September 25, 2025: Now in its fourth year, the Russian war effort in Ukraine has proved to be a failure on many levels—not just a military defeat, but an increasingly difficult disaster to explain to the Russian people. The government has sought to suppress disloyal or disruptive discussions among Russians, particularly in rural areas and regions occupied by non-Slavic peoples, where most soldiers for the Ukraine war were recruited. High signing bonuses and even higher death benefits for troops killed in Ukraine brought unexpected prosperity to regions that had seen little of it before. However, locals eventually noticed the growing number of graves for soldiers sent to Ukraine. Another touchy subject is the government’s refusal to call the fighting in Ukraine a war, instead labeling it a "Special Operation" against a neighboring country that hadn’t attacked anyone. Many Russians noted that people had eagerly fought Germans in World War II, but the Ukraine conflict lacked similar fervor.

In 2022, when Russian troops invaded Ukraine, the government claimed it was necessary to rescue Ukrainians from NATO and the European Economic Union. This justification made sense to many Russians until they realized Ukrainians actually wanted to join NATO and the European Union. The conflict with Ukraine began in 2014 when Russia seized the Crimean Peninsula and portions of two adjacent Ukrainian provinces. Russia argued it shouldn’t have to pay rent to Ukraine for the continued use of Sevastopol as a base for the Russian Black Sea Fleet, believing Crimea was mistakenly given to Ukraine before the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. Ukraine was willing to continue renting Sevastopol to Russia, but Russia decided it was simpler to declare Crimea Russian and seize it.

The subsequent war with Ukraine has devastated the Russian economy and led to the destruction of most of the Black Sea Fleet. Ukraine now controls much of the Black Sea, using this advantage to sustain agricultural exports and import civilian goods. NATO-supplied weapons and munitions enter via Poland.

Russian government officials struggle to explain this to their citizens, especially since Ukrainians have fought back, killing or disabling over a million Russian soldiers and driving just as many military-age men into exile. By late 2023, the government passed laws to prevent Russians from leaving to avoid military service. These laws made it difficult, but not impossible, to escape conscription. The government hesitated to enforce them rigorously due to growing complaints and dissent within Russia, worsened by Western economic sanctions that began right after the invasion and intensified as the war continued.

By 2025, the Russian economy was barely surviving. Russian oil exports were banned, forcing the country to smuggle oil and sell it at a discount. The enormous sums spent on recruiting soldiers and compensating families for those killed or disabled were compounded when Russia resorted to hiring foreign mercenaries—first North Koreans, then Central Asians, and now thousands of Cuban men—to sustain the war effort, as Russian men fled to avoid conscription. The Russian government can no longer afford this.

Western countries have supported Ukraine in several ways. Over $200 billion in military and economic aid has been supplied by NATO nations. Initially, most weapons came from the United States, but by 2025, European NATO nations were struggling to provide arms, as they lacked the capacity to manufacture large quantities of weapons and munitions for a war like Ukraine’s. Europeans had long depended on the U.S. for such military support. In 2024, a new American administration decided that European NATO countries would need to take primary responsibility for supporting Ukraine, a conflict closer to them than to Americans. The U.S. would sell weapons, munitions, and military supplies to European NATO nations for transfer to Ukraine.

Economic sanctions imposed by Western trading partners, which began in 2022 and intensified over time, have crippled Russia’s economy. The high costs of the war and increasingly effective efforts to disrupt Russian oil sales have led to an economic crisis. The government struggles to justify to its increasingly impoverished population why this must continue. At this rate, it won’t last much longer—a major problem for Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who has run out of resources, cash, and justifications for his war in Ukraine.