It’s easy to understand how the current American buffoonery, clearly manifested at the negotiating table, might make one deeply cynical of diplomacy when it’s seen to be geared toward benefiting the aggressor and an outside dealmaker rather than the victim of the aggression and its supportive neighbor, Europe. The nature of the proposed settlement for ending Russia’s war upon Ukraine seems only to forestall an inevitable resumption of hostility given the historical unreliability of security guarantees, particularly when it comes to Russia. Parallels are seen with the Trump Administration’s recent bungling of trade agreements with China in wild pursuit of bargains in the absence of more thoughtful long-term benefits.
Recent events have brought on a flurry of broad rhetorical statements regarding the circumstances of this war, many of which lack substance and certainly fall short on justification. Unreliable as these statements may be, conclusions are drawn from them that skew reality and guide discussion. Worse still are the streams of misinformation within our society that seek to sway opinion when repeated either by those ignorant of the required background, simply trolling for pay or feeling foolishly entitled to render opinion anonymously.
Whatever one believes to be the root cause(s) of the conflict, no one can deny that it was Russia who did the invading. For Vladimir Putin, there was no longer any legitimate or justifiable recourse but to do what he felt was his prerogative when he saw Ukraine drift from his sphere of influence. A true liberal democratic Ukraine, once a client republic of the Soviet Union, could not be seen to be placing checks on executive power. A government attending to the will of its people would be an unwanted anomaly on Putin’s doorstep. Many Russians see Putin’s rule as illegitimate and one based upon a flawed electoral authoritarian system. That system, in turn, has created an increasingly repressive and coercive kleptocracy. The prospect of a flourishing Ukrainian democracy aligned with the European Union (EU) could conceivably stir Russian sentiment in a similar direction.
Putin’s manufactured “Nazi” theme as justification for his war with its professed need to denazify Ukraine was much too stupid a concept to hold water for long. The “NATO encroachment” tact petered out soon after when Finland and Sweden joined NATO with only muted rhetorical responses from Russia. The long-awaited people’s revolution in Ukraine of 2013-14 closed the door with Russia. It declared a path toward a Western-oriented democratic society and a break away from the Russia-inspired corruption that had polluted its system of governance during the Soviet years.
And now, a benighted U.S. crack team of “negotiators” appears determined to return Ukraine back under Russia’s influence by acceding to its demands for territory and denying Ukraine its sovereign rights. Putin remains determined to see Ukraine’s complete subjugation and prepares to move upon Europe as if it were some sort of revanchist scheme to regain the hold Russia once had.
“Bigger Nations Win Wars”
Much to the chagrin of “big nation” leaders, history has shown repeatedly how uncertain the outcome of any conflict might be, particularly when justifications for “special military operations” are simply not plausible or when the aggressor is resisted by a nation fighting for its right to exist. It is worth adding that when that nation is intimately familiar with the aggressor’s methods of war and has the technical ability to innovate new methods of warfare, the duration and intensity of the conflict may quickly increase by several orders of magnitude. As it turns out, Russia can indeed be brought down several notches, dispelling its notion of exceptionalism and invincibility.
Militarily, Russia is far from winning this war. It continues to lose personnel at an astounding rate sacrificing its convicts recruited from prison, ethnic minorities from within the Russian Federation (RF) and a mixed collection of foreign fighters, all for the purpose of depleting the opponent’s stock of ammunition.
The major Russian ground offensive has concentrated in Donetsk Oblast and particularly in the town of Pokrovsk where an 18-month-long battle has taken place. It has now become an urban conflict between Russian infiltration units and Ukrainian defenders with daily Russian losses peaking at upwards of 800. Russia’s elite 155th Naval Infantry Brigade was significantly depleted and rendered combat-ineffective in the process. Thus far, Russian claims of taking the town have more to do with wishful fantasy in the hopes of boosting morale and gaining traction during discussion with the Americans. Russian gains have been made in the eastern Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhia oblasts although several assaults have been repelled with a number of air-defense systems destroyed recently.
