The head of Ukrainian military intelligence, Kyrilo Budanovrevealed this weekend at the 20th Yalta Conference on European Military Strategy that the Kremlin has set a deadline for victory in Ukraine of early 2026. This calculation fits perfectly with the forecast of the American think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, according to which Russia would by that date run out of spare parts for some types of Soviet weapons at the current rate of attrition on the front.
In the absence of a total mobilization, for fear of provoking a tidal wave in public opinion, Russia has increased the number of soldiers in its army, professional and occasional, to 2,389,000 men over the past two years, 180,000 more than last time. December. The aim is to compensate for the losses occurring in Ukraine by new partial mobilizations, more recruitment and to continue to stir up patriotism in order to find new volunteers.
Russia’s problem is the sustainability of such an army in the short term. Lots of soldiers with few weapons is a bad combination.. The attacks are scattered and the infantry is mistreated, as seen in Ukraine. Budanov believes that all these problems, as well as the war fatigue itself and the feeling that this is not something alien to Russian citizens – something they already see in Kursk and would see in other places in the Russian Federation if Biden allowed attacks. long distance – can seriously harm the morale of the Russian population.
In this sense, Russia believes that it will have to give its all in 2025 and win enough victories to consolidate this victory in 2026. According to Budanov, if Ukraine manages to resist during these twelve months, that is, if international aid is maintained and does not waver – the American elections will have a lot to say about this – it will have a lot to gain because the urgency will prevail at the Russian upper echelons, which will want to end the war by almost any means, as was the case with the USSR in Afghanistan.
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China, Brazil and Vance’s “Peace” Plan
Another question is what this victory consists of and how this peace is achieved. It is clear that both sides are exhausted and neither has shown enough determination to achieve a significant breakthrough. It is true that Russia continues to conquer small towns on a broad front, but it has not yet managed to expel the Ukrainians from Kursk, nor have these advances translated into a breakthrough that breaks the local defenses. We are facing a war of attrition in which victories are measured in very few square kilometres..
It is also clear that the rest of the world is fed up with the conflict. Fed up with nuclear threats, fed up with food inflation, fed up with the trade paralysis that a war in the heart of Europe and facing the Black Sea represents… So, in recent weeks, different peace plans have been presented, highlighting the one signed by China and Brazil and which was a kind of “peace for the territories”, that is, that Russia keeps what it has conquered in these two and a half years, that an international security zone is established and that Ukraine remains with the rest.
This is basically the Kremlin’s solution, as Zelensky pointed out last week… but it is also the solution of JD Vance, a possible future vice-president of the United States and, by extension, that of his boss Donald Trump. When the Republican candidate constantly repeats that “the war will end in a week”, it is difficult to imagine a scenario other than the one proposed by Russia. Favoring the strongest has always been the shortest way to end a conflict… and the least effective in the medium term.
The possibility of implosion
The fact is that Ukraine is not ready to accept such an agreement. From kyiv, they consider that the war has not lasted since February 2022 but since 2014, when Russia trained and armed similar guerrillas in Donetsk and Lugansk and had them fight for years against the regular Ukrainian army. After ten years of fighting and tens of thousands of deaths, it is difficult to simply give up what was fought for, it would take away all meaning. Only a government sympathetic to the Kremlin, like the one that existed until 2014 under Yanukovych or like the one that Putin wanted to impose in this “special military operation”, would agree to such a thing.
Zelensky, of course, is not suited to this task. The Ukrainian president has expressed his willingness to present Joe Biden with what he calls a “victory plan.” In kyiv, they are convinced that the war can be won, or at least they believe that it is necessary to offer a victory to the allies so that pessimism does not spread. The details of this plan are unknown, but it must be understood that they are consistent with what Budanov emphasized: to exhaust Russia as much as possible, to allow the attack of military targets beyond the border, and confidence in a social and economic collapse that would suffocate Putin and force him to step down.
This certainly does not seem like a simple thing. The experience of the Donbass war itself demonstrates this: Ukraine has not managed to reclaim the cities of Donetsk and Lugansk and their environs for ten years. To think that it can do it now seems too optimistic. On the other hand, Russia will have to stop the bleeding sooner or later. Will it be able to conquer the whole of Donbass? Perhaps, but if it took them two years to get close to Pokrovsk, it is difficult to see them marching through Kramatorsk or Sloviansk any time soon.
The problem, in any case, is mistrust. There had already been the Minsk agreements in 2015 and Russia released them seven years later. What would prevent it from doing the same thing a second time? International guarantees would be needed, but Russia will always demand that Ukraine does not join NATO… and if NATO does not intervene, sooner or later Putin will try to finish his job. For the “right” reasons, to influence the electoral process by reversals or for the “wrong” reasons as so far. Surrendering, for kyiv, would be not only a shame, but a waste of time: Putin does not understand compromises and does not forgive signs of weakness.
