How Russia Still Thinks It’s Winning (and Why It Might Not Care)

The Attrition Fantasy

Putin’s strategy is built on the idea that Russia can outlast Ukraine and the West.

• Theory of victory: Keep grinding, keep bombing, keep the pressure on until Western support dries up.
• Winter warfare: Target Ukraine’s energy grid, freeze morale, and hope NATO gets cold feet.
• Trump factor: Kremlin insiders believe Trump won’t push hard for Ukraine, making the West look divided.

In short: Russia’s betting on exhaustion, not brilliance.

Inside Russia, the war is framed as a righteous crusade.

• State media paints Ukraine as a Nazi-infested puppet state.
• Dissent is crushed.
• Casualties are hidden or reframed as heroic sacrifice.

If you control the narrative, you can pretend you’re winning even when you’re not.

Russia’s economy is limping, but China’s support keeps it breathing.

• Energy exports rerouted to Beijing.
• Imports of drones, tech, and industrial goods have surged.
• Political bromance: Xi and Putin keep showing up at each other’s parades.

Russia sees this alliance as proof it’s not isolated, just pivoting.

The war helps distract from Russia’s internal mess:

• Corruption, terrorism, and regional instability are rising.
• Veterans returning home could become a political headache.
• But as long as the war dominates headlines, domestic problems stay in the shadows.

Does the Kremlin care about the cost? Only if it threatens control.

Putin still believes he can force Ukraine into negotiations not by compromise, but by escalation.

• More troops to Donetsk.
• Drone incursions into NATO airspace.
• Strategic leaks to Western media to stir division.

It’s not diplomacy. It’s theatre.

It’s not about peace or prosperity, it’s about control, survival, and narrative dominance. And whether it cares? Only insofar as losing would threaten the regime itself.

This isn’t a war of logic. It’s a war of stubbornness, spectacle, and slow-motion destruction. Russia’s strategy is to keep going until someone else blinks. The tragedy is that it does not care who pays the price as long as it’s not Putin.