1/3 At its current pace, Russia would need more than a century to seize the remaining 80% of Ukraine.
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1/3 At its current pace, Russia would need more than a century to seize the remaining 80% of Ukraine. Sustaining today’s casualty rate would mean roughly 36 million Russian casualties, more than the country’s entire current population of military-age men.
CSIS estimates Russia has already suffered roughly 1.4 million battlefield casualties, including as many as 450,000 killed. In 2026, it has been losing 30,000–34,000 troops a month while recruiting only about 27,000 replacements.
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2/3 Its offensive has produced extraordinarily little for that cost.
What happens next?
2026: Russia can keep fighting and launching major strikes. But its ability to translate enormous losses into meaningful territorial gains is already poor.
2027 onward: If losses continue to outpace recruitment, Russia faces an increasingly ugly choice: reduce the tempo and ambitions of the war, or extract substantially more soldiers and resources from Russian society.
3/3 You can't evaluate Russian sustainability independently of Ukraine’s. Russia does not need a healthy military. It needs a military capable of generating more combat power than Ukraine can counter.
The fastest route to ending the war is not waiting for Russia to exhaust itself. It is giving Ukraine enough combat power that Russia cannot win the war at a price it can survive.
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1/3 At its current pace, Russia would need more than a century to seize the remaining 80% of Ukraine. Sustaining today’s casualty rate would mean roughly 36 million Russian casualties, more than the country’s entire current population of military-age men.
CSIS estimates Russia has already suffered roughly 1.4 million battlefield casualties, including as many as 450,000 killed. In 2026, it has been losing 30,000–34,000 troops a month while recruiting only about 27,000 replacements.
2/3 Its offensive has produced extraordinarily little for that cost.
What happens next?
2026: Russia can keep fighting and launching major strikes. But its ability to translate enormous losses into meaningful territorial gains is already poor.
2027 onward: If losses continue to outpace recruitment, Russia faces an increasingly ugly choice: reduce the tempo and ambitions of the war, or extract substantially more soldiers and resources from Russian society.
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