Still Think Russia is Winning? WATCH THIS Before You Speak Again
The Military Show
1.69M subscribers
Jun 8, 2025
#militarystrategy #militarydevelopments #militaryanalysis
Russia thought Ukraine would fall in 72 hours. Three years later, it’s lost nearly a million troops, crippled its economy, and still holds just 20% of Ukraine.
Support us directly as we bring you independent, up-to-date reporting on military news and global conflicts by clicking here: / @themilitaryshow
#militarystrategy #militarydevelopments #militaryanalysis
#themilitaryshow
- SOURCES: https://pastebin.com/p7bzjGfa
- ATTRIBUTIONS: https://pastebin.com/9R75Fhpi
Transcript
- 0:00
- On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine—confident, cocky, and certain
- of a three-day victory. “Kyiv will fall within 72 hours,” they said. Russia’s military was the
- world’s second most powerful, or so we were told. The war? Just a formality. Three years later,
- Russia holds just 20% of Ukraine. And it’s paid for it with nearly one million casualties. One
- million dead and wounded. More than the U.S. suffered in two decades of the War
- on Terror—compressed into just three years. And that’s only the beginning of the disaster. Today
- on The Military Show, we’re dismantling the illusion that Russia is “winning” this war.
- We’ll break down the territory myths, the manpower crisis, the shattered economy, the propaganda, and
- the growing whispers that the Russian Federation itself may not survive the consequences of Putin’s
- blunder. So if you still believe the narrative that Russia’s got the upper hand—you’ll want to
- watch this to the end. Let’s start with the cold, brutal numbers... The Institute for the Study of
- 1:00
- War’s assessment from February 2022 states that “Russia captured approximately 4,200 sq km of
- Ukrainian territory last year, most of which was in the Donetsk area.” This area is only slightly
- larger than Rhode Island, the smallest U.S. state by area. Comparatively, 4,200 square kilometers is
- around 0.6% of Ukraine’s total territory size. And that’s where it gets truly mind-boggling.
- Forbes did some independent number crunching using statistics from April 2025, where Russia
- only took around 68 square miles of territory. If Ukraine maintains that level of defenses and
- Russia doesn’t step up on the offensive, the War in Ukraine would take another 230 years. That’s
- how long Russia would need to occupy the entire country, one of the surefire ways to win. The same
- analysis suggested that Russia would need around 100 million casualties to achieve this, against
- its total 2025 population of around 144 million. This is far from a strategy. It’s a complete
- absence of one, requiring a multi-generational investment in war, which brings about other
- severe issues. But territory only tells part of the story. Let’s talk about the human cost
- 2:04
- of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s imperial delusions. According to the latest data from the
- Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, Russian forces have suffered approximately 975,000 casualties
- since February 2022. While we should approach any wartime statistics from Ukraine with caution,
- even conservative Western estimates from the U.K. Ministry of Defense put Russian casualties well
- above 750,000 at the end of last year. To put this in perspective, Russia lost approximately
- 15,000 soldiers during its 10-year war in Afghanistan. In just three years in Ukraine,
- they’ve suffered casualties over 60 times higher. To put it bluntly, this is not a sustainable war
- effort. Russia’s demographic crisis was already severe before the war, with a declining and aging
- population. The country’s fertility rate was crippled by the economic crisis at the fall of
- the Soviet Union, reaching as low as 1.2 births per woman by the turn of the century. While the
- situation got slightly better, the country is still far below the replacement rate. As a result,
- 3:01
- there’s a significant lack of working-age males younger than 30 simply because they were never
- born in the first place, and Russia is also conscripting from that same lacking demographic.
- Now, factor in not just the direct military losses but also the estimated 920,000 Russians who have
- fled the country to avoid conscription. That’s nearly 2 million working-age men removed from
- Russia’s economy and society in just three years beyond demographic shortages. In short, Russia is
- literally running out of people to throw into this meat grinder. But to understand the extent of the
- tragedy that is likely going to befall Russia, let’s roll back to the start of the invasion.
- Russian military planners were so confident they’d be celebrating in Kyiv within days that
- they packed parade uniforms. Combat plans shared with troops indicated they should prepare for
- light resistance followed by occupation duties. In fact, Russia’s military logistics were structured
- around the assumption that Ukraine would collapse almost immediately. Three years later,
- those assumptions look not just wrong but delusional. Instead of a swift victory parade,
- Russia got bogged down in the longest conventional war in Europe since World War II. Their vaunted
- 4:03
- air force failed to establish air superiority. Their tank forces were decimated by portable
- anti-tank weapons and drones. Their elite units suffered catastrophic losses in the early phases,
- forcing Russia to resort to poorly trained conscripts, convicts, and foreign mercenaries.
- The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) published a damning report in September
- 2024 titled “The Russia-Ukraine War: A Study in Analytic Failure.” The conclusion was that
- Russia’s military planning represented perhaps the most significant intelligence failure of the 21st
- century. This sentiment was shared by the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI),
- which posited that Russia forewent its traditional logistical channels due to the erroneous belief
- that the war wouldn’t last more than a few weeks. In short, Putin maintained the illusion
- that Russia was a great military force, but the military didn’t have the planning or logistics to
- back that illusion up. Due to the secrecy behind the plans involved in the invasion, many higher
- officers were caught unaware of the true extent of the invasion and failed to properly stock up
- 5:01
- on supplies before the war began in earnest. This led to severe supply shortages in the crucial
- first few months of the war when Russia maintained the initiative. After the initial rebuttal at the
- Hostomel Airport, which was essentially Russia’s Hail Mary to conquer Ukraine with minimal losses,
- Russia failed to properly follow up, with a significant lack of adaptability that has
- become a necessity in modern warfare. Soon enough, Ukraine took back most of the territory it lost
- to the initial invasion, and the conflict devolved into one of attrition. Russian propaganda channels
- still peddled the idea that the war is a foregone conclusion, celebrating minor tactical gains of a
- few square miles. But in truth, Russia is losing a war to itself by running out of money to fund
- the war effort. On paper, Russia retains the 11th spot on the list of the world’s largest economies.
- But strip back the veneer, and the situation is problematic at best. Western sanctions have
- decimated Russia’s high-tech sectors, crippled its banking system, and isolated it from global
- markets. By the end of 2024, the ruble had lost 23 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar,
- 6:00
- with the exchange rate between the two currencies fluctuating daily to create incomprehensible
- uncertainty of the country’s real economic status. But the most devastating economic impact comes
- from Russia’s pivot to a war economy. According to an analysis by Meduza, Russia now spends
- an estimated 40 percent of its governmental budget on defense—a level unsustainable for
- any modern economy. Worse yet, a third of it is hidden under “secret projects” related to
- the military-industrial complex, indicating an unprecedented level of propaganda and paranoia
- surrounding the Kremlin. What makes this situation even more dire is that Russia’s primary source of
- income—energy exports—faces long-term decline. The European Union has reduced its dependence on
- Russian gas by over 30% since 2022, and oil sales to China and India are being negotiated at steep
- discounts. The dependence on oil and gas, which constitutes between 30 and 50% of the government’s
- revenue, means that the country’s already-lacking workforce is increasingly turning to the one
- single profitable industry (the energy sector). This makes Russian manufacturing increasingly
- rely on imports, especially from China, as well as the entire country needing to import the
- 7:03
- workforce to meet its increasing demands. With Russia losing both militarily and economically,
- it has a few options beyond simply continuing as-is and accepting that war is the new status
- quo. None of them is good. Option one (but not likely to happen) is a massive escalation. Some
- hardliners in the Kremlin have pushed for using pretty much everything Russia has to win the war,
- going so far as to propose the use of tactical nuclear weapons. This wouldn’t be the first
- mention of nuclear warfare, as Putin himself has saber-rattled on the topic more than two
- dozen times. But this scenario would ultimately backfire. While a limited nuclear deployment (such
- as destroying Kyiv or vital military sites) might create short-term tactical advantages,
- NATO would be basically hard-pressed to answer with nuclear weapons of their own. In response,
- Russia would need to use its supplies of weapons on NATO countries, plunging most of the world
- into a nuclear winter. And even that escalation wouldn’t solve Russia’s core problems. Russia
- desperately needs both the land and the people in Ukraine. Bombing them to oblivion makes the
- region uninhabitable, and the country would lose the potential 40 million citizens, which would
- 8:04
- be used to prop up the failing demographics and workforce instead of resorting to immigration. The
- second option is withdrawing from Ukraine. Russia would likely only use this as a last resort, as
- it represents a devastating political defeat for Putin’s regime, which has staked its legitimacy
- on this war. A withdrawal from Ukraine without achieving core war aims would likely trigger
- elite fragmentation within Russia and potentially regime collapse. Putin’s government is a carefully
- built house of cards, hinging on the fact that Putin has been able to get what he wants for
- the past two decades. Annexing Crimea and fueling discourse within NATO have been key geopolitical
- wins for the Russian president. If the situation turns around, it will send a clear signal that
- the country’s top echelon of government is actually not nearly as powerful as it seems. This
- explains why, despite catastrophic losses, Russia continues to pour resources into this conflict.
- The alternative—admitting defeat—is viewed as an existential threat to the current power structure.
- The third option is a peace deal, even in a limited form. While this might seem most rational
- 9:01
- after three years of basically trench warfare with drones, no side can reach an agreement on it.
