As I stood on the freezing rooftop of a hotel in Kiev in the early morning hours of February 24, 2022, the idea that Russia would launch an all-out attack on Ukraine still seemed almost unimaginable, despite the build-up of troops on the border.
Yes, Kremlin strongman Vladimir Putin is used to wielding Russian hard power. Putin’s wars in Chechnya, Georgia, and Syria, as well as military operations in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, have brought successes at relatively low cost.
But invading Europe’s second-largest country after Russia is a potentially disastrous prospect that a ruthless strategist like Putin would certainly ponder.
Apparently not, I remember thinking, as I struggled with my bulletproof vest as missiles rained down on the Ukrainian capital.
The past four years of conflict have exposed multiple false assumptions, previously widely held even among Kiev’s allies, that Ukraine would be too weak and disorganized to resist a full-scale invasion.
Similarly, the reputation of invincibility surrounding Russia’s vast military was undermined.
According to a study by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a think tank, when the Kremlin launched what it called a “special military operation,” its military expected to take control of Ukraine within just 10 days.
More than 1,450 days later, that deadline, which appeared hopelessly naive, turned out to be a fundamental miscalculation that resulted in a devastating toll of pain, destruction, and bloodshed.
Of course, the real costs are carefully kept in check in Russia, where information is increasingly controlled. Official casualty figures are closely hidden from the public, but estimates from multiple sources indicate distressing losses.
For example, a recent study by the US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) puts the number of Russian casualties at around 1.2 million since the start of the full-scale invasion.
This horrific death toll, of course, does not include Ukraine’s staggering death toll, estimated at between 500,000 and 600,000, but is higher than the casualties suffered by “any major power in any war since World War II,” the CSIS report said.
Of this estimate, the report adds, 325,000 Russians have been killed in the past four years. For some context, this is equivalent to three times the losses inflicted on U.S. forces in all the wars Washington has fought since 1945 combined, including on the battlefields of Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
And as the Ukraine conflict enters its fifth year, the military’s bloodshed is only getting worse, steadily increasing with each passing month, as President Donald Trump has frequently noted.
Again, the Kremlin has not confirmed the numbers, but Ukrainian authorities recently boasted that they had killed 35,000 Russian soldiers in December alone. The stated goal of military planners in Kiev is now to kill Russian soldiers faster than recruits (currently mainly volunteers) can be trained and sent into battle.
“When the population reaches 50,000 people, we will see what will happen to our enemies. They consider humans as a resource, so the shortage is already obvious,” Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhail Fedorov told reporters at a recent press conference.
In many ways, this war has turned into an ugly numbers game.
Every time I visit Moscow, a city where many of my friends and colleagues have left or been eliminated, I am struck by how far away the brutal war in Ukraine is.
At least on the surface, this flashy Russian capital with its shops, cafes and traffic jams is well insulated from the horrors of the front, save for the occasional intercept of Ukrainian military drones, but frankly, few Muscovites give it a second thought.
After a brief sanctions shock following the 2022 invasion, Russia’s military spending soared and its economy boomed.
Fueled by oil and gas exports, Russia is on track to defy Western predictions of economic collapse and become the world’s ninth largest economy by 2025, ahead of Canada and Brazil, according to the International Monetary Fund. This is up from 11th place before the Ukraine war began.
But there are growing signs of creeping economic pain associated with the distorted war economy.
One problem is the increasingly expensive practice of offering large signing bonuses to Russians who agree to join the military, and even bigger rewards if they are killed in action.
Additionally, military conscription and the prioritization of production in the military industry have led to what Russia’s pro-Kremlin newspaper Nezavishimaya Gazeta calls “severe labor shortages” in other essential industries as well.
Most likely, Russia could never have prevented the development of these events, even if it had not already expanded and become mired in Ukraine.
But after four years of brutal war that took a terrible toll on Ukraine, Russia was left exhausted domestically and weakened on the international stage.
Back on the rooftop of a Kiev hotel in February 2022, I, like many others, was wrong about the possibility of President Putin ordering a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
But they were unfortunately right about the disastrous consequences of doing so – for the Ukrainians, of course, and for the Russians as well – a prediction that unfortunately proved all too accurate.
