How Russia Is Winning the War Against Ukraine • OP News

John Mearsheimer is an imperial scholar who predicted the Ukraine War years ago (along with many others from within the Empire itself). I call him imperial because he argues not that American warmongering is bad but that it should be done better. But even an imperial clock is right twice a day, in this case about the start and end of the Ukraine war.

Recently Mearsheimer made another prediction, saying:

“The Russians are going to win the war.
They’re not going to win a decisive victory but they’re going to end up conquering a huge chunk of Ukrainian territory beyond what they already have and they’re going to take Ukraine and make sure it remains a dysfunctional rump state.”

What’s interesting about Mearsheimer as a scholar is that his argument for this is quite clearly broken down, so if you want to disagree, there are many clear points of falsifiability You can watch the one-hour talk yourself, but herein it is broken down.

Military Manpower

At the onset of the invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022, Ukraine’s armed forces numbered approximately 250,000 active personnel. Through conscription and other efforts, that number grew to almost 700,000 by July of the same year. After exhausting auxiliary units and reserves, the Ukrainian army grew to around 1 million. However, some estimates suggest Ukraine has lost as many as 80,000 soldiers, and a further 400,000 have been wounded. Ukraine has, therefore, lost between 20% and 25% of its initial active force.

Russia, meanwhile, has by some estimations lost some 60% of its pre-war active military personnel, but still has a stronger army overall. Russia began with 1.45 million active personnel in 2022. By April 2022, that number grew to 1.5 million, following a decree by Russian President Vladimir Putin to expand the armed forces. Russian casualties are believed to be as high as 900,000, and deaths as many as 250,000 – however, it’s hard to determine just how accurate these reports are. If true, it means Russia has lost substantially more soldiers than Ukraine, but doesn’t mean Ukraine has the upper hand.

Despite heavy losses, Putin is reportedly facing few obstacles in recruiting new troops. U.S. intelligence assessments suggest that Russia’s conscription system and financial incentives could allow it to sustain high troop levels for at least another two years.

The base assumption of Mearsheimer’s argument is that the Ukraine War is a war of attrition. I won’t get into that beyond, well, look at it. On top of that assumption he says that victory in a war of attrition depends on three factors:

Resolve
Population Size
Artillery

Broadly and brutally speaking, how much hot metal you can fling at how many bodies before they break? This is the worst sort of war which leads to the worst sort of peace, but after the crossing of every red line about not shoving NATO up Russia’s ass, here we are, knee deep in shit.

To summarize Mearsheimer’s casualty calculus, here are the three points above in table form, with the numbers he pegs to them. I’ve linked to sources for the numbers further down.

According to Mearsheimer, Russia has a 5:1 population advantage and 5–10:1 artillery advantage. Attrition warfare (important qualifier) is about blood and metal and Russia simply has more blood and metal to spill. Note that within this model any population/artillery difference would lead to one side being attrited (assuming both sides have the same level of resolve). So the ratio could be 2:1 and Russia would still win, but it looks more like 5:1 or worse all around.

To illustrate this macabre model, you can see it drawn here as literal vats of blood:

Population size shown as the size of the vats, artillery power shown as the size of the outlet on the enemy side

To repeat, Russia simply has 5x the population, ie 5x as much blood to spill. Russia also has 5–10x the artillery (which I’ve illustrated as 7x), which is how quickly you can bleed out the other side. That’s illustrated as an outlet on Ukraine’s side which is 7x bigger than the blood pipe on Russia’s side.

You can see how this works out, as Ukraine has already lost a huge chunk of its population and effectively two (nearly three) armies worth of men already. They’re at the bottom of the blood barrel, with a huge hole in the side.

As you can see from this model, the only things that would help Ukraine are NATO putting their own troops in the blood bucket (which they won’t do) or attacking deep within Russia itself to attrit war production (which NATO won’t allow).

America keeps funneling (very profitable) arms into the conflict but no bodies. And it keeps Ukraine’s arms tied. Ukraine is all flailing limbs and no torso, which does not help with the blood supply problem. This is the fundamental math problem Ukraine faces. They are bleeding too much and they have very little blood left. Their ‘allies’ will give them a thousand needles (on debt) but no blood transfusions. And so inevitably, this patient will die. This is what’s meant by ‘winning’ in a war of attrition. It’s pretty fucked up.

