Start planning for post-war realities
Russia is not on a winning trajectory. It is burning people, money, ships, and time—while resorting to cheap risk inflation against NATO to slow Western aid. You don’t have to take it on faith; the data are piling up.
Brazen but brittle coercion at NATO’s edge. On 19 Sept 2025, three Russian MiG-31s penetrated Estonian airspace for ~12 minutes; Tallinn invoked NATO Article 4. Moscow denied it, but NATO scrambled F-35s and allies called it reckless—classic risk-by-proxy when you can’t change the battlefield. (Reuters)
Pokrovsk meat-grinder, low payoff. Russia is throwing waves of infantry at Pokrovsk to “unlock” Donbas—and stalling. ISW’s 19 Sept update: continuous assaults, no advance. Kyiv says it’s inflicting heavy losses and counterpunching around Pokrovsk/Dobropillia. (Fog-of-war caveat, but the direction is consistent.) (Institute for the Study of War)
Sick, scraped-barrel manpower. Multiple outlets report units of HIV/hepatitis-positive soldiers segregated and sent to the Pokrovsk sector, sometimes with armbands denoting illness. Treat specifics with caution, but even pro-Kremlin commentators have aired the “separate units” claim—evidence of a force accepting extreme health risks to keep numbers up. (The Telegraph)
Strategic naval retreat in the Black Sea. Ukrainian strikes forced Russia to rebase most combat-ready ships out of Crimea; even Russian-installed officials conceded relocations. The fleet’s freedom of maneuver has been curtailed since 2024 and remains constrained. (Reuters)
Deep strikes inside Russia, with real economic effects. Ukrainian drones repeatedly hit refineries and petrochemical hubs (Bashkortostan, Volgograd, Saratov, Samara). Novatek’s Ust-Luga complex suffered an attack in August, forcing export rerouting via Novorossiisk. Knock-on effects include gasoline export bans, fuel tightness, and ad-hoc logistics fixes. (Reuters)
Air defense saturation ≠ victory. Russia still fires huge swarms (805 drones on 7 Sept; ~580 drones + 40 missiles on 20 Sept), but these are costly holding actions that don’t create durable gains—and they provoke more Western air-defense support. (Reuters)
War finances: narrowing room to maneuver.
Sanctions vise tightening on lifelines. The EU’s 19th package is moving (including LNG measures and a “shadow fleet” crackdown); a bipartisan U.S. bill targets Russia’s sanctions-evading tanker network; the EU is advancing plans to use frozen Russian assets more directly. Each step chokes revenue or raises costs. (Reuters)
Arms dependency on pariahs. Independent analysis estimates millions of DPRK shells delivered to Russia; Tehran’s Shahed supply/know-how underpins mass-drone attacks—clear signals that Russia’s own stocks/industry can’t sustain rate of fire alone. (RUSI)
Elite attrition and bunkerization. The resignation of technocrat Dmitry Kozak—one of the last credible internal skeptics—signals a Kremlin doubling down on loyalty over competence. That’s how you make worse decisions faster. (The Washington Post)
None of these items alone “ends” the war. Together, they sketch a state grinding forward only by paying higher and higher prices for smaller and smaller gains.
Because they’re cheap leverage. When battlefield momentum won’t deliver, Moscow inflates risk to nudge Western self-deterrence: airspace incidents (Estonia), drones straying over Poland/Romania, nuclear name-checking in exercises. It’s not a plan to fight NATO; it’s a plan to spook NATO. (Reuters)
The sustainment trend is negative for Russia: expensive manpower (including convicts), constrained energy revenues, high borrowing, imported munitions, and a navy pushed from its main base. Meanwhile, Ukraine proves it can strike deep, ship grain under fire, and hold the line at places like Pokrovsk even under massive pressure. (Again: no confirmed Russian advance there on Sept 19.) (Reuters)
The Atlantic’s blunt framing is apt: Russia is losing not just to Ukraine, but to its own strategic self-harm. That’s what national exhaustion looks like. (The Atlantic)
1) Plan for a post-war Ukraine that needs speed, not pity. Ukraine’s reconstruction bill is staggering (World Bank est. ~$524 bn). What helps is front-loaded, shovel-ready financing for ports, power, housing, and local industry—with procurement rules that reward speed and transparency. If you work in energy, construction, logistics, finance, agri-tech, or digital services, start mapping partnerships now. (Reuters)
2) Lock in Europe’s security dividend. The right answer to drone/missile terror is air- and missile-defense depth across NATO’s east, hardened energy grids, and standardized munitions pipelines. The EU/US moves on shadow fleet and LNG show how to convert sanctions into durable force multipliers; keep pushing enforcement. (Reuters)
3) Starve Russia’s war economy of oxygen. Priorities: enforce oil-price caps by naming/shaming/delisting dark fleet hulls; insurance and port-service denial for violators; tighten dual-use tech export controls; expand secondary sanctions on facilitators. Use the profits from frozen assets and, where lawful, the assets themselves to underwrite Ukraine’s rebuild. (Reuters)
4) Think beyond borders. Support Russia-language independent media and civil society in exile; fund demining and war-crimes documentation; prepare for transitional justice and a regional reintegration that ties Ukraine’s growth to EU single-market access and NATO security guarantees.
5) Don’t wait for a date. No one can timestamp the final straw. But “falling” is a process, and it’s underway. The smart posture is to assume a hard landing is possible—then be ready to move personnel, capital, and kit the day the window opens.
Russia is bleeding for inches at Pokrovsk, evacuating ships from Crimea, juggling fuel shortages at home, taxing and borrowing into a slowing, high-rate economy—all while poking NATO to keep us second-guessing ourselves. That’s not strength; it’s managed decline with propaganda. The winning move for the rest of us is to plan, invest, and build—a safer Ukraine, a sturdier Europe, a NATO that treats the Black Sea like the Baltics: defended, connected, and open for business.