- First, Ukraine has little incentive to negotiate away territory after successfully defending
- its sovereignty for three years. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s peace proposal demands
- full territorial restoration, possibly including Crimea, as well as security guarantees from NATO.
- Even if Ukraine cedes territory, Zelenskyy has put NATO reassurance as one of his top priorities,
- even if he needs to step down as president in the process. Russia, meanwhile, cannot accept any
- agreement that doesn’t legitimize its territorial conquests. And international geopolitics and
- relations are further complicating the matters. President Donald Trump’s administration’s erratic
- approach to Ukraine has undermined consistent diplomacy. In February 2025, Trump met with
- Zelenskyy directly to propose a peace plan that would have ceded significant Ukrainian
- territory to Russia, contradicting the stated position of his own State Department. It caused
- a near complete breakdown in relations between the two countries, ultimately resulting in
- Ukraine requesting revisions of mineral deals and the U.S. backing out of peace discussions
- 10:02
- between the warring parties. Even worse, Russia has publicly stated, multiple times at that,
- that it wants to find a peaceful solution, going so far as to accept probationary ceasefires.
- None of them worked, with the 30-hour Easter ceasefire resulting in Ukraine claiming Russia
- broke it nearly 3,000 times. So Russia is caught in a strategic trap of its own making—unable to
- win militarily, unwilling to accept defeat, and incapable of pursuing a diplomatic solution. Let’s
- zoom out and look at the bigger picture. What has Russia actually achieved through this catastrophic
- military adventure? Before the invasion, NATO was an alliance searching for purpose, with
- many questioning its relevance in the post-Cold War world. Trump himself criticized the alliance,
- as most members failed to meet the basic requirement of using 2% of their GDP on
- military. Today, it’s revitalized and expanded, with Finland and Sweden as new members. The
- 800-mile border between Finland and Russia practically doubled the NATO-Russia border,
- significantly curbing Russia’s ability to actually defend itself in a theoretical conflict against
- 11:00
- the economically larger, demographically stronger, and militarily more modern alliance. Specifically,
- the biggest changes came to countries that can hold large sway in the alliance. Germany, one
- of the world’s largest economies, instituted new funding incentives for national defense. Poland,
- which was once a member of the Warsaw Pact, plans to create the largest standing army in
- Europe. Sweden and Finland have pushed their military industrial complexes to the limit,
- sending prototypes of vital equipment to Ukraine and partnering with the U.S. and U.K. contractors
- to deliver deadlier weapons. Diplomatically, Russia has transformed from a respected if
- difficult global power into a pariah state with limited international options. Russia’s largest
- trading partner switched from the EU to China, a country that is even more dependent on resources
- and can significantly undermine Russian policies to get access to them. All of these issues
- came from a single problem that Russia failed to account for: the glaring gap between its projected
- military power and actual combat performance. Before February 2022, Russia’s military was widely
- considered the world’s second most formidable fighting force. Military analysts routinely
- 12:03
- cited its 1,320,000 active-duty personnel, 2 million reservists, 6,000 tanks, and 4,000
- aircraft as evidence of overwhelming strength. Annual military parades showcased supposedly
- cutting-edge equipment like the T-14 Armata tank, Su-57 stealth fighter, and hypersonic missiles.
- The Global Firepower Index consistently ranked Russia second, only to the United States. Western
- military planners built entire defense strategies around countering this perceived threat. And when
- the second-largest military invaded a smaller neighbor, it turned out none of the statistics
- really mattered. Instead of the feared Russian colossus, we saw: Elite paratroopers dropped into
- Hostomel Airport without proper support, resulting in a complete failure to establish the air tunnel
- necessary to win the invasion 40-mile-long armored columns running out of fuel just miles from their
- own borders Tanks deployed without infantry support, making them easy prey for Ukrainian
- anti-tank teams Russia resorting to sending human wave attacks, a tactic considered fit
- 13:00
- for World War I Logistics trucks with commercial tires that failed in off-road conditions Aircraft
- unable to effectively suppress Ukrainian air defenses Museum pieces like the T-62,
- T-55, and possibly even the T-34 (from all the way back DURING World War 2), making their way to the
- frontline Perhaps most damning was the so-called modern equipment itself. Those supposedly advanced
- T-90M tanks? Many were found with what should’ve been “reactive armor blocks” filled with sand
- and cement instead of explosives. The feared attack helicopters and fighter jets? Plagued
- by navigation systems so unreliable that pilots taped commercial GPS units to their dashboards.
- And what about those next-generation weapons that caused so much concern in Western defense circles?