Math Instead of Maps

So much of war reporting is about maps, but it’s really about men and materiel. Territory is tactics, but it’s not a strategy. In many ways territory is what you get after you kill the enemy, not how you kill them. In this theory of war, the point is not finding land and taking it but finding men and materiel and destroying them.

Hence as much as western media crowed about Putin ‘failing’ to capture Kyiv, it’s unlikely that this was ever an objective. It was likely a feint to pin Ukrainian troops there while Russia was able to setup a defensive line around the Donbass. Then the Ukranians nominally defending their land became attackers, a role which traditionally carries 3:1 casualties. Then the Russians retreated to a second defensive line, which made map jockeys cheer, but all the while the cruel math was destroying the Ukranian military at an atrocious rate.

Population

If you search the population numbers in the model, it actually looks like Russia is only 3.5x bigger, but Mearsheimer says Ukraine has lost 8 million people to migration, with 3 million going to Russia, which the UN confirmed. This lowers the blood in the bucket dramatically.

Hence Ukraine goes from 41m to 33m and Russia from 147m to 150m. Hence the ratio goes from 1:3.5 to 1:4.5. I think 5x population in Russia is a reasonable estimate as refugee numbers are lossy and so much of the Ukrainian population is (tragically) internally displaced.

When we’re talking about fighting numbers, the picture is even worse. Ukraine has already effectively thrown (and lost) two armies into the fight.

Western media and its consumers talk about how Russia is depending on the mercenary Wagner group like that’s a bad thing. But all this means is the the mainline Russian troops haven’t been engaged yet. Meanwhile they talk about Ukraine throwing children and old men with Panzerfausts into battle.

Old dogs and young dogs, or as RUSI.org puts it: “Against the odds: members of Ukraine’s Territorial Defence Forces pictured in April 2022. Image: Viktor Ognevyuk / Wikimedia Commons”

It seems as though Russia has been systematically destroying multiple iterations of the Ukrainian army without fully engaging its mainline forces. This horrible state of affairs is constantly spun as ‘inspirational’ for western audiences so war profiteers can keep bleeding them for blood money, but for Ukraine it’s just blood, and they simply don’t have enough.

Artillery

The general equation of war is blood + bullets, and on the second account, Ukraine is also screwed. For all the talk of sanctions crippling Russia, Russia is the largest country on Earth full of natural resources and productive capacity. Sanctions have crippled Europe (to America’s benefit), but not Russia. Russia can make its own materiel and most of the world still trades with them. As Mearsheimer says about artillery:

“Then we come to the artillery imbalance. Almost all of the reports on that balance say the number is either five to one, seven to one, or maybe ten to one in the Russians’ favor. This has massive consequences. Massive consequences. Do you just want to think about what this war is all about? It’s two armies standing toe to toe, trying to kill each other with massive amounts of firepower, and one side has a five to one or a seven to one or a ten to one advantage. The side that’s on the horror end of that ratio is in the deep kimchi. This is really horrendous. And by the way, that country that’s on the downside of that ratio in artillery also is on the downside in the population ratio.”

Another point is that the Russian artillery is Russian artillery, while Ukrainian artillery is largely begged and borrowed. Not only does Ukraine have less weaponry, they’re not allowed to really use it. They can get western wunderwaffen… but only use them to bomb their own country. For example, they talked about getting F-16s, which means using a high-maintenance jet to bomb their own backyard (with $1 million bombs). This makes no sense, but it makes headlines and makes someone a big commission, so who gives a shit. While the US gives Ukraine weapons (on debt), it literally does not let them use them to attack Russia where it hurts.

But let’s return to basic numbers,

Ukraine simply doesn’t have the materiel, and we are living in a materiel world. Quoting from western news outlets, they’ve been pathetically low on basic artillery. According to the New York Times in November 2022, Ukraine was firing 2–4,000 shells per day. Meanwhile British think tank RUSI.org estimated that Russia was firing 33,000 rounds per day. For sense of what this looks like inside the horrific World War I type trenches, there’s Luke Mogelson’s front-line report:

“The most advanced and expensive U.S. contributions to the war have been longer-range howitzers and missile systems that operate from the rear. The infantry on the front relies on rudimentary muzzle-loaded mortars, for which there is currently a dire ammunition shortage. The major in charge of artillery for Pavlo’s battalion told me that in Kherson his mortar teams had fired about three hundred shells a day; now they were rationed to five a day. The Russians averaged ten times that rate.“

In a war of attrition, a battalion with five shells is just human sacrifice.

