Putin’s established security forces.

They are better able to coordinate and communicate, keeping them one step ahead of the coup planners.

If this were true, combat veteran news added that shines an interesting new spotlight on the arrest of Salikov.

Before Putin gave the FSB the power to shut down communications at his command, warnings could have been given to those on the verge of arrest.

The Kremlin may still have gotten its men, but if a coup was in the offing, the alerts that couldn’t be sent during the most recent arrest could have served as signals for moving against Putin before his cronies came.

Salikov wasn’t able to get those signals.

Nobody was outside of a very select few people that Putin appears to have handchosen with his new whitelists.

Of course, the trouble with conspiracies like these that they can’t be proven unless they actually happen.

But what we may have seen with the arrest of Salikov and the internet shutdowns that preceded it is Putin managing to just about stay ahead of his former defense minister as Shyu prepared for a power grab.

A lot more will be revealed in the coming weeks.

If Shyu gets arrested or comes down with sudden Russian death syndrome, we’ll have a much better idea of whether the coup was actually being planned.

But there’s another twist to this tale.

There is a possibility that a certain US president may be behind Putin’s most recent coup fears.

Stick with us to the end and we’ll explain why.

Before that, and even without the suggestion of Shyu finally turning on Putin in the mix, what we’re seeing with these latest internet shutdowns is Putin’s paranoia manifesting to the point where it impacts every aspect of Russian society.

There’s been plenty of talk in the past about how Putin fears for his life and position.

Back in May 2025, the New Voice of Ukraine reported on Putin suddenly dropping hints about looking for a successor.

What seems to be a fairly benign thing for a dictator to do is actually another sign of Putin’s paranoia.

At least according to political analyst Vadim Denisenko.

In my view, the key factor is likely Putin’s increasingly paranoid mental state, Denisenko tells the outlet, adding, “Aging dictators often begin to grow paranoid about those around them.

That paranoia, I believe, is what ultimately forced him to start talking about a successor.

Talk of succession isn’t really about Putin caring even a little bit about what happens when he’s gone.

What this talk does is show those who might be planning to move against him that they may get what they want in the future.

All they have to do is stay loyal for a little while longer, and Putin may pick them as the person to follow in his footsteps.

It’s a hollow type of promise insinuated by a leader who is just worried about keeping the political vultures off his back.

Putin buys time when he openly talks about what comes next, which then allows him to move against the people who might have taken a nibble on the carrot dangled in front of them.

There is the possibility that all this could be a conspiracy that has been conjured out of thin air.

One of the clearest dissenting voices in this arena is Anton Barbashian, who is the co-founder and editorial director at Riddle Russia.

Speaking to the Kev Independent, he said, “This is pure BS.

If Russian elites wanted Russian President Vladimir Putin out, it would have happened in 2022.

” He added that Shyu may be allowing Putin to dismantle his clan in return for immunity from whatever reprisals Putin had in store for him back in 2024 when he was removed from the Russian Defense Ministry.

Perhaps that is the case.

Maybe VCHK OGBU has made a whole lot out of nothing with its claims about getting its hands on a source who revealed a coup being plotted by Shyu.

However, Putin’s paranoia won’t have been helped by the twist in the tale that we mentioned a moment ago.

Donald Trump has been making a lot of moves in 2026, most notably the ousting of former Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro and the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Kom during Operation Epic Fury.

And as combat veteran news notes, there is a chance that Putin is watching all of this from afar and coming to the conclusion that he could be next on Trump’s list.

This, by the way, may actually be a side effect of President Donald Trump’s repeated sort of policies where instead of going after the apparatus of the states, he simply says, “Well, I’m just going to take out the actual leader themselves and install a leader that I can work with.

” Combat Veteran News says, “That’s enough to make you wonder, isn’t it?” Could Trump have been looking at Shyu or somebody like him as a potential successor to Putin if the US decides to take Putin out? It’s possible.

A scorned friend relegated to irrelevance after spending so long at the top might be willing to cooperate with the US just to get one over on Putin.

If Putin’s talk about succession is meant to be a carrot for those who are waiting for Russia’s leader to kick the bucket, what Trump has spent 2026 doing might be a far more tangible signal that they could get the power they want if they play ball with the US.

If nothing else, Trump’s actions will have ramped up Putin’s paranoia.

As the New York Times puts it, Trump has spent much of 2026 outputining Putin.

The US is checking Russia’s global influence and ripping up Moscow’s playbook for partnerships abroad.

The outlet says as his global allies collapse around him, Putin may now be looking inward for people that he thinks could collaborate with Trump in the future.

Perhaps he sees Shuyu as one of those people.

If he does, Putin’s paranoia may lead to his own downfall.

Friends will become enemies.

Confidants become potential conspirators.

Even if a coup isn’t in the works, Putin’s fear that something may happen could be enough for him to tear himself down before anybody else has the chance.

After all, it’s not like Putin hasn’t given potential plotters more than enough reasons to want him gone.

The disastrous war in Ukraine has cost Russia so many people that it’s had an enormous negative impact on a problem that is going to affect Russia for the next century.

Putin has made it clear time and time again.

Russia wants the Dombas.

It wants the region so badly that it’s still at the heart of every Russian demand made during peace talks.

But Russia will never take the Dombas.

Why? The sacrifice that Russia would have to make would send shock waves throughout the entire country.

And we can see that when we look at the absolutely insane numbers, never mind taking Ukraine.

Putin is terrified of what taking the Dombas means for Russia.

And we’re going to explain why.

Let’s sum it up before we jump into the numbers.

18 months and practically all of its troops.

That’s what it would cost Russia to take the Dombas according to Ukraine’s president Vladimir Zalinski and the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office Pavlo Palisa.

We’ll start with police’s comments.

On March 1st, police spoke to Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty where he said that the pace of the Russian advance in Ukraine is still immensely slow.

At the same time, this slow advance is costing Russia a phenomenal number of soldiers in the Donetsk oblast, which is the portion of the Dombas that Russia still needs to bring under full control before it can lay claim to occupying the entire region.

Consider the current dynamics.

It will take them approximately a year and a half to do this and a resource equivalent to today’s Russian grouping on the territory of Ukraine.

It will be very difficult for them to accomplish this and it will be far from as fast as they want, police declared as he also shared the numbers that Russia lost in 2025.

just to claim a small portion of the Dombas region.

All told, Russia took less than 1% of Ukraine in 2025 at a cost of over 450,000 of its soldiers, police says.

Police adds that Ukraine currently still holds about 6,000 km or about 2,316 square miles of the Donetsk region that Russia still needs to capture.

Keep that number in mind.

We’ll be coming back to it when we look into the maths behind police’s claims.

For now, what this all adds up to is that Putin would have to dedicate approximately the entire force that Russia has in Ukraine along with at least 18 months to take the Dombas.

And with each dead Russian soldier, whatever Putin has planned for the rest of Ukraine weakens.

As for Zalinski, his projection for Russia taking the Donass involves an even longer timeline that of his presidential office’s deputy head.

Ukraine’s president says that the occupation of eastern Ukraine will cost about 800,000 Russian lives and that it will take at least 2 years and progress will be very slow.

In my opinion, they will not last that long.

Zilinski adds that he knows this because the recent history of Russia in the Donbass region shows that Putin’s forces aren’t able to take territory quickly enough and that Russia is sacrificing enormous numbers of soldiers, not to mention equipment and supplies for every square kilometer of the region that it takes.

These are all very interesting claims by Ukraine.

And if you stick with us, you’ll learn just what it is about the Dombas that makes it such a death trap for Putin’s invading forces.

But before we get to that, we have to ask the big question.

Do Ukraine’s claims add up? To answer that, we’re going to have to dig deeper into the figures.

Thankfully, we have some that reveal just how truthful Ukraine’s claims about the Donbass really are.

We’ll start with the amount of territory that Russia is capturing in the region and just what those captures are costing Putin’s forces.

On February 24th, Mets reported that the Russian army was suffering such enormous losses in the Donetsk region that Ukraine was shredding through 156 of Russia’s soldiers for every square kilometer that Putin’s forces managed to occupy.

That figure comes from Ukraine’s defense minister Mikyo Fedorov, who says that Ukraine’s goal is now to increase these losses to 200 soldiers per square kilometer, which Fedorov says is the last level at which advancing becomes impossible.

This is an ambitious target for Ukraine, but for now, let’s stick with the 156 figure.

We ask you to keep police claims that Russia still has 6,000 km of donets to capture before it can claim to hold the Dombas.

This is actually a disputed figure.

In December, Reuters claimed that the number was 5,000 km, though it’s worth keeping in mind this was around the time that Russia was claiming to have occupied territory such as the city of Kovsk that it didn’t actually occupy.

Still, that gives us two figures to examine.

5,000 and 6,000 km left for Russia to take.

Starting with Reuters’s number, Russia occupying 5,000 km at this current rate of 156 casualties per square km amounts to a casualty count of 780,000.

So even with the lower figure, we see that Zalinsky and his offic’s deputy head are pretty much right on the money.

Zilinsky said that it would take about 800,000 soldiers for Russia to capture the Donbass.

that happens to be even more than the 715,000 soldiers that Russia has deployed into the country.

Meaning Putin indeed has to expend an entire army to take the Dombas even in the best case scenario.

That’s for the worst case, which is that Russia has to take 6,000 km.

We get a total casualty count of 936,000.

That’s an absurd figure.

For Russia, it veers uncomfortably close to the almost 1.

27 27 million casualties that Ukraine’s Ministry of Finance claims that Russia has experienced since Putin launched his war 4 years ago.

Plus, it’s unclear if Mets’s figure of 156 casualties per square kilometer in Donetsk includes Russian soldiers who surrender or go absent without leave.

If it doesn’t, Russia may be staring down the barrel of 18 months where it would lose close to a million of its soldiers just to capture the Dombats.

Russia is already at the point where it suffered the largest losses of any major military power since World War II, as reported by The Independent.

What this means for Putin is that a continued push into the Dombas amounts to him digging an even deeper grave for a Russian military that is already 6 ft under and counting.

All of this brings us to some questions.

Chiefly, why is Putin so adamant about taking the Donbass when he knows what the cost will be? And why is the Donbass such a tough nut for Russia to crack? We’ll answer the second of those questions later in the video, so be sure to stick with us until then.

As for why Putin seems so relentlessly capable of destroying an entire generation of Russian men to take the Dombas, there are several reasons.

The first of which we can trace back to Putin’s desire to restore the Russian Federation to something resembling what Putin sees as the glory years of the Soviet Union.

Francis Farrell reporting for the Kev Independent explains this Soviet era desire during a brief history lesson where he covers what makes the Donbass so important to Putin.

Farrell focuses on how Russia took advantage of the Donbass region being home to vast amounts of coal during the Soviet era.

During the Soviet Union’s industrialization drive, huge numbers of workers from all over the country, including from the Gulag system, were relocated to work in the Donetsklast’s mining and heavy industry sectors.

Farad explains, “This gives us two angles to consider for Putin’s desire to take the Dombas, which are that Russia is very well aware of just how valuable this portion of Ukraine is, and that due to Russia having sent so many of its people into the Donbas during the Soviet era, Putin still has this warped perception that the Dombas is and has always been part of Russia.

It’s this perception that is one of the reasons why Putin focused on Donetsk and the other major Donbass region of Luhansk during his initial campaign of aggression against Ukraine back in 2014.

Putin supported proxy separatist groups in both of these regions during the 2014 campaign.

In addition to sending the little green men who were essentially covert Russian soldiers sent into Ukraine to wreak havoc.

Although Moscow consistently denied being involved, its fingerprint was everywhere, Farrell says, adding.

From the leaders of the so-called uprising to the way the pro-Russian forces were financed and armed, never mind the countless direct evidence of the presence of regular Russian troops.

Russia failed to take the Dombas in 2014.

But sure enough, it became the focal point of the country’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

Russia attacked in the Dombas in large part because Putin claimed from the outset that the so-called Russian people who lived in the region wanted to be liberated by the Russian Federation.

After the complete failure of the initial special military operation, Russia switched its entire focus to the main goal of liberating the Donbass by April 2022.

Of course, Putin’s claims were nonsense.

This was highlighted by good authority which reported on a survey of 4,025 residents of the Donbass divided equally between those with Ukrainian and Russian origins.

That survey found that 42% of those questioned wanted to remain part of Ukraine versus 31% who were happy to be annexed by Russia.

Another 9% said they wanted complete independence with the rest of the respondents saying that they didn’t know what they wanted.

These figures do show that there is a high amount of Russian influence in the Donbass.

However, many of those living in the region prefer being part of Ukraine to any other option, which immediately rubbishes Putin’s claims about whatever supposed liberation he delivers being something that those in the Donbass desire.

But then that’s never really been what all of this is about, has it, Putin? Money lies at the root of why Putin wants the Donbass.

But before we go deeper into that, you are watching the Military Show.

If you haven’t subscribed yet, now is the perfect time.

