Crystal Spitball #1 Russia will lose its war against Ukraine

September, 1916. The Imperial Russian Army concludes a massive offensive on the Eastern front. The result is a stunning victory, one of the most successful feats of arms of the whole war. It seems that one more such offensive will ensure the final Russian victory. All bodes well for the coming year.

March, 1917. Tsar Nicholas II. has just abdicated the throne, which the Romanov dynasty held for three centuries. In six months the empire itself will disappear into history books, replaced by a republic, which is in turn undone by a Bolshevik coup. In less than a year the country goes from the brink of victory to a catastrophic defeat.

In this inaugural edition of the Crystal Spitall, I will look at the reasons why the Russian federation under Putin seems today to be standing on the edge of an abyss that's reminiscent of the one it plunged into a hunderd years ago under the Tsar.

Definition: What would defeat look like for Russia?

Russia's war goals are, naturally, quite different from those of Ukraine. Whereas Russia seeks to abolish Ukrainian statehood, the Ukrainians want to preserve it. By the same token, if at the war's end a viable Ukrainian state still exists, Russia will have lost.

Due to its sheer size and perceived superpower status, some people might question the very idea of Russia losing. After all, neither Napoleon nor Hitler could force Russia to capitulate despite invading deep inside its territory.

Even so, Russia isn't invincible. As we mentioned earlier, Russia did lose WW1. It was also defeated by the much smaller Japanese empire in 1905, and more recently by the Mujahideens in Afghanistan and later by the infinitely weaker Chechen separatists in 1996.

Powerful nations often lose wars against much weaker opponents. United States, for example, have lost many wars which were fought exclusively on the territory of its enemy. In the same way, Ukraine doesn't need to defeat Russia by beating their armies in the field and pushing them out of Ukraine.

Another objections to the idea that Russia might lose is to point out the power of the Putin propaganda machine. After all, it regularly whitewashes the president's failures and therefore any outcome of the war can be easily repainted with a nice fresh coat of victorious red, white, and blue. Right?

Wrong. Whilst Putin can relax and depend on his propaganda apparatus to cover up most of his screw-ups, he knows that not even the world's premier disinformation machine could ever again turn him into the alpha male he's always depicted as, if the war ends with his nemesis Zelensky standing on a podium in Kyiv in front of the Ukrainian troops parading down the Khreshchatyk.

If that happens, the Russian TV will soon be interrupting its regular broadcast with an unplanned performance of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake , specially dedicated to Vladimir Vladimirovich by his erstwhile subjects.

After four years of talking about the monstrous Nazis in Ukraine, and playing up the imagined parallels with the Great Patriotic War, Putin would look a total fool if he not only failed to destroy the Nazis, but actually allowed them to keep their independence, their political system, and worst of all, their army. Putin's been trying to convince the Russians that he's the modern Stalin and only by turning the Ukrainian nation into ashes can he avoid becoming a laughing stock instead.

The situation looks bleak enough for him as it is. While the Red Army went from the gates of Moscow to Berlin in little under four years, Putin has only taken about 7% of Ukraine in the same time frame. His troops still haven't even reached Kharkiv, a short 30km ride from the Russian border. This comparison is visible to anyone with eyes and it will be increasingly hard to paper over even for the Russian propagandists.

So, in order to keep away the putrid scent of defeat, Putin will continue to artfully dodge any ceasefire proposals that aren't based on his maximalist terms (essentially, a full Ukrainian surrender). That's the only way he can preserve the image of a supreme warlord who's about to triumph. At least for now.

Ironically, this isn't understood by the many members of the western commentariat, once so touchingly concerned with helping Vladimir Putin save face. Though they were not entirely wrong when they insisted that what was needed for the war to stop was an off-ramp for the Russian president.

What they failed to realize was Putin's price, which was never going to be acceptable to Ukrainians, as long as they believed they had a chance to win. And if there ever was a moment when Putin could have gotten away with letting Ukraine survive, by now he has gotten himself too deep. He cannot preserve his repution by anything smaller than a complete destruction of the Ukrainian state.

It's exactly this fragility in the Russian political system, built on the legitimacy of one man and one man only, that is the Achilles' heel of the Russian war effort. If that one man begins to be seen as too weak to enforce his will, the military effort will at some point begin to crumble from the inside. Just like in 1916, the eventual Russian defeat will proceed from an erosion of the regime's power. Like the proverbial fish, the rot will spread from the head down.

Russia isn't going to lose this war because its army is beaten on the field of battle. It will begin lose the war once Ukraine's continued resistance and Russia's growing internal problems manage to expose Putin's regime as ultimately incapable of achieving victory. That's when the regime's hitherto loyal henchmen and supporters will start to look for a way out.

Assumption 1: Russian economy will stall in 2026.

New sanctions and falling oil prices have badly hit the oil and gas revenues , which represent a third of Russia's federal spending.

These revenues are likely to fall further as Ukraine expands its attacks against the Russian shadow fleet of oil tankers to international waters.

