Year Three of Putin’s three-day war
If the outcome of peace talks rewards Russia’s aggression, Putin and his kind will set their sights on other targets.
Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s planned blitzkrieg to capture Kyiv in two or three days has now lasted three years. As leaders in the United States and Europe begin to talk peace, the costs, consequences and lessons of Putin’s war are coming into focus.
Costs Topping the list of the war’s costs are the human losses, which are horrific.
The United Nations estimates at least 12,300 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in Putin’s war, though Ukraine’s agency charged with investigating war crimes places estimates 100,000 civilians killed. Putin’s war has displaced more than 10 million Ukrainians. Russia has abducted 260,000 Ukrainian children. And Russia has forcibly transported thousands of Ukrainian adults into “filtration centers” inside Russia. All told, investigators are sifting through evidence of 58,000 war crimes committed by Russian troops.
Western intelligence agencies report that 80,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed in the war. Those same agencies estimate 200,000 Russian troops killed, with another 400,000 seriously wounded. Russian infantrymen fighting in Ukraine grimly joke, “A hundred men eat breakfast, seven men eat dinner.”
Then there are the material losses, which are massive.
In 36 months of fighting, Ukraine has lost 1,062 tanks, 435 armored fighting vehicles, 1,205 infantry fighting vehicles, 409 mine-resistant vehicles, hundreds of artillery pieces, 103 fixed-wing aircraft and 50 helicopters.
Russia has lost a staggering 3,740 tanks, 1,899 armored fighting vehicles, 5,459 infantry fighting vehicles, 615 armored personnel carriers, 3,835 transport vehicles, more than 1,200 artillery pieces, 455 rocket-launch systems, 136 fixed-wing aircraft, 151 helicopters and 28 warships.
Russian missiles and drones have hit virtually every corner of Ukraine — scarring Kyiv and Kharkiv, turning Mariupol into rubble, flattening historical sites in Odessa, bombing dams in Ukraine’s south and destroying 1,200 cultural sites. International observers estimate that Ukraine’s reconstruction will cost more than $486 billion. (For perspective, Ukraine’s entire pre-war GDP was $199 billion.)
Ukrainian drones and missiles have stuck at least 15 Russian refineries, torching gas and oil reserves, refining capacity, storage facilities and a healthy portion of Putin’s kleptocratic wealth.
The payoff for all that killing and destruction: Putin’s henchmen control about 18% of Ukrainian territory today. They held more than 25% in 2022.
Ukraine, interestingly, holds 470 square miles of Russian territory.
Consequences Putin claimed before his invasion that Ukraine was “not a real country,” that Ukraine was “entirely created by Russia,” that Ukraine was a mere extension of Greater Russia.
The irony is threefold.
First, Putin’s war on Ukraine and attempt to erase Ukraine galvanized the Ukrainian people, lit the fuse of Ukrainian nationalism and laid bare the very premise of Putin’s war of war crimes: If Ukraine wasn’t a viable, unified nation-state three years ago, it undeniably is today.
Second, while Putin thought his war on Ukraine would expose a feeble and failed state in Kyiv, it actually exposed the weakness of his own regime: There are countless reports of desertions and fratricide within the Russian military. In Russia’s Southern Military District alone, 18,000 military personnel have deserted. In 2023, Putin had to put down a military mutiny. Plus, rebel Russian soldiers are fighting alongside Ukrainian troops as part of the Free Russia Legion. Their goal is “to liberate our home — Russia — in order to destroy the Putin regime and establish a new free country in Russia.”
Third, support for Russia among Russians is tenuous: When Putin ordered 300,000 reserve military personnel back into service, 200,000 Russians fled to Kazakhstan, 70,000 fled to Georgia, 66,000 fled to European Union countries. All told, a million Russians have fled their homeland since the start of Putin’s war.
The ironies and unintended consequences don’t end there.
One of Putin’s motivations for invading Ukraine was to prevent the further expansion of NATO. Yet the NATO alliance is larger and more united today than it was before Putin launched this war.
Soon after Putin’s lunge at Kiev, longtime neutrals Sweden and Finland sought NATO membership. After they were brought into NATO, they quickly joined their fellow allies in working to restore NATO’s deterrent capabilities.
Indeed, it could be said that rather than scaring NATO to death, Putin’s attempt to crush Ukraine scared NATO back to life. For years, the alliance had been drifting. But with Putin trying to rebuild the Russian Empire, there’s broader support — and clearer need — for NATO than at any time since the coldest days of the Cold War.
The United States has expanded its presence in Europe by thousands of troops since February 2022, with a permanent U.S. Army garrison now based in Poland and U.S. Air Force refueling operations shifting from Germany to Poland.
Britain is deploying 20,000 troops to defend NATO’s northern flank. Poland is investing 5% of GDP in defense. France is making historic increases in defense spending. Germany is spearheading a NATO battlegroup in Lithuania, has nearly doubled defense spending since 2022 and is leading efforts to construct a continentwide missile-defense system. Finland, with a massive reserve force of 870,000 troops, is standing up a new NATO land command.
NATO’s European members are leading battlegroups in Estonia, Lithuania and Romania, defending the skies of Eastern Europe, and protecting the Baltic Sea. Indeed, with Sweden and Finland now in the NATO fold, the alliance has turned the Baltic Sea into a NATO lake.
Moreover, the alliance is returning to its primary mission of deterring war by preparing for war: