Key Points and Summary – Vladimir Putin is losing the war in Ukraine; the West must prepare for escalation. Russia’s recent summer offensive failed militarily, resulting in massive casualties for little gain.
-More critically, Ukraine’s long-range drone strikes are crippling Russia’s economy by taking a huge portion of its oil refining capacity offline, leading to domestic fuel rationing and falling revenues.
Putin Back in 2023 Speaking. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
-With Putin’s back against the wall, the only way to force a negotiation is for the West to demonstrate unwavering military and financial support for Ukraine, making the war unwinnable for Moscow.
The Ukraine War Could Soon Go From Bad to Worse
WARSAW, POLAND – A combination of falling oil prices and Ukraine’s increasingly technological advantages in conducting long-range strikes on Russia’s oil industry has become the greatest threat to the continued rule of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The former KGB Lt. Col. “has his back against the wall. He is losing the economic war faster than he is gaining any military advantage in Ukraine,” writes long-time foreign policy analyst Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Friday’s edition of the London Daily Telegraph.
“Putin is losing the war, so prepare for escalation”, reads the title of his most recent assessment. The summer offensive that Moscow was sure would result in a dramatic change in the situation on the battlefield did not achieve the Kremlin’s outcome. Putin’s military suffered some 800 casualties a day and ended up with little on the ground to show for it.
Russia also failed in its primary strategic objective: to break Ukraine’s fortress belt—a chain of well-defended cities and fortifications in the Donetsk region of the Donbas. The attempt to turn the tide of the war in Moscow’s direction fell well short of expectations.
“Russians are still harassing us and hunting civilians with drones, which is a horrible practice, but they are not achieving any strategic goal,” said Andriy Zagorodnyuk, Ukraine’s former defense minister, in an address to the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London.
His assessment and that of others is that “the Russian home front is cracking—much as the German home front cracked from war exhaustion after the Kaiser threw everything into his failed spring offensive in 1918.” In addition to mounting problems in the cities,
Ukrainian drone strikes are “doing so much damage to Russian oil infrastructure and refineries that the country is having to import emergency fuel supplies from China, Korea and Belarus.”
Declining Oil Production
The Moscow agency Neftegaz estimates that 38 per cent of Russia’s primary refining capacity is out of action.
Ukraine also appears to be able to strike at will at almost any target on Russian territory. The attack this week on the Antipinsky oil refinery in Tyumen in western Siberia was 2,000 kilometers into Russian territory: it was the deepest strike of the war so far.
An Estonian Defense Forces M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) fires a training rocket during a live-fire exercise in Undva, Estonia, July 11, 2025. U.S. Army elements from Bravo Battery, 1st Battalion, 14th Field Artillery Regiment, 75th Field Artillery Brigade, supporting Task Force Voit, assisted in the training process. The task force was originally formed in 2023 to support the Estonian Defense Forces in the creation of a HIMARS unit. Task Force Voit works closely with the Estonian Armed Forces, sharing critical defense strategies, training, and military readiness support. The presence of U.S. troops in the region serves as a cornerstone of NATO’s commitment to security in the Baltic region. The task force provides combat-credible forces to V Corps, America’s only forward-deployed corps in Europe. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Rose Di Trolio)
HIMARS. Image Credit: U.S. Government.
“They have huge areas they can’t defend with air-defense systems. Russia cannot do anything substantial to protect those assets,” said Zagorodnyuk.
“It has amazed a lot of people because they didn’t think Ukraine could reach so far. We clearly see the effects of deep strike technology,” he said during his address at RUSI this past week.
Zagorodnyuk also said the old style of warfare is essentially dead, making most of Russia’s enormous military hardware useless. The war has become a race for developing advanced but easy-to-produce and inexpensive hardware, and Ukraine has consistently been a step ahead of the Russians.
The Wall Street Journal has also reported that the Trump administration is now actively helping Kyiv by providing intelligence for targeting these long-range strikes. This goes further than the previous administration, “crossing a line that Joe Biden never dared cross,” writes Pritchard.
At the same time, the brief period of optimism that there could soon be an end to the war, sentiments generated by the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska two months ago, has largely evaporated. From the Russian side, their continued predilection for claiming victim status has them calling out everyone but Putin himself, who continues to be the primary—if not singular—obstacle to bringing hostilities to a close.
“Our edifice of relations is collapsing, and the Americans are to blame,” said Sergei Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, echoing a familiar and shopworn accusation.
How You Have to Negotiate With Putin
Meanwhile, twenty regions across Russia are facing petrol rationing. Filling stations are limiting sales to 30 liters across large parts of the country and reportedly to as little as 20 liters in Crimea. Many of them have stopped selling 95 octane or above-grade petrol altogether.
According to an analysis by Goldman Sachs, Russia was producing 9.7 million barrels a day (b/d) of oil in 2023. However, the same analysts say this has dropped to nine million b/d and could fall to as little as 7.5 million b/d.
The refinery crisis is also causing a build-up of crude that cannot be stored. Goldman Sachs said the drilling companies are also feeling pressure from 17 percent interest rates and a rising “tax wedge.” The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air says total export revenues of Russian oil, gas, and coal have been declining for three years and fell to a new low of €546 million (£475m) a day in August.
The PAC-3 MSE is a highly sought-after air defense munition due to its advanced capabilities and versatility. As a next-generation interceptor, it offers improved range, speed, and maneuverability, making it an effective counter to a wide range of threats, including tactical ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and aircraft. (Official U.S. Army photo)
Patriot Missile. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
“This is not enough to sustain a Russian war machine,” Prichard writes, when it is consuming a tenth of national income in one way or another. What he calls “fiscal attrition” could now combine with “a second graver threat to Russia: the prospect of a prolonged collapse in oil prices as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states flood the global market.”
What I See In Warsaw
Here in Warsaw, the well-known Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Radