Post Segments
Tunnel Vision Gone Mad.
Since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022 the Institute of the Study of War (ISW) in Washington DC has followed the conflict in great detail using open sources. ISW see no signs that Putin has any intention to negotiate a ceasefire other than on his terms – Ukraine capitulates, is disarmed, does not join NATO or the EU and becomes vassal state of Russia with a puppet government. Putin believes his theory of war: in a war of attrition Russia will outlast the West and its support for Ukraine. A great deal of time, effort and money goes on propaganda to make NATO governments believe that Russian victory is simply a matter of time. Is this plausible? ISW look at all aspects including casualties on both sides. I quote from a recent ISW report in the next paragraph:
“Leaked Russian estimates of Russian killed in action (KIA) to wounded in action (WIA) rates in Ukraine underscore the impact of increased tactical drone usage in Ukraine and the extent to which drones complicate ground advances and casualty evacuation. Ukraine’s “I Want to Live” initiative published leaked Russian data on October 6 detailing Russian military casualties from January to August 2025. The data indicates that Russian forces suffered a total of 281,550 casualties of which: 86,744 were killed in action (KIA), including 1,583 officers and 8,633 penal recruits; 33,996 are missing in action (MIA), including 11,427 penal recruits; 158,529 were wounded in action (WIA), including 6,356 officers and 16,489 penal recruits; and 2,311 were captured. Ukraine’s “I Want to Live” initiative’s data on total Russian military casualties from January to August 2025 is similar to Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief General Oleksandr Syrskyi’s report that Russian forces had suffered 299,210 casualties since January 2025 as of September 9. Ukraine’s “I Want to Live” initiative reported that Russia’s casualty ratio is one KIA for every 1.3 WIA, likely due to insufficient tactical medicine training and the Russian military command’s frequent failure to sufficiently rehabilitate WIA. The standard KIA to WIA ratio is one-to-three, which demonstrates that the Russian forces currently appear to have an abnormally high KIA to WIA ratio (1:1.3) likely due to the efficacy of pervasive tactical-level drone strikes that have created kill zones (an area immediately near the frontline where a mass of tactical strike and reconnaissance drones pose an elevated risk to any equipment or personnel that enters the area) throughout the theatre, complicating both sides ability to evacuate casualties and triage WIA. ISW has previously observed reports that the Russian military command is struggling to and frequently refusing to recover WIA, likely due to the threat of Ukrainian drone strikes that are significantly complicating movement on the battlefield.”
The long View.
Russia was in its second year of recession in November 2021. The special operation was meant to unfold with victory and occupation of all Ukraine within days – just like seizing the Crimea in 2014. Putin wanted to shift the political gravity of our planet. Three and a half years and a million casualties later, according to Wikipedia, Russia occupies slightly less than 120,000 square kilometres of Ukraine. In March 2022 the Russians occupied 165,000 square kilometres of Ukraine. Russia occupies 3,500-4,000 more square kilometres (Russian claims are challenged) in late 2025 than in late 2024. The cash bill for this runs at the equivalent of a billon US dollars a day. Forty per cent of the state budget goes on defence (or as Trump prefers to call it, war). Almost 8% of Russia’s GDP is spent on invading Ukraine.
There are other costs. According to Wikipedia there have been three waves of mass migration from Russia to neighbouring countries, mostly well qualified and generally well off families escaping the risk of conscription for their men. Some 300,000 left in February 2022 followed by 500,000 during March 2022. Today (counting their families) about 900,000 middle class professionals remain outside Russia.
Add to them more than 1,000 men a week killed and wounded. The war has cost Russia as many as 200,000 killed and 800,000 wounded, perhaps more judging from the leak published by ISW. That’s a very large number of able-bodied men who will not add any children to future generations. Moscow deliberately has been spared from war although not entirely. Out of 13 million inhabitants of greater Moscow only 198 souls have been killed in Ukraine. A Swiss TV crew recently filmed deserted villages with only a handful of old people and derelict schools within fifty miles from Moscow. Putin’s answer to this empty landscape is to recruit from Central Asia, accept help from North Korea, Iran and China while kidnapping tens of thousands of children from occupied Ukraine. He wants to turn them into Russian soldiers and puts them through military camps for this purpose.
David Roche of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) calculates that Putin can draw from a pool of 7 million men and has no problem replacing losses.
Keep in mind that Russia stretches from Europe to the Far East. There’s plenty of land. Putin’s main reason for invading Ukraine was to gobble its millions of clever and tough white Christian people.
