Vladimir Putin has no plan for winning in Ukraine

ON JUNE 10TH 2026 the fighting between Russia and Ukraine will have lasted longer than the first world war. That conflict, too, was supposed to have been over in a few weeks. As in Ukraine, fighting became bogged down and the high command squandered men’s lives in one doomed assault after another. In August 1918 the allies used new tactics to break the German lines. Today, by contrast, Ukraine will not surrender and Russia does not know how to win.

Even in a dictatorship, a leader who has no theory of victory is storing up trouble. As Tsar Nicholas II learnt to his cost in the first world war, sooner or later there will be a reckoning. The more that Mr Putin throws away Russian lives pointlessly today, the greater the crisis he will face tomorrow.

The root of Mr Putin’s problem is he has been unable to defeat Ukraine on the battlefield. The offensive in summer 2025—his third and most ambitious—has been an abject failure. Russia’s tactic is to send small groups of men into the killzone. Yet, if some break through, the rest cannot take advantage of their progress. As soon as they mass, they are obliterated.

The numbers tell this terrible story. In the year to mid-October, Russian casualties grew by almost 60%, to somewhere between 984,000 and 1,438,000. The dead now number between 190,000 and 480,000. Perhaps five Russian soldiers are dying for every Ukrainian. And yet over the summer Mr Putin’s armies failed to take a single large city. Russia is advancing, but to occupy the four oblasts it claims as its own would require five more years. If the killing continues at 2025’s rate, total Russian casualties will reach almost 4m.

That lack of progress explains why Mr Putin is also striking Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. He hopes to make parts of Ukraine uninhabitable and to destroy morale. Russia has started talking about the devastating winter that lies ahead. Nobody should trivialise Ukrainian suffering, but attacking civilians rarely causes a country to collapse. People already know that Russia is merciless. Every missile that strikes a civilian target only underlines how much they have to lose should Mr Putin prevail.

In contrast, Ukraine’s deep strikes inside Russia may change some minds. Polling suggests that 70% of Russians say they support the war. Perhaps only one in five of these people is a fervent believer. The rest take the easier path of refusing to think about what is happening. But by hitting oil infrastructure and airports as the economy slows and budgets tighten, Ukraine may be able to jog Russians into confronting reality.

Mr Putin also had hopes that America’s president, Donald Trump, would tip the balance in his favour. By withdrawing vital American support—in particular, on intelligence and for air-defence—Mr Trump could indeed impose a bad peace on Ukraine. Early in 2025, he briefly tried to do so.

Yet those tactics no longer look likely. The peacemaker in the White House continues to blow hot and cold with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, whom he dislikes. But Europe is now paying Ukraine’s bills, neutralising MAGA’s main gripe that America was being exploited. And Mr Trump seems to have concluded that throwing Ukraine to the bears would ruin his aspiration to become a Nobel prize-winning statesman. In October he even imposed sanctions on Lukoil and Rosneft, two Russian oil companies.

Lastly, Mr Putin may hope European resolve will crumble. The money Ukraine needs to keep on fighting will run out in February. The prospect of populist governments that are less hostile to the Kremlin already hangs over the continent. A divided and dysfunctional Europe will struggle to give Ukraine the long-term backing it needs to thrive once the fighting stops.

But that is not the same as abandoning Ukraine in the heat of battle. The case that Ukraine is the key to European security is iron-clad. If Kyiv falls, Mr Putin will have control over Europe’s biggest army and a formidable arms industry. Work is afoot to set up a credible multi-year financing mechanism that goes beyond seizing Russian assets. If it succeeds, Mr Putin will know that Ukraine’s economy can outlast Russia’s.

Some people think the Russian president must believe time is on his side, or he would have already sued for peace. Yet the lesson of Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq is that leaders cling on in the hope that something—anything—will turn up. So the chances are that Mr Putin will continue to fight in 2026,  waiting for his generals to find a new way of waging war, for Ukraine to run out of men, for Mr Zelensky’s government to collapse, or for Mr Trump or Europe to lose patience.

But if none of these things happen, Mr Putin will be storing up a terrible reckoning. Russia has mortgaged its economy, harried Finland and Sweden into joining NATO, subordinated itself to China and scythed through a generation of young men. And for what? The moment this question forms on Russian lips, the world will face a new danger. Mr Putin could accept defeat abroad and impose terror at home. Or he could escalate. ■