Russia occupies 19% of Ukrainian territory, having gained less than 1% during 2025 at the expense of 100,000 dead just during the first half of the year. From the start of the invasion on February 24, 2022 until mid-year of 2025, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has put the number of Russian dead at 250,000, 15 times greater than during Russia’s 10 years of war in Afghanistan. Total Russian casualties in Ukraine numbered over 950,000 by midyear 2025 although other estimates exceed a million according to the British Ministry of Defense. Reports of armament losses as of December 1, 2025 include 11,387 tanks, 23,678 armored fighting vehicles, 34,754 artillery systems, 430 fixed-wing aircraft, and 347 helicopters among several other elements. Added to this is the loss of 28 naval vessels, accounting for more than a third of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. The estimated cost of these losses amount to $1.13 trillion. The impact upon Russia’s federal budget with 38% committed to its military and security apparatus in the coming three years appears untenable when coupled with compensation owed to its active military personnel and to military families for their deceased members. It is certainly difficult to justify when territorial gains in Ukraine failed to exceed 1% in the past year.
“Ukraine Must Give Up Territory”
It seems counterintuitive for an occupied nation to be told to concede territory to an aggressor for an entirely unjustified invasion. That’s because it is. In a just and, hence, ideal world, a global community would see to it that the aggressor be forced out and made to pay reparations commensurate to the damage incurred. Its regime would likewise be brought to justice as has occurred on a number of similar occasions in the past.
From the start of the war, military aid to Ukraine by the U.S. proceeded incrementally in a manner that delayed needed armament at a time it would have best served the greatest territorial gains. The U.S. strategy failed to understand Russia’s use of threat deterrence as a weapon to hold the West in abeyance. Moreover, restrictions were placed on the use of long-range tactical weapons for cross-border strikes limiting Ukraine’s ability to destroy strategic launch sites and airfields, military warehouses, fuel depots, and armament manufacturing facilities. Such reticence again appeared largely attributed to dubious Russian threats of crossing a “red line” and further escalating the conflict. What resulted was battlefield entrenchment and an unnecessarily protracted war.
The eastern territories, particularly Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts, account for much of Ukraine’s mineral and agricultural resources along with its industrial output, enough so that their loss would threaten its economic survival and therefore its ability to recover from the destruction Russia has caused. The two oblasts, collectively called the Donbas, is the industrial heart of Ukraine, responsible for 25% of its industrial production. In fact, Donetsk Oblast itself ranked second in GDP within the country. The mineral wealth residing in eastern Ukraine has an estimated worth of several trillions of dollars with 40% of the country’s mineral deposits, including rare earths, found there. The Dnipro-Donetsk basin, east of the Dnieper River houses 90% of Ukraine’s oil and gas production where there is an estimated 900 billion cubic meters of natural gas reserves.
The scale of destruction and displacement of millions of people as a consequence of the war caused Ukraine’s overall GDP to drop over 30% during the first year. Some recovery has taken place with estimated GDP growth in 2023 of 5.5% and in 2024 of 2.9% boosted by international aid. There is considerable promise that the nation has the stamina and resilience to recover if provided the aid it needs not simply to rebuild but to modernize beyond the relics of its Soviet legacy.
On February 21, 2022, a few days before the invasion, Putin chose to declare each of Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts as “Autonomous People’s Republics” recognizing their independence from Ukraine. In 2014, at the time of initial hostilities, the population in this collective region, the Donbas, were ethnic Ukrainians. During Soviet times, the Russians had instituted a cultural policy of Russification in the region which the new republics under separatist leadership then further promulgated with a policy of Russian political indoctrination. The West’s impression that eastern Ukraine is pro-Russian has stemmed from this and has been given further fuel with pronouncements by U.S. Special Envoy Steven Witkoff that eastern Ukrainians are Russian-speaking implying therefore that they are committed to being Russian. Despite such rhetoric, the idea that the population in the Donbas actually chose to separate from Ukraine is misinformed as only a third of inhabitants actually supported pro-Russian separatism.
The 2014 separatist movement in the Donbas was supported by Russian regular forces, paramilitary units, and imported activists that caused a civil war in the region. It became the prelude to Putin’s 2022 invasion eight years later. In May of that year, 82% of the population of the Donbas had a negative attitude toward Russia and, by July, 81% wished to join with the EU while 71% liked the idea of becoming part of NATO.
