As I’ve pointed out several times this year, Russia is in a bind. It’s economy is contracting, it is losing territory on the battlefield. It is losing soldiers faster than it can replace them. It’s oil refineries are frequently in flames. And polling indicates Russians are turning on the war and even on Putin himself.
Putin is doing his best to stay on top of this quickly degrading situation by making more threats and looking for more soldiers without having to resort to drafting them. We’ll get to all of this below but let’s start with a poll.
Polling is a tricky business in an authoritarian state: No reliable surveys are possible when respondents are afraid to speak their mind for fear of personal consequences. In September 2024, a Muscovite by the name of Yuri Kokhovets was sentenced to five years in prison for giving the “wrong” answer in a street poll about the war in Ukraine. In such conditions, the results of any opinion polls are necessarily skewed toward the socially expected — and personally safer — responses.
With this disclaimer in mind, it is nothing short of remarkable that last month’s polling by the independent Levada Center has shown that 62 percent of Russians favor peace talks with Ukraine, with only 27 percent wishing to continue the war. One can only imagine what the actual result would be if one removed the fear factor from the polling.
Of course the opinions of the masses don’t matter in an authoritarian state, so Putin can safely ignore those polls. But there are other problems he can’t ignore, such as his stalled efforts on the battlefield.
In the next four or five months, Putin “may not be able to negotiate from a position of strength anymore,” Kaupo Rosin, head of Estonia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, said in an interview at the intelligence agency’s headquarters in Tallinn.
Rosin detailed a combination of economic, military and societal pressures facing Putin that could force him to the negotiating table. “Time is not in Russia’s favor,” he said…
“I do not hear any more talk about total victory. People (in the Kremlin) recognize that the situation on the Ukrainian battlefield is not going too well,” Rosin said, adding that Moscow was losing more men than it can recruit.
In the two years to January, Russian forces advanced at an average of 70 meters (230 feet) a day, with about 1,000 soldiers being killed or wounded daily, according to analysts from Washington DC-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and others.
Because losses of soldiers now exceed recruitment, Putin has been forced to come up with new options such as offering debt forgiveness for anyone who signs up.
President Vladimir Putin signed a law on Monday forgiving up to 10 million rubles ($140,000) in unpaid debt for new military recruits and their spouses, marking the latest state financial incentive aimed at luring more men to fight in the war against Ukraine.
The law applies to any Russian who signs a minimum one-year contract with the military to serve in Ukraine after May 1, 2026. The debt exemption also extends to the spouses of recruits.
Putin is also making efforts to recruit more foreign soldiers, many of whom are recruited under false pretenses.
The Kremlin plans to recruit at least 18,500 foreigners to fight in the Russian army in 2026, Ukrainian military intelligence officials claimed in late April. This figure represents a sharp rise in the annual recruitment of foreign nationals as Moscow seeks to continue the invasion of Ukraine amid heavy battlefield losses and domestic mobilization concerns…
The Kremlin has been widely accused of luring individuals to Russia on false pretenses before sending them to fight on the front lines in Ukraine. Social media advertising campaigns are a common tool to attract potential foreign recruits. Many victims report being offered civilian jobs with high salaries and pathways to future Russian citizenship, or logistical military roles in rear areas that do not involve participation in combat operations.
Once enlisted, the outlook for foreigners serving in the Russian army is typically grim. Survivors report receiving only minimal military training in Russia before being deployed to join the invasion of Ukraine. They are then often sent to the most active parts of the Ukrainian battlefield, leading to high casualty rates.
Adding 18,500 soldiers isn’t very significant when you are losing more soldiers than that per month. Maybe that will help Putin get through the summer but probably not much longer.
And that’s probably why Putin is also making a lot of threats designed to convince western countries that he’s about to unleash a deadly new attack on Kyiv.
Russia said on Tuesday its government has warned U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to evacuate diplomats and American citizens from Kyiv, as Moscow plots fresh strikes on the Ukrainian capital.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov “officially informed” Washington that Russia would be launching “systematic and consistent strikes” against Ukrainian military facilities and what Moscow called “decision-making centers,” in a call with Rubio on Monday, according to the Russian government.
The bottom line: Russia is not defeated but it is backed into a bit of a corner, which might make it even more dangerous in the short run. But the trend so far this year has definitely been bad for the country’s economy and the war. Putin really does need to call it quits pretty soon before the situation causes more people to turn on him and make people wonder whether he’s even fit to lead.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.
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