- The T-14 Armata tanks made a brief appearance in 2023 before being withdrawn. They either failed
- miserably or were too expensive to get blown up by cheap drones. The Su-57 stealth fighters have
- conducted only limited strike missions from safe distances within Russian airspace, lobbing glide
- bombs (the one saving grace of Russian military tactics, which also harken back to its Cold War
- 14:03
- weapon stores). But how could Russia’s military leadership so catastrophically misjudge both
- their own capabilities and Ukrainian resistance? The answer reveals something fundamental about
- Putin’s Russia. Russian intelligence services believed that Ukrainian forces would immediately
- collapse and that most Ukrainians would welcome Russian troops as liberators. This wasn’t just
- a military miscalculation—it was a fundamental failure to understand reality, driven by the very
- propaganda machine Putin had created to maintain his grip on power. One of the fatal flaws of the
- authoritarian regime that Putin created in Russia is that it completely depends on Putin’s image as
- a leader. Brookings maintained that this is only tenable so long as the autocrat stays in power,
- which can severely damage the longevity of the country as a whole. Former Kremlin advisor Gleb
- Pavlovsky, now in exile, explained it more bluntly in his April 2022 interview: “This is all Putin’s
- own personal decision... Nobody, including myself, realized just how maniacally obsessed he must have
- been with Ukraine. We underestimated the extent of decay of the Russian government.” Remember,
- 15:03
- this interview was only a month and a half into the invasion, and the same sentiment rings true
- three years later. The Russian military itself became a victim of this distorted reality.
- Corruption was endemic but hidden from official reports. Training exercises were choreographed
- performances rather than realistic preparations. Equipment maintenance existed on paper while
- actual hardware deteriorated in storage. This is underscored by a closer examination of Russia’s
- military doctrine. As a holdover from Soviet times, Russia’s perceived biggest risk was a NATO
- invasion. To that end, Russia created operations and strategies to defend the motherland rather
- than invade. Its concentrated command structure would help it shore up weaknesses in defenses,
- but it also opened itself up to rampant corruption and power reshuffling once Putin came into power.
- With Russia losing momentum, there’s a possibility that Putin himself could be “ousted” from the
- Russian throne. After all, he would be quickly found solely responsible for the disaster,
- and power-hungry politicians in the Kremlin would need to save face by removing him. However,
- 16:00
- Brookings succinctly analyzed that Russia’s current political structure doesn’t really
- have a viable candidate to succeed him, and that the entire regime might not survive a leadership
- change. This opens up a chance that Russia itself could collapse. This would happen in a few stages,
- but they would progress rather quickly or even coincide with one another. First,
- there’s the economic breakdown. Russia’s war economy is already showing severe strain,
- with defense spending crowding out essential services. As casualties mount and sanctions
- bite deeper, this becomes unsustainable. Critical infrastructure—already suffering from
- underinvestment—begins to fail more frequently. Second, political fragmentation. Regional
- governors, especially in resource-rich areas like the Far East, begin asserting greater autonomy
- from Moscow. Initially presented as an economic necessity, these moves gradually acquire political
- dimensions. Third, military disintegration. As the professional army is ground down in Ukraine,
- Russia increasingly relies on poorly trained conscripts and ethnic minorities from peripheral
- regions. Unit cohesion breaks down. Desertion rates skyrocket. Military equipment fails
- 17:01
- without replacement parts. Finally, the central authority collapses. Whether through palace coup,
- popular uprising, or simply the inability to project power to Russia’s vast regions,
- the Moscow government loses effective control over significant portions of Russian territory. The
- consequences would be catastrophic, and not just for Russia but for global security. The Federation
- would likely collapse into a series of states, resembling the breakup of Yugoslavia or the fall
- of the Soviet Union itself in the 1990s. The core of the country, Moscow and Saint Petersburg, would
- likely attempt to relocate Russia’s nuclear weapon reserves and proclaim itself the successor state,
- saber-rattling with the arsenal much like Putin did during the war. Scores of immigrants would try
- to enter the EU again, going after the successes seen by former Warsaw Pact members like Romania
- and Poland. China might swoop in and occupy swaths of resource-rich territory in Siberia for itself
- to fuel its bottomless industry. So the next time someone confidently tells you that “Russia is
- winning in Ukraine,” you just need to go back to the beginning: After three years of what
- was supposed to be a war that lasted a few days, Russia controls just 20% of Ukraine, has suffered
- 18:02
- casualties approaching one million, has devastated its economy, destroyed its international standing,
- reinvigorated its adversaries, and has no viable path to actual victory. The truth is that Russia
- isn’t winning—it’s trapped in a strategic disaster entirely of its own making, with no good options
- and no clear exit. The longer this war continues, the more catastrophic the consequences will be for
- Russia itself. But what do you think? Thanks for watching, and leave your comments below.
| |