The people of eastern Ukraine have witnessed the indiscriminate bombardment of civilian infrastructure, causing over 53,000 casualties including 14,534 killed as of late November 2025. About 20,000 children were confirmed to have been kidnapped although the actual number is feared to be in excess of 35,000. Many were placed in “re-education” camps in efforts to erase their Ukrainian identity with some then recruited into Russia’s military. These atrocities add to the numerous cases of torture, rape, and execution of civilians by the Russian military in the context of the war and should dispel the notion that the people of eastern Ukraine would wish to live under the yoke of another repressive and authoritarian Russian regime.
Ukrainians are not inclined to give up any portion of their land. Its people have a good sense of the nation they want and the liberty to make it in their own image for the future, not one manufactured for them by a self-serving imperialist who they happen to have as a neighbor for the time-being.
“A Ukrainian Victory is Unrealistic “
Is it? Or should we talk instead of yet another Russian collapse? Everything always seems fine in Russia until it isn’t. The past century serves as a good reminder of Russia’s penchant for abrupt governmental collapse. The 1917 Russian revolution and civil war ended 300 years of tsarist rule and was followed not quite 70 years later by a chaotic disassembly of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) which accompanied the economic collapse of its Soviet regime in 1991. How long will a Putin kleptocracy last after having stepped into the abyss of its war with Ukraine?
The Underworld of Russian Dissatisfaction
Putin’s return for a third presidential term in 2012 was met with violent protest involving tens of thousands in Moscow over allegations of electoral fraud. Although put down by the police with hundreds of arrests and prosecutions, the recurrent spectacle of protests that took place over the course of five months in 2012 demonstrated a level of dissatisfaction not seen since the collapse of Soviet Russia. Five years later on May 6, 2017, thousands of opposition activists returned to the center of Moscow for a rally to mark the anniversary of the antigovernment protest and to show that opposition to the regime had not dissipated despite the Kremlin’s intensified repression of dissent reminiscent of Stalinist Russia. The war now has caused the Kremlin to introduce a further escalation of repressive measures in attempts to quell what is expected to be mounting opposition to Putin’s four-year-long “special military operation.”
Older generations of Russians, perhaps still enamored by the memory of Stalinist rule, are often regarded by the West as a stoic sort, accommodating themselves to the harsh realities of life with the help of state propaganda. Newer generations likewise appear to regard stability and security over political freedom but only up to a point as was witnessed in September 2022 when Putin announced his order for partial mobilization to support a war, one that was going unexpectedly badly for Russia. The reality of what felt like a remote conflict came crashing home and instigated a massive flight of several hundreds of thousands of draft-eligible Russians into neighboring countries in fear of forced conscription.
The majority of young Russians seem disengaged from political affairs with only 30% having voted in an election in the previous two years. Over a 25-year period since 1999, an annual survey by the Levada Center, an independent Russian nongovernmental polling agency, has asked Russian youth whether they regard Russians as a great people of particular significance to world history. A decline was seen from a peak of 64% in 2017 to 52% in 2024, the survey’s lowest score since its inception. Three years before the war, a 2019 Levada Center study already reported 53% of young Russians wanting to emigrate with 42% of those citing the political situation, 40%, an unstable economy, and 39% seeking a better standard of living. A 2021 Levada Center study showed 48% of Russians aged 18-24 felt the nation was on the wrong path with 44% of those aged 25-39 feeling the same. Approval of Putin’s leadership among the 18- to 24-year-olds fell from 62% in 2020 to 51% in 2021, a year before the war. The outbreak of war saw an even greater campaign of fear and repression by the Kremlin such that the response to polling has become more suspect. Below the surface, however, the Kremlin’s propaganda machine is falling short with Russia’s youth in garnering support for Putin’s radical isolationist stance on patriotism which doesn’t align with their sentiments.
