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Date: 2025-08-21 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00028630
RUSSIA
LOSING THE UKRAINE WAR

The Military Show: Still Think Russia is Winning?
WATCH THIS Before You Speak Again


Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpyLQvNsUw4
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY



Peter Burgess
Still Think Russia is Winning? WATCH THIS Before You Speak Again

The Military Show

1.69M subscribers

Jun 8, 2025

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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.

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  • 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.


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