People might say Russia is also running out of artillery and point to the head of Wagner complaining about running out of artillery… but consider the source. Russia’s motivation, like a poker player with a winner hand, is to get the army they’re trying to destroy to commit more into a losing position. Shortly after these very public complaints, Wagner took Bakhmut. War is the art of deception and Russians don’t even have to try that hard to fool Americans. Some Americans are so deep in self-deception that the work is already done.

Poll: Who is in the right, Russia or Ukraine?

Resolve

Resolve, or morale, is tricky because it can’t really be measured, but makes a huge difference. The western media loves to talk about resolve because fuck math, it’s boring. Mainstream media’s job is producing emotive stories to sell deadly toys, like Paw Patrol for homicidal adults.

While Ukrainian resolves is indubitable (their country is under attack) so is Russian resolve, which westerners willfully do not understand. People outraged about China building up its military in China refuse to understand how Russia feels about enemy troops on its border. Mearsheimer breaks this threat perception down into two parts. First is how threatened Russia felt by NATO fiddling with Ukraine before the war and how much more threatened it feels now. Westerners often talk about killing Putin, regime change, and dismembering Russia. This only strengthens Russian resolve, making Ukraine an existential fight for them as well.

What is highly dubious is American resolve. First off, we have no skin in the game, and second, our military has been losing wars and abandoning allies for decades. The great American innovation in empire has been figuring out that there’s more money in losing wars. You can loot your own treasury, fuck over your allies, and do it all far from home.

Recent history is full of discarded American allies, frozen conflicts like in Korea, and outright devastation of countries we purported to ‘save’.

Territorial Gains and Losses

As of May 2025, Russian forces occupy approximately 43,572 square miles of Ukrainian territory, accounting for around 18.7% of Ukraine’s landmass.

As it stands, Ukraine’s territorial gains inside Russia are very limited, and its military has not regained major occupied regions like Donetsk, Luhansk, Crimea, or significant chunks of Kherson or Zaporizhzhia.

From this perspective, Russia has the upper hand, and it is not by a close margin.

Supply Chains and Production

Ukraine has significantly bolstered its defense industry, with approximately 500 arms producers employing nearly 300,000 people as of 2024. This year, the sector’s capacity is expected to reach $35 billion, up from $1 billion at the outset of the war. Ukraine now also produces roughly one-third of its military equipment domestically, with near-total self-sufficiency in drone production thanks to amateur drone enthusiasts creating as many as 100,000 drones per month.

While Ukraine still relies heavily on NATO countries for its large weaponry, Russia has been almost entirely dependent on its own resources since the invasion began. Russia continues to rely on its extensive industrial base to this day, producing an estimated 3 to 4.5 million artillery shells annually, which is almost triple the combined output of Europe and the United States. Sanctions, however, have led to some challenges, including a 22% reduction in funding for aircraft production as a result of manufacturing delays.

Both countries have developed significant wartime production capabilities, but Russia remains more self-sufficient – and if NATO support were withdrawn, Moscow would be able to sustain its war effort far longer than Kyiv.

Russia holds more territory, has greater self-sufficiency in weapons production, and maintains a larger pool of manpower despite heavier losses. By no realistic metric could Ukraine be described as winning this war at this stage – a reality that likely explains Kyiv’s rumored willingness to make territorial concessions as part of what might hopefully be the last round of negotiations.

A Bloodbath

Since resolve is roughly equal on the Russian and Ukrainian side and actually drained by the Americans, all that’s left is population and artillery. Here, as mentioned, Ukraine is cooked. Russia wins by sheer attrition, but it’s a terrible victory which merely moves their NATO problem a few years forward and few oblasts over.

As you can see, there are no good guys here, no winners and losers when it really comes down to it. Russia will ‘win’ this war, but what do they win? A fucking ruin. This has been brutal, grinding trench warfare like World War I, leading to deeply embittered people on both sides. And you know how that worked out last time.

A frozen conflict in the time of economic collapse is going to thaw out and explode faster than all the shit under the Siberian tundra. There will be no lasting peace here. Just a brief absence of war.

Population + Artillery + Resolve = Russia wins the Ukraine War.