Russia’s Economy
Russia’s war economy has been significantly strained by a 20% decline in oil revenues brought on by lower global prices, the cumulative effect of sanctions and the large-scale Ukrainian campaign of striking oil refineries, depots, pipelines, seaports, and oil tankers. Inflation hangs at 8%, attributable to military spending, keeping central bank interest rates high and currently at 16.5%. The 2025 budget deficit climbed from 0.5% to 2.6% while military spending reached $142 billion. To worsen matters, Russia is prevented from borrowing on international bond markets and instead must obtain credit through its cash-strapped domestic banks. Liquid assets in the National Wealth Fund (NWF) have dropped to $35.7 billion after covering the budget deficit by selling gold and foreign currency. Before the war, the NWF was more than five times higher at $185 billion. The sale of gold from its reserves has been Russia’s strategy to quickly adjust its budget deficit and stabilize the ruble. The gold reserves have diminished from 405.7 tons to 173.1 tons, a drop of 57% thus far. The emphasis has shifted now to raise funds through public taxation, increasing the value-added tax (VAT) to 22% and targeting businesses further by lowering the threshold to collect VAT in order to counter tax avoidance measures. Smaller businesses are also no longer exempt from the current tax scheme. The measure is likely to increase inflation and worsen consumer pricing as the pressure to maintain control of the deficit mounts.
Russian Welfare
Other domestic concerns have mounted. Although one may not think that such concerns would weigh heavily in the context of this war, a cumulative effect of a few of these could emerge sufficient to undo Russia’s social fabric. A number of these can be readily identified. Food shortage has generally not been a concern in Russia although several factors, many attributable to the war, have come in to play to make food insecurity now a problem. These include persistently high inflation and increased consumer costs, a shortage of agricultural labor, supply chain disruptions, and market volatility. A lack of adaptation to climate change leading to crop failures and a dearth of machine parts needed for repairs due to sanctions have further contributed to the problem that now confronts millions of Russians.
Preceding the war, between 2019 and 2021, 400,000 Russians on average were determined to be severely food insecure. Fertile agricultural regions saw considerable drops since then of vegetable harvests in the order of 500,000 metric tons in Bryansk, 120,000 in Nizhny Novgorod and 100,000 in the Moscow region. In a prematurely rash quest for self-sufficiency, an ill-timed Kremlin decision was made in January 2024 to adopt an economic isolationist policy that restricted seed imports from “unfriendly” nations. One outcome was a reduction of seed potato imports by 93% which worsened an already dismal domestic harvest brought on by unfavorable weather conditions and war-related factors to result in a 14% drop in production. Help has been sought from Egypt, Pakistan, and China but the situation is unlikely to be a temporary one and it is uncertain how long it may take domestic production to recover under current conditions.
Russia’s chronically inadequate health care has been exacerbated by a war that has prioritized military spending over funding domestic welfare and may be another element that tips the scale against the Kremlin. Efforts to deal with the increased burden of health care for returning war veterans are insufficient. Hospitals are overwhelmed. Physically disabled soldiers in need of repair will require great effort by a health care community that is ill-prepared to provide for their specific needs. In 2023, the number requiring wheelchairs and prostheses had already increased by 42% since the start of the war. Soldiers are also returning with mental health problems, among them posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which can persist for decades. There is little support for them with only four to five psychologists per 100,000 people available to manage this critical problem. This accumulating health care issue alone is bound to have a significant societal impact.
Salary increases for health care workers were approved but became largely the responsibility of regional and municipal budgets which have been strapped with the burden of offering bonuses to candidates for military conscription in order to keep up with personnel losses on the front. Some regions have now suspended payments altogether due to budgetary shortfalls. Health care staffing problems and work overload have created a major decline in personnel involving almost 30 regions already beset with socioeconomic underdevelopment of their own. The assignment of more than 2,500 physicians from 50 regions to occupied territories in Ukraine has only furthered the staffing problem in Russia.
Significant increases in the incidences of communicable diseases such as measles which rose 128-fold from 2022 to 2023, whooping cough and influenza have resulted from shortages of vaccines. Since the start of the war, 2,200 medicinal products have been removed from the Russian market, 50% of which were imported. By the start of 2023, the Health Ministry warned of shortages of 158 different medications and, by year-end, the list had grown by 58. Several regions, including Moscow and St. Petersburg, experienced an insulin shortage, 75% of which was imported. Such shortages are of a particularly acute nature because of the lethality of uncontrolled diabetes.
Russia’s burden of human immuno-deficiency viral (HIV) infection, the highest in Europe, is rising due to limited access for treatment. Between 2017 and 2023, the number of infected individuals rose by 27% to 1.2 million and, despite this, the Health Ministry elected to reduce spending on antiviral (ARV) medications. This would result in 33% fewer individuals being treated in 2023 than in 2022. According to data from the AIDS.CENTER website, 51,984 new HIV diagnoses were registered in 2024 with an estimated prevalence of 831.8 per 100,000 people. Of greater concern, are indications that the disease has expanded into the general population rather than being confined to identified vulnerable segments of the population. When specific age and gender groups are considered, as in the case of men aged 40-45 years, 4% will be found to be infected. In at least 16 regions, more than 1% of pregnancies were found to occur in HIV-infected females, a threshold considered indicative of a generalized epidemic. Adding fuel to the crisis is evidence of an increasing number of HIV cases in the Russian military such that in the fourth quarter of 2023, the incidence had increased by 20 times over that preceding the war. Return of these service personnel back into Russian society coupled with the ongoing neglect of the growing problem at home will only accelerate the spiral.
The Crime Scene in Russia
There has been a significant surge in violent crime in Russia with a murder and attempted murder rate rising already by 4% in 2022, the first year of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This marked the first escalation in 20 years after steadily declining numbers were reported to have reached a low of 7,332 cases in 2021. A 5% increase in domestic violence was reported also in 2022. Soldiers who have participated in combat show a prevalence of PTSD ranging from 3% to 11% and, among those wounded, borderline mental disorders may be found in at least 30%. Of the latter, PTSD may arise in 14-17%. The Defense Ministry has estimated that about 20% of returning troops suffer from PTSD amounting for upwards of 250,000 veterans thus far.
The problem has grown since these initial reports with 142,500 cases of violent crimes in 2023, a 14% rise since 2022. Domestic violence caused the deaths of 2,284 women in 2022 and 2023, 93% at the hands of their partners. In 2024 the ratio of women killed in cases of domestic violence rose to 47% of the total murdered in Russia, the highest such ratio in 15 years.
In the first half of 2025, a total of 333,251 “serious and particularly serious crimes” were recorded, a 10.4% increase over that of the same period in 2024 and 32.3% over that in 2019. The 2024 year in total accounted for 617,301 such crimes which was the highest since 2010. The region most affected was the Central Federal District, the key administrative region in Russia, centered on Moscow, accounting for over 79,000 cases. Moscow and its immediate surrounding area experienced almost 43,500 serious crimes. In an apparent attempt to quell panic, the Interior Ministry removed the number of murder victims from public statistics as of the 2025 midyear.
Another problem that has become of particular concern has been the return of prior convicts who were released from prison with the promise of pardon after their tour of duty in Ukraine. By October, 2023, up to 54,000 prisoners had been recruited into the Wagner paramilitary group and by November, 2024 that figure increased to 180,000. By then, several tens of thousands were released from the military to return to Russian society. There is a high degree of recidivism among violent offenders with 64% reported in the U.S. to be rearrested within eight years of release from prison. Assuming the same among those in Russia, a significant influx of violent criminals will find their way back onto the streets of several urban areas to be recruited by both new and well-established organized crime groups searching for contract killers as well as dominance in their regional domains. Gangs of such prior convicts who have armed themselves with weapons smuggled from the front have now emerged along with arms trafficking rings and underground weapons factories to create an underworld more lethal than anything seen before.
Epilogue
Ukraine has certainly taken the brunt of the war violence having suffered an invasion of its sovereign territory; massive displacement of its population; the kidnapping of its children; the indiscriminate destruction of its civilian infrastructure; the targeting of medical institutions, educational facilities and administrative buildings; the despoliation of its farmland; and the pillaging of its agricultural products. What is more, Ukraine has lost many of its finest in the cause of freedom, something that the entire nation aspires to. It is deeply indebted to those nations that have come to its aid and who continue to honor its desire for self-determination and self-sufficiency. Its soul is entwined with its language and culture that the past many centuries of its history have forged. These cannot be taken away. Those nations who ignore this foundational reality will not understand Ukraine’s resilience against the odds that seem stacked against it and, perhaps, should be reminded of their own beginnings.
As for the cause of this suffering, Russia not only deserves the condemnation that history will provide but also the ignominy of its defeat.
Copyright @Kost Elisevich, MD, PhD 2025. All rights reserved. Any illegal reproduction of this content will result in immediate legal action.
