Key Points – Russian President Vladimir Putin’s definition of victory in Ukraine has significantly downscaled since the 2022 invasion, from initial ambitions of regime change and “demilitarization” to more limited territorial goals like controlling the Donbas and holding a land bridge to Crimea.
-Despite these shifting objectives, Russia continues to suffer catastrophic losses, with Ukrainian military sources reporting nearly one million total casualties (killed, wounded, missing) and over 10,000 tanks destroyed by May 2025.
-This immense human and material cost makes it increasingly challenging for the Kremlin to credibly portray the prolonged conflict as anything other than a devastatingly costly endeavor for minimal, if any, strategic gains.
Putin: Destined to Lose the Ukraine War?
Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin outlined the objectives of what he called a “special military operation”.
His goal – and thereby his definition of victory – he claimed, would be to “de-Nazify” and “demilitarize” Ukraine.
He also said he saw it as his duty to defend the eastern Ukraine provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, which are the territories that have been occupied by Russian proxy forces since 2014.
A third objective, which he did not directly call for but has demanded multiple times since the initial invasion in 2022 failed to take Kyiv, was to depose the Ukrainian government and remove President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“The enemy has designated me as target number one; my family is target number two,” said Zelenskyy shortly following the invasion. Russian troops made two attempts to storm the presidential compound and kill him so that they could fly in a new puppet president to be installed by Putin’s forces.
After The Initial Failed Invasion of Ukraine…
Once the initial invasion failed to achieve any of its initial aims and bogged down, Putin then shifted the goalposts and altered his publicly articulated objectives.
This occurred about a month into the invasion, after Russian forces were forced to retreat from their positions close to Kyiv and Chernihiv.
Now, according to Kremlin spokesmen, Putin’s main goal had been downgraded considerably again to simply the “liberation of the Donbas”, which was to also include the regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
However, little progress has been made by Moscow since then in achieving these objectives either.
Russia has since scaled back its definition of success in this war even further.
The Kremlin’s “minimum requirement” was further reduced to “occupying the entirety of the Donbas region (comprising the provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk)”, according to The Economist.
Moscow has said it also wants to regain “control of Russia’s own Kursk region, which Ukraine has partly occupied” and hold on to “the ‘land bridge’ it seized in the early stages of the war connecting Crimea to Russia”.
Even with these sets of constantly downgraded definitions of victory, there is “no reason” to believe Putin wants long-term peace, stated Sky News military analyst Michael Clarke, for the simple reason “that’s not good for his rule”.
For numerous reasons tied mainly to domestic issues, the last thing Putin needs is for the war to end.
Too much of this legitimacy as Russia’s leader is tied up in the war continuing. Should hostilities end – and even worse, should they end without enough gains for him to be able to declare a victory – his very survival could be threatened.
Putin Can’t End the Ukraine War?
Even with Putin constantly downgrading his definition of victory in Ukraine, it becomes progressively more difficult for him to “sell“ what has been accomplished in Ukraine as worth the cost, given the losses to date in this war.
Ukraine military sources state that the Russian army’s combat losses in Ukraine from 24 February 2022 to 24 May 2025 amount to nearly 979,830 killed, wounded and missing, which includes another 1,130 troops killed or wounded in action on 25 May.
Ukraine’s armed forces have also “hit” 1,159 Russian tanks since the beginning of 2025, according to Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi who delivered this assessment on 17 May.
“Ukrainian soldiers continue to destroy the enemy and his equipment,” he said in a post on his Facebook page.
“Since the beginning of this year alone, the Defense Forces have hit more than one thousand occupying tanks (1,159) and more than two and a half thousand war-armored vehicles (2,510),” he added.
Syrskyi did not specify if the military vehicles “hit” had been damaged or destroyed, but Ukraine’s General Staff on May 18 reported Russia has also lost 10,832 tanks since the start of the full-scale invasion.
With losses of this scale continuing, Putin being able to claim that the war was anything other than a horrendously costly mistake that Russia will spend generations paying for becomes increasingly impossible to do.
About the Author:
Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw. He has been a consultant to the Pentagon, several NATO governments and the Australian government in the fields of defense technology and weapon systems design. Over the past 30 years he has resided in and reported from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and Australia.
The Ukraine War
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