For all of Putin’s bluster about history and liberation, it’s cold, hard cash that drives his desire to snatch the Dombas away from Ukraine.

Specifically, Ukraine’s mineral resources, which include the coal we mentioned earlier, along with dozens of rare earth minerals and other resources from which Russia could profit, are in Putin’s sights.

According to United 24 media, these mineral deposits are valued at around $15 trillion.

And you can probably guess where most of these deposits are.

As United 24 media points out, the primary regions containing these mineral deposits align with areas targeted or already occupied by Russian forces, including Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk, and Zaparisia regions.

The Economic Times adds to this, noting that the Dombas region is among the richest in Ukraine.

It claims that this single region is home to 56% of Ukraine’s entire hard coal reserves, which are among the largest in the world and valued at 12 trillion on their own.

It’s unclear if that means $12 trillion of hard coal in the Donbass alone or about half that amount.

But either way, there’s a lot of money for Russia to make from its push into the Donbass.

The same resource adds that the territory that Russia already occupies in Ukraine as of August 2025 means that Russia controls about $12.

5 trillion of Ukraine’s mineral and gas assets.

Add agriculture and water resources into the mix, which aid in farming throughout South Ukraine and help to keep Crimea supplied with water amid that region’s constant shortages, and you start to see what it’s really all about for Putin.

He’ll claim history and liberation.

What he means is that it’s about filling the Russian coffers, which is more important now after a war that has cost Russia over a trillion dollars in counting than it ever has been before.

Putin’s problem brings us back to the second question that we posed a few minutes back.

Why is the Donbass going to be such a tough nut for Putin to crack? Ukraine’s stellar defense of the region, which is what has led to the enormous casualty figures that we now see, is part of the reason.

However, another of Putin’s major problems, and perhaps the reason why the last thing that he wants to do is to actually try to take the Dombas is that the worst is yet to come for Russia in that region.

Now that Russia finally seems to have taken Prov, its forces have to switch their focus to the fortress belt along with the other dense urban areas that still remain under Ukraine’s control.

Among those urban areas are Leman and Doilia, which have the potential to turn into death traps on the same scale as Prosk.

But far more worrying for Putin is the line of large cities that run along the H20 Constantin Slavansk highway.

Spanning about 31 miles, this line of cities includes Krammatsk and Slavansk to the north along with Alexo Duska, Dreska and Constantin to the south.

Combined, this collection of cities had a pre-war population of over 380,000, which is about 6.

3 times more than the pre-war population of Krosk, against which Putin almost destroyed his entire eastern force over the last 2 years.

My point here is simple.

Russia has a very long way to go before it can topple these cities and take the Dombas.

And as if things couldn’t get any worse for Putin and his greedy ambitions, there is a reason why this stretch of settlements is known as the fortress belt.

As Russia’s forces have spent over 4 years mired down in other regions of Donetsk, Ukraine has been building the fortress belt up into aworked defensive mechanism that will deliver death to Russia’s forces at a scale that we’ve yet to see during the war.

The Economist highlighted this in a January article where it claimed that Ukraine now has the type of fortress belt that it wished it had back in 2022.

And it’s all due to Russia taking so long to advance.

There are now lines of defenses stretching up to 200 m or over 650 ft on the crest of the hill near the cities of Cratosque and Slavian Scalone.

The outlet says this single line is filled with barbed and razor wire, anti-tank ditches, dragon’s teeth, and excavated soil that serves as a defensive bur.

There will also be drones on constant patrol, ready to destroy any Russian units that attempt to cross.

And this is just a small part of a massive line of defenses that spans the 31m length of the fortress belt, all of which Russia has to overcome before it even manages to get to the settlements themselves.

Barl adds that Ukraine has built massive kill zones between and behind these cities, meaning that there is simply no easy way for Russia to push through the fortress belt.

Just like the line of defenses discussed by the economist, these kill zones are filled with defenses against Russian infantry and mechanized units along with the everpresent and buzzing drones that exist to spot Russian forces and destroy them.

Putin knows that he can’t expend an entire Ukraine’s worth of the Russian army over the next 18 months to 2 years just to take this belt.

That sheer scale of death would be too massive even for him.

The reality that Russia’s leader is trying to hide is that he’s terrified of what awaits his army in Donetsk, which is why he’s now trying so hard to create a narrative about how Ukraine’s fall and the loss of the Dombas are inevitable.

Putin needs that narrative to hold up.

The longer it does, the more time he has to try to manipulate the West into believing the garbage that comes out of his mouth, which in turn gives him leverage for peace talks.

