Putin Has Reduced Russia to Zero in Ukraine

The Arithmetic of a Failed “SMO”: Seven Minutes That Became Four Years

The myth of “Kyiv in three days” is by now a cliché. There was also the dismissive refrain — “What’s there to Ukraine? A couple of days and that’s it” — voiced by propagandist Margarita Simonyan. But it was her colleague Zakhar Prilepin who went even further. In late January 2021, he declared:

“If Russia accepts the ‘DPR’ and ‘LPR’ into its composition, the six-year war waged by the Ukrainian army will end six minutes after our troops appear on the line of contact. And after seven minutes, it will be clear that all Ukrainian ‘volunteer battalions,’ all the ‘cyborgs,’ all forty million of their combat bloggers, all their bravado — and, most importantly, all their independence and sovereignty — are worth exactly zero.”

In the end, the “zero” did not belong to Ukraine.

An Unplanned “Reality on the Ground”

Since then, Russia has formally annexed occupied territories, launched a full-scale invasion, and Prilepin himself has survived an assassination attempt. There was no blitzkrieg.

As later emerged, Kremlin strategists had built their calculations on a pivotal assumption: only 10% of Ukrainians would resist, while 90% would greet Russian troops with bread and salt — and perhaps even applications to join the ruling party.

The “reality on the ground” — a phrase Moscow once used with confidence — proved profoundly miscalculated. Four years on, the Russian army is clawing for ruins and tree lines. Not only has all of Ukraine refused to submit, but even Donbas remains unconquered.

The most telling evidence is not merely Russia’s staggering casualties. It is Moscow’s recurring insistence, in “negotiations,” on the complete withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from Donbas. That demand, in itself, is the clearest metric of the “success” of the so-called “Special Military Ooperation,” now entering its fifth year under the banner of the “second army of the world.”

For many Russians, February 24, 2022, began almost mundanely. At 6:30 a.m., Belgorod region governor Vyacheslav Gladkov spoke almost cheerfully about extending school holidays due to canceled classes near the Ukrainian border.

Exactly four years later, he reports that Belgorod has endured massive missile and drone attacks.

In early 2022, Russian defense briefings spoke in sweeping terms — “axes,” “regions.” By February 2026, measurable “gains” are counted in square kilometers and forest belts. During the third week of February 2026, Russian forces captured 22 km -- at the average cost of approximately 295 soldiers per square kilometer.

The arithmetic of attrition is stark — roughly two and a half companies for one kilometer. The losses in equipment, from tanks to warships, scarcely need elaboration.

Thus, in real time, the “second army of the world” transitions into its fifth year of war.

The Price of Illusion

Over these four years, Russia’s economy has evolved into a façade of stability. Behind reported “GDP growth” lies deep structural erosion. The cost of the war has become for Russia’s federal budget not merely a line of dry statistics, but a sentence handed down to its future.

By various estimates, Russia has spent roughly $550 billion on the war — around $16.6 billion per month. Combined allocations for “national defense” and “internal security” now account for 38–41% of total federal expenditure.

Despite fiscal maneuvering, this year’s projected budget deficit may approach $100 billion. To cover the gap, the Kremlin has raised VAT to 22% and introduced additional burdens that fall squarely on ordinary citizens.

Energy sector — long the cornerstone of Russia’s stability — is weakening. In January 2026, fossil fuel export revenues fell to their lowest level since the invasion began. Resources that could have driven technological modernization are instead consumed by war.

Sanctions: From Shock to Managed Constriction

By the fourth year of war, sanctions have shifted from immediate shock to calibrated containment.

On February 1, 2026, a new EU and G7 mechanism introduced an automatic price cap of $44.10 per barrel on Russian oil — only $10–15 above production costs, effectively stripping away excess profit.

Sanctions now target not only companies but individual vessels. In 2025–2026, the United States and the EU blacklisted over 150 tankers, disrupting logistics chains. Even ports in nominally “friendly” countries increasingly refuse sanctioned ships, wary of secondary sanctions, thus effectively closing the Kremlin’s last major loophole.

Infrastructure maintenance is becoming increasingly difficult. As of February 2026, over 45% of Russia’s Airbus and Boeing passenger fleet has been grounded for parts cannibalization.

The U.S. Treasury now holds authority to disconnect foreign banks from the dollar system if they facilitate Russian payments for dual-use goods. Transaction times between Russia and China have expanded from two days to several weeks, with intermediary fees climbing to 10–12%. Imports to Russia are becoming prohibitively expensive.

Sanctions function as slow asphyxiation. They do not produce instant collapse — but they steadily raise the cost of survival and sanctions circumvention.

Few analysts believe Russia will halt on its own. Two potential force majeure scenarios are most often cited: systemic economic breakdown or the physical death of Putin.

Leading financial institutions, including the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, assessing the pace at which Putin is burning through the reserves of the past in pursuit of an illusion of victory in Ukraine, indicate that Russia has already entered a phase of critical resource depletion.

The National Wealth Fund — once presented as a strategic cushion — is reportedly depleted by approximately 85%. Should Urals crude fall below $40 per barrel, Russia’s federal budget could begin destabilizing within six to nine months. At current levels of $45–50, fiscal resilience may extend to mid-2027 — after which monetary emission may become unavoidable.

There is no other way to sustain among Russians the illusion that “everything is going according to the SMO plan.” As early as the second half of this year, analysts suggest the possible introduction of “hybrid” food rationing — through administratively set “social prices” on staple goods, the so-called “borscht basket.”

Yet it may soon be not the “borscht basket” that requires recalculation, but a “shurpa set” — a traditional Central Asian soup.

An officially acknowledged labor shortfall of 2.4 million people can no longer be offset by migrants from Central Asia. Further reliance on such labor, critics warn, would “dilute Russian national identity” — a concern voiced most loudly by those proclaiming, “I am Russian.”

The question, “How much longer can this continue?” concerns many — not only in Ukraine. According to analysts, the length of time the Kremlin can sustain an intensive war depends on three key variables.

Oil prices.

China’s position — even partial restrictions on dual-use exports could halt Russia’s defense industry within six months.

The potential breakdown of the so-called “social contract” — “we pay you, you stay silent” — between Putin and Russian society. For now, loyalty is being purchased. But with inflation exceeding 20 percent, even this “war-for-cash” model will lose its nationwide viability.

At the regional level, it already is. Authorities are cutting enlistment bonuses for contracts with the Ministry of Defense and slashing social spending. If the current level of sanctions pressure persists, experts estimate that Russia’s internal resources could begin to unravel critically within 12 to 18 months. If pressure intensifies, the timeline may shorten further.

The most telling aspect is that all of this is well understood in Russia itself. Even by those who, in recent years, loudly invoked the “Kyiv regime,” insisted that “sanctions benefit us,” spoke of “denazification,” “biolabs,” and a supposed “Western proxy war to the last Ukrainian.”

Today, those slogans — along with the letters “Z” and “V” — are flaking off the ceremonial façade of Putin’s Russia. What replaces them is fatigue — and, above all, uncertainty.

The same Zakhar Prilepin who in January 2021 predicted that Ukraine would lose its independence in seven minutes wrote on February 23, 2026, that he now looks “with tenderness” at political analysts who had claimed that “Zelensky and Ukraine had only days left.” He now calls for a “sober assessment of reality.”

But this is not sobriety. It is merely another bout of historical hangover.

After four years of full-scale war against Ukraine, many Russians are beginning to sense that they, too, are drifting toward zero. The real sobering — and the necessary detoxification of Russia — still lies ahead.

Max Meltzer