Strategic industries are already short on workforce, whilst the workers they do have are often not getting paid .

Inflation remains uncomfortably high and is in fact expected to grow.

State borrowing is getting increasingly costly as the bond yields keep growing .

Russian National Wealth fund is nearly depleted . The savings that allowed Russian war economy to survive and even thrive despite sanctions could run out as early as four months from now.

None of this is to say that worsening living conditions will make the ordinary Russian people force Putin to give up the war. Russian people's threshold of economic discomfort and, indeed, physical pain, has always been higher than that of most other nations.

Things would probably have to get as bad as they were in the late 80s, just before the fall of the Soviet Union, before the ordinary Russians start demanding the war to be stopped. Given the steady support from China, India and North Korea, and the lack of sufficient pressure applied from the US, this isn't likely to happen in the foreseeable future.

But it doesn't have to. The economic situation only needs to keep worsening steadily, because the economic doldrums undermine Russia's war effort in other, more direct ways.

First of all, and most importantly, the size of the Russian army seems to have reached its limit (more on this below). Given that military spending in 2025 accounted for a full third of the federal budget , the Russian invasion force isn't likely to grow any further with Russian economy in difficulties.

The proportion of mililtary spending to other items in the federal budget is already higher than what it was during the Soviet days at the end of the Cold war. It seems very likey that from now Russia will only be able to replace losses, but not create any new forces. It will have to win the war with the army it has now, size-wise at least. A tricky proposition, given that since November 2022 it has only managed to capture about 1 percent of Ukrainian territory .

Secondly, shrinking the pot of gold used to keep the regime's henchmen happy can mean that a growing number of them starts imagining a more profitable future either post-war or post-Putin, whichever comes at a lesser risk to them.

Putin is immortal and his support isn't eternal. We should not forget this. His own people are going to be ever more aware of it, as the war stretches long past the four years it took to beat the Nazis in WW2. The question is will they do anything about it? Nobody can make an informed guess about this, given the utter dearth of relevant information of what's really happening inside Russia.

What seems certain is that next twelve months will do much to undermine Putin's position as the legitimate ruler. And once the Russian elite catches a whiff of Putin's weakness, it is likely to start a trend that Putin won't be able to stop short of giving Russia a total victory. If the opposite is the case and Russia's financial situation grows dire with the fronlines remaining static in Ukraine, an opposition from within the regime could begin to organise and plan for the post-Putin future. And perhaps, when a crisis presents itself, they might make their move.

Assumption 2: Russian hybrid warfare campaign against Europe will backfire.

The wake-up calls have been too many.

The annexation of Crimea in 2014. The Skripal and the Navalny poisonings. The unprecedented release of US intelligence detailing Putin's plan to invade in February 2022, and then the invasion itself. The Bucha massacre. The mass graves, torture sites found in recently de-occupied towns. The blocking of US aid by the Republican Congress that led to the fall of Avdiivka, a serious setback for Ukraine. Trump's re-election in 2024. The Oval Office ambush of Zelensky in February 2025.

After each of the so called wake up calls, the Europeans temporarily regained consciousness to make bold claims, only for most of them to promptly hit the snooze button and go back to sleep.

And yet, the point might soon be reached when even pulling a pillow over their head won't be enough to shut out the light of the morning. Whereas a series of unique disruptive events, shocking though as they were, failed to produce a sustained change of attitude, a relentless chain of provocations from Russia , such as we have seen over the last year, has a potential to keep the somnolent Europeans awake long enough to actually cause problems for Putin.

Putin's campaign of sabotage, airspace violations, and drone incursions, could easily overreach. In his desperate attempt to deter the Europeans from sending aid to Ukraine, he might force more and more of them to respond not solely by defensive measures.

It is not inconcievable that at some point the Baltic states or Finland, backed up by the UK, might up their game from merely fortifying their borders to launching more active measures against the Putin regime, such as cyber attacks or trying to spark a similar campaign of sabotage inside Russia. Poland might tire of simply shooting down Russian drones as they come over Poland and start attacking them inside of Belarusian airspace as well. In one way or another, more Russian provocations will mean more appetite to hit back. Nobody likes being pushed around forever.

At the very least, Russia's shadow war will keep reminding the Europeans that tough choices must be made sooner or later, and that the snooze button won't work anymore. In the end, Putin might find that by trying to deter the Europeans, he's actually managed to reawaken their fighting spirit.

Assumption 3: The frontline will remain broadly static in 2026.

In 2025 Russia has managed to conquer only some 1.04 percent of Ukraine's territory. And that's according to the Russian army chief of staff Gerasimov. Independent sources, such as the ISW, put the figure quite a bit lower. But let's be generous and accept the Gerasimov claim as true.

Provided the Russian army keeps advancing at this pace, and they never moved any faster since 2023, it is going to take them another five years just to conquer the four southeastern oblasts they have illegally annexed in 2022.

It's unclear from where they could scratch up another million men whose life and limb would pay getting there. Nor is it clear if Russia could even afford to pay for the equipment and supplies necessary to sustain another five years of war at this scale.

