This isn’t the war Russia had planned, but it’s the war it has learned to fight: one of attrition and calculated pressure. Moscow believes it has the manpower and economic flexibility to sustain a conflict that exhausts both Ukraine and Western allies before it exhausts itself. And unless the West shifts its strategy to match this reality of patience and persistence, there’s a growing risk it could unwittingly play into the Kremlin’s hands.
This is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s long game — a war where time is the key battleground.
Clearly, Putin’s original aims haven’t been met. There was no lightning strike on Kyiv, no rapid regime change. Ukraine’s state, army and national identity are strained, but they remain unbroken. Meanwhile, peace negotiations are still a possibility — though a remote one for now, as Moscow rejects Ukraine’s condition that any talks must follow a ceasefire.
Still, Russia currently controls roughly 19 percent of Ukraine’s territory, including swathes of the Donbas and a land bridge to Crimea, and it continues to make incremental progress. Its advances, however, have become costly and slow; the war has claimed over a million Russian lives; and the tempo of fighting is high yet grinding.
But the Kremlin feels it no longer needs rapid or dramatic territorial expansion to maintain its strategic momentum. It need only keep going — and wait.
This strategy isn’t without its limits, of course. In terms of manpower and military equipment, Russia is facing growing pressure. At the current intensity of fighting, the country can likely sustain operations into next year without a further mobilization, but its shortfalls will slowly become more acute. Plus, when the time comes, a further mobilization may not be politically palatable.