is finally happening.
The real danger for Ukraine is that the Russian situation is so dire that Putin might personally want to prolong the war, regardless of the cost. When focus returns to the domestic situation, the spotlight will swing to a mess of his own making: inflation, shortages, a shrinking workforce, and a kleptocracy that cannot modernise. If he keeps fighting, the bill might grow, the body count might climb and the backlash might be even greater once the guns stop firing, but he can at least postpone the problem for another day.
In short, Putin may no longer be living in reality, but in a bizarre version curated by the yes-men around him. That is why pressure must be kept up: to make the reality of his situation impossible to ignore.
Mark Brolin is a geopolitical strategist and the author of ’Healing Broken Democracies: All You Need to Know About Populism’
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