Granted, no signs of sudden collapse are discernible at present (fog of war being what it is). Nevertheless, chances are growing that maintain the Russian forces in Ukraine will become too expensive to sustain , and in the long run borders on inevitable.

Despite the ever-increasing enlistment bonuses paid out to newly contracted soldiers , the Russian army has failed to grow its troop levels in Ukraine last year. This prevented Russia from creating a strategic reserve that could be employed where the enemy is weakest and possibly lead to a strategic breakthrough.

In fact, had it not been for tens of thousands of North Korean troops that Russia used to patch up its lines after Ukraine's successful invasion of the Kursk oblast, the measly advances Russia did make in Ukraine last year could have been even poorer.

While the Russian army will certainly continue to be a powerful force in the years to come, its offensive potential over the course of the next year will become ever more blunted.

Assumption 4: President Trump will fail to bully Ukraine into a surrender.

European Union has recently approved a €90bn loan that will ensure Ukraine's budget is fully funded for several years to come . With the budgetary worries out of the way, Ukraine's government can focus on prosecuting the war, instead of preparing to deal with a sudden collapse to its finances.

The solution that called for providing Ukraine with the Russian frozen assets, which was eventually blocked by several EU members, isn't quite off the table either. Should Viktor Orbán lose the parliamentary election in April (indeed current polling shows him on track to lose), the pro-Putin lobby in Brussels will weaken. And it might disappear altogether if governments in Belgium and Slovakia fall, and both countries have a history of sudden governmental crises.

With the frontlines stable and no budgetary shortfalls to worry about, Ukraine simply isn't so desperate that it would need to consider Putin's surrender terms, even if they are delivered to Kyiv in a slightly watered down version by an American president.

Volodymyr Zelensky's position at home has recently been somewhat weakened by a series of corruption scandals that involved his nearest colleagues. Ironically, this could actually strengthen Ukraine's resolve.

Zelensky has just named one of the country's most respect soldiers, Kyrylo Budanov, as his de facto chief of staff. The elevation of a former chief of military intelligence could bring about political consolidation and infuse the Ukrainian society with a renewed sense of purpose. Where his predecessor Yermak spent a lot of energy on building and preserving his personal power (not to mention the bank account), it is likely that Budanov will have a more pragmatic approach to his job and will use his powers only as far as it helps Ukraine win the war.

Furthermore, the leverage that the makers of US foreign policy have on Ukraine has diminished greatly since the early days of the war and especially since president Trump took over. As he's already reduced the flow of US aid to Ukraine down to a trickle, the pressure he can apply on Zelensky has also decreased.

Ukraine already makes most of its crucial weaponry at home and now it receives all budget funding from its European allies, so the threat of the US pulling all their remaining assistance (mainly intelligence and some anti-air ammo) will not be sufficient to force Ukraine to capitulate. It would cause problems for the Ukrainian army, for sure, but the main effect would simply be more casualities, especially among the civilians, and another delay to the end of fighting.

Ukrainians seem to be aware that they must now rely mainly on themselves, because despite the US cleary stated sympathies for Russia and Putin, there has been little change in the public opinion regarding the war. Latest polls have revealed that 76% of Ukrainians still refuse to acknowledge the occupied regions of Ukraine as Russian , one of key Putin demands. In the face of staggering odds against them, and after four years of war, the Ukrainian will to resist remains steadfast.

An invitation by way of conclusion

Will future military historians one day look at 2026 and identify this year as the one when the Russian military fortunes began their inexorable decline? I don't know it any more than you do. As pundits and journalist often annoyingly declare when they try to dodge a future-related question: I haven't got a crystal ball. Duh! Who does? No sane person pretends to know the future, nor can even the best-informed expert do more than speculate. We can all agree on that much.

The point is that anyone who follows objective reporting and uses critical thinking should nearly always be in possession of better predictive faculties than someone equipped with conspiracy theories and confirmation bias. And the best way to distinguish between the two approaches, perhaps the only way, is to play the guessing game. Whoever turns out closer to the eventual events, can claim to have the better sources and thus, the better access to reality. So I invite any readers who have made it this far to keep looking ahead and whenever you disagree with someone, turn the conversation to the future. Make a guess, have your friend make theirs, turn on the stopwatch and wait. There will be less shouting, less arguing and hopefully, more shared facts to build on.

A note on my sources

I don't aspire to be an expert on any given topic, but I do listen to experts. I don't simply repeat everything they say, after all they often disagree with each other, that's not the point. The point is to try and collect the best objective information and impartial analysis possible, before one makes up one's own mind. Here's a list of sources which I follow regularly, plus a booklist I made of recommended reading on the war.

Mark Galeotti's podcast In Moscow's Shadows.

War on the Rocks podcast.

Militarnyi.com

Kyiv Independent

Medusa's English service.

Phillips Payson O'Brien's substack.

SIPRI reports.

Institute for the Study of War