Putin will push for Ukraine to seed the Donbass because, as the Atlantic Council puts it, the Donetsk fortress belt is a major problem for Russia.

As long as Keefe continues to control the Donbass fortress belt, there is a good chance the Ukrainian military can turn the entire region into a graveyard for Putin’s invading army, the think tank says.

Bloomberg adds that Russia is currently weighing up its peace talk options as Ukraine continues to refuse to seed the Dombas.

The outlet claims that Russia has already created a draft memorandum for a peace accord that it will sign if Ukraine agrees to withdraw its forces from the region.

This isn’t the power play by Putin.

It’s Russian fear put on paper.

And Ukraine knows it.

On March 3rd, the New Voice of Ukraine reported that Zilinski has no intention of abandoning the Donbass or the 200,000 people who still live in the region.

I want to be clear.

I will never abandon Dombas and the 200,000 Ukrainians who live there.

Why should I? because Putin makes it a condition for peace and he will immediately put forward new demands after that.

No, I will not tolerate that.

Zalinski roared in a statement that is the last thing that Putin wanted to hear.

Ukraine can see through Putin’s Donbas game.

It knows that Putin is terrified of the prospect of sacrificing another 800,000 soldiers at least to the fortress belt along with up to two more years of fighting.

Those two years alone are hardly something that the 73-year-old Putin can spare if he wants the taking of the Donbass to be the legacy that he leaves behind.

Ukraine also realizes that seeding the Donbass now just opens up the door for Russia to attack again in the future.

In fact, Russian plans obtained by Ukraine already reveal that Putin has his eyes on much more than the one region he claims will bring peace to Ukraine if Zilinski sees it.

These plans, which detail Russia’s strategy in 2027, reveal that Putin’s forces intend to push deeper into Zaparisia, attack Denipro city, and perhaps even overrun Odessa.

In other words, they’re not the kinds of plans that Russia would be making if the Donbass were all that it wanted.

Russia is preparing for a long-term campaign in the Donbass, not because it wants to fight that fight, because Ukraine is giving it no choice.

There will be no seeding of territory.

If Putin wants the Dombas, he’s going to have to commit to losing up two more years and the sacrifice of all the soldiers that Russia has in Ukraine and maybe many more to get it.

Does Putin have the appetite for that battle? If he has learned any lessons from the horror show that Russia endured in Provsk, he shouldn’t.

It’s no secret that Russia is in dire straits.

Its futile war with Ukraine has led to enormous casualties, grave economic losses, and isolation on the global stage.

And it’s all because of one man, Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose reckless, ruthless, and relentless obsession with power has brought his own nation to its knees.

But the situation may even be worse than reported.

According to Germany’s intelligence agency, the Russian economy is suffering an unprecedented decline with the Kremlin actually publishing fake figures in a desperate bid to cover up its disastrous collapse.

For those who know Russia well, this news will not come as a shock.

The Kremlin has a long and storied history of falsehoods and fabrications.

It’s proven time and time again that it has absolutely no qualms about lying to the Russian public as and when it feels the need in order to make itself look better.

Russia isn’t the only country that does this, of course, but propaganda is almost baked into the Kremlin’s DNA.

It’s Moscow’s number one go-to solution to keep the public on side and control the country’s narrative.

And it’s been used extensively throughout the course of the conflict so far.

In fact, even before the war officially began and the first shots were fired, the Kremlin relied on propaganda to win support for its invasion.

It made up stories and exaggerated claims about a so-called neo-Nazi regime ruling over Ukraine and carrying some sort of genocide of ethnic Russians.

Thanks to this, when the Kremlin’s troops first marched over the border, large parts of the Russian population supported the invasion, they fell for the propaganda and believed that their president was making a bold or even heroic choice to send in their army and liberate people from oppression.

At the same time, many hoped that Putin’s special military operation would be a swift and efficient one, all over and done with within a matter of weeks.

As we know now, that didn’t happen.

The war dragged on and Russia failed to achieve almost any of its stated objectives.

It also began suffering heavy losses along the front lines while people, banks, and businesses back home were slowly but surely cut off from the rest of the world.

Living standards declined while fathers, brothers, and sons perished, and most of the rest of the world shunned Russia like never before.

As the years passed, more Russians began to question the need for such a costly, wasteful war, with more and more of them wanting to see it brought to an end as soon as possible.

Still, their government lied to them, relying on propaganda to power through one crisis after another.

Putin and his various lackeyis continuously misled their people, making up excuses and hiding behind lines.

and they’re still doing it to this day, as proven in a damning report from the German Federal Intelligence Service, or BND.

After analyzing the Kremlin’s official published economic data, BND agents discovered the astonishing extent of its lies.

They found that Russia’s real federal budget deficit for 2025 was dramatically higher than the official published numbers.

To be more precise, Moscow stated that its 2025 deficit was around 5.

65 65 trillion rubles, which is approximately $72 billion.

BND, however, found that the real deficit was closer to 8.

01 trillion rubles or $100 billion, almost $30 billion higher than the Kremlin’s claims.

That works out at around 3.

6% of the country’s entire gross domestic product.

It’s a staggering level of loss, as BND’s report notes.

This shows the true costs that the Kremlin is willingly incurring for its aggressive war against Ukraine.

Costs that will have consequences for many years.

And the fact that the Kremlin was so boldly and blatantly lied to cover up its losses undermined its already fractured reputation both domestically and overseas.

The trustworthiness of official statistics is further eroded.

As a result, Russia as an investment location carries incalcuable risks.

Putin’s plan to restore Russia to its former glory cannot succeed under these circumstances.

From Ukraine’s perspective, however, this is excellent news.

Russia may like to stretch the truth here and there, but this is one of its biggest and most outrageous lies yet, and it shows just how far the country has fallen.

In the early years of the war, Putin didn’t necessarily need to lie about the economy, nor did the Kremlin feel the need to falsify its calculations because it actually cope quite well with the initial costs of the conflict.

Even when Western nations impose multiple waves of sanctions against Russian banks and businesses, as well as freezing the assets of Moscow oligarchs, the Russian economy remained reasonably strong with Putin himself even boasting about beating the sanctions.

As the years passed, however, the situation began to deteriorate.

Russia’s national wealth fund has slowly eaten up.

Its reserves dwindled, and most importantly of all, its oil industry, the backbone of its entire economy, started to feel the heat.

Sanctions led to many countries reducing their reliance on Russian resources, tearing up trade agreements, and seeking out alternative supplies.

The European Union, for example, slashed its investments in Russian energy.

It rapidly implemented almost total bans on seaborn imports of Russian crude oil and refined petroleum products while also establishing a strict price cap on Russian oil to restrict the country’s export income.

It also diversified its suppliers and accelerated investment in renewable energy sources via the re power EU plan.

The impact of these decisions is clear to see in the statistics.

Petroleum oil imports from Russia to EU nations fell from 29% in the first quarter of 2021 to just 1% by the third quarter of 2025.

For example, as EU buyers turned their backs on Moscow, the Kreman sought to strengthen its trade relations with other nations.

It hoped that the likes of China, India, and other countries would pick up the slack and prop up the Russian economy.

And for a time, they did.

Eventually, however, even these nations began to rethink their relationship with Russia.

In February 2026, for example, Indian oil refiners vowed to reduce Russian oil imports and invest in American energy instead after the country signed a fresh trade deal with the United States.

What’s more, even though China continues to buy a lot of Russian resources, its overall trade with Russia declined in 2025 with the total value of imports and exports between the two countries falling from $244.

8 billion in 2024 to $228.

1 billion in 2025.

And the Kremlin hasn’t just had to cope with less money flowing into its coffers from its few remaining trade partners.

It’s also had to deal with direct explosive attacks on the infrastructure that keeps its oil industry up and running.

Throughout 2025 and into 2026, too, Ukraine drone crews have repeatedly targeted Russian refineries, fuel depots, and pipelines, dealing one crippling blow after another to the enemy’s economy.

These attacks have quite literally sent enormous amounts of Russian oil up in smoke, damaging both the Kremlin’s economic prospects while also making it more difficult for it to fuel its war machine.

The early months of 2026, for example, have seen successful strikes on targets like the Ilski oil refinery, one of the most important refineries in southern Russia, vital for supplying fuel to forces fighting in the southern regions of Ukraine like Crimea, as well as the Vulgar refinery, which directly fuels assaults along the eastern front.

Refineries in Cranador Cry and the Comey Republic have also been struck, further denting Russia’s economic and military prospects.

While Ukrainian drones have also smashed fuel stockpiles at oil depots in Libertk, Belgarod, Vulgarad, Penza and Voronish regions of Russia.

Every time one of these targets gets hit, Russia feels the effects.

Its oil and gas revenues which have been so vital in financing the war suffer.

That in turn makes the entire war more difficult to sustain while also piling additional pressure onto the country’s floundering failing economy.

And there are no signs of this getting better anytime soon.

On the contrary, the BND report notes that the situation is almost guaranteed to get worse the longer the war goes on.

If comprehensive counter measures are not taken, the structural problems of the Russian economy, which is heavily dependent on the energy sector, will be exacerbated in the long term and threatened to become chronic.

And Ukraine is eager to expedite that process.

But before we get into that, there’s more where this came from.

So if you’re getting value from the military show, don’t forget to subscribe.

Now, Ukraine has already played a starring role in Russia’s fall from grace.

Without its drone attacks on refineries and other targets, the Kremlin’s economy wouldn’t be in such a perilous position.

But Keev isn’t stopping there.

Its Ministry of Defense has announced its intentions to ensure that Russia’s deficit increases even further.

In fact, Ukraine wants to make 2026 the worst year on record for the Russian economy, relying on a multi-pronged strategy to achieve that aim.

This strategy includes coordination with allies around the world to impose stronger sanctions on Moscow and orchestrate joint actions against the Kremlin’s shadow fleet oil tankers.

Ukraine is also set to persist with its attacks on oil infrastructure, using its worldleading drone arsenal and increasingly powerful long-range missiles to hit its enemy where it hurts the most.

The BND agrees that additional measures taken by Ukraine and its allies could help to make what is already a difficult situation even more challenging for Russia.

concluding further sanctions, for example, against Russia supporters in third countries or the so-called shadow fleet and the consistent implementation have the potential to further increase the cost of Putin’s war of aggression.

While revenues dwindle, the cost of maintaining the status quo rise, for example, for circumvention measures.

The future viability of the Russian economy is eroding further.

Even within Russia, Kremlin officials are growing increasingly concerned.

One official who opted to remain anonymous due to the risks involved with speaking out revealed to Reuters that the Russian public deficit could be three times higher than the official target by the end of 2026 due to declining oil revenues and stronger sanctions from the West.

The source cited calculations made by economists from a Kremlin linked think tank.

The Kremlin reportedly has no intention to publish these calculations, but that doesn’t make them any less valid or accurate.

They show that Russia is set to lose up to 18% of its energy revenue when compared to the government’s plans, pushing its deficit to up to 4.

4% of GDP, far higher than Moscow’s optimistic 1.

6% target.

The source openly admitted that the situation is looking increasingly dire.

The budget situation is sharply deteriorating.

Revenues will be lower and expenditures higher.

They added that the country’s financial authorities will have to take even more drastic measures than they already have in order to exert some level of control over the crisis.

All of this might not be so terrible from Russia’s perspective if the country was actually making gains and achieving its objectives on the ground.

The Russian public might, for example, be more willing to accept economic losses if Russian troops were capturing towns and cities with some level of regularity, clearly establishing the allimportant footholds they need to push on towards the kind of victory that was promised way back in 2022.

But that isn’t happening.

Another damning report authored by researchers David R.

Henderson and Ryan Sullivan and published by Defense News has revealed just how much the Kremlin has lost and how little it’s gained since Putin gave the order to invade all those years ago.

The contrast is astonishing.

To accurately estimate how much money Russia has spent and lost on its war with Ukraine, the researchers looked at three vital values.

the cost of human capital, the cost of material attrition and operational expenses, and the macroeconomic fallout and GDP loss that the Kremlin has suffered over the course of the conflict so far.

Here’s what they found.

Regarding the cost of human capital, the researchers attempted to estimate how much Russia’s casualties, which now number far more than a million, have impacted its economy.

To do this, they used a standard economic tool called the value of a statistical life or VSSL metric.

This allowed them to estimate the value of a single Russian life as being approximately $2.

6 million, while serious injuries were valued at $270,000.

From there, the team simply had to multiply these figures by the total number of Russian casualties.

However, it’s impossible to know exactly how many Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in the war with Ukraine, as different sources give different values, and the total tally grows even bigger by the day.

In order to avoid any needless bias in their findings, the researchers relied on January 2026 data from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which puts the total number of Russian soldiers killed so far at approximately 325,000 and the total number of wounded or missing at around 875,000.

As a result, the defense news report found that the total economic loss from fatalities is 325,000 multiplied by 2.

6 million, which works out at $845 billion.

The loss for injuries is $875,000 by $270,000, which totals $236 billion in total.

Then, that’s more than a trillion in losses related to killed or injured troops alone.

and soldiers are only one piece of a far larger puzzle.

Russia has lost an extraordinary amount of military hardware in Ukraine as well.

Open-source intelligence groups like Orics as well as international intelligence agencies have tracked and confirmed these losses one by one with literally thousands of Russian tanks, vehicles, vessels, aircraft, air defense systems, and other assets wiped off the map by Ukrainian drones, mines, missiles, and more.

Some of these assets are worth tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars or even more in some cases.

Again, exact figures are impossible to find.

So, the researchers relied on Minfin, which reports official government statistics to inform its calculations.

Min’s data shows that Russia has lost approximately 12,000 tanks, 24,000 armored fighting vehicles, and 400 planes, as well as numerous other assets.

Added up, those equipment losses are reportedly worth around $125 billion.

The researchers also estimated that Moscow has spent close to $150 billion more on operational expenses like fuel, ammunition, and logistics, too, citing facts and figures from the Rand Corporation.

In total, then that’s another $275 billion in materials attrition and operational costs.

The third and final factor to consider was the macroeconomic fallout and GDP loss that Russia has endured as a result of its war with Ukraine.

This is extremely difficult to calculate or quantify as there’s so many different factors and variables to take into account.

Various sources estimate that anywhere from 600,000 up to a million Russians have left the country since the war began, for example.

Many of those could and would have contributed greatly to their homeland’s economy had the war never occurred.

The researchers also had to estimate how much trade and investment Russia has lost due to the effects of Western sanctions and its increasingly isolated status on the world stage along with the economic impact of international organizations freezing Russian assets.

To simplify matters, the researchers relied on a July 2025 study from a team at the University of California, Berkeley, which analyzed pre and post invasion forecasts for Russia’s GDP.

That study found that the country had lost on average $281 billion in GDP per year since the war began.

Added up over the course of the conflict so far, that figure also exceeds $1 trillion in total.

Therefore, Henderson and Sullivan concluded that Russia has lost a jaw-dropping $2.

5 trillion on its war with Ukraine.

That figure far exceeds the country’s $2.

2 trillion GDP.

But the questions remains, what does Russia actually have to show for such an extortionate expense? The answer, very little.

Using data from the Institute for the Study of War, the researchers found that Russia has occupied around 28,000 square miles of Ukrainian territory since the full-scale invasion began in 2022, which is roughly 12% of the country’s land mass.

In total, however, Russia now controls 20% of Ukraine when including territory seized before 2022, such as Crimea.

Even then, that 28,000 square mile figure equates to around 10% of the total land mass of a single US state, Texas, which really puts into context how small the Kremlin’s gains have actually been.

But the most damning stat was yet to come.

When they looked at how much Russia had spent and what it had got in return, the researchers found that the Kremlin had spent approximately $90 million for every square mile of ground it gained.

That’s a mind-blowing amount of money for such a meager and minuscule return.

To make matters worse, it’s important to remember that Russia hasn’t been taking over big cities and important infrastructure locations in Ukraine.

Often its gains are little more than muddy crater fililled fields and abandoned villages with buildings that have been completely blown to bits after months and years of repeated shelling.

The Kremlin isn’t gaining valuable resources here.

It’s spending billions of dollars for land with almost zero value.

The worst part of all, as the researchers note, is that Putin himself probably doesn’t care all that much.

He won’t feel the impact of these astonishing losses on a personal level as he’s still able to enjoy his presidential palaces and luxurious lifestyle.

It’s the Russian public instead who feel the effects most directly as their living standards slip and the cost of everyday essentials continue to rise.

The Kremlin, meanwhile, will keep on covering up the truth with fake figures and other falsehoods.

But it’s not going to work forever.

Putin’s propaganda machine is starting to stutter.

And the longer this war continues, the easier it will be for even the most hardened Russian nationalists to see through the lies.

Now, you can learn even more about the deep, dark, inescapable hole the Russian president has dug himself into in this video, which looks at how Ukrainian forces recently wiped one of the Kremlin’s most important Black Sea bases off the map in a perfectly executed overnight assault.

Alternatively, check out this video to learn more about how Ukraine achieved the impossible, going from a minor player in the military world to a veritable superpower in the span of just a few short years.

And finally, to see more videos like these, including breaking news reports and in-depth analysis of tactics and strategies, subscribe to the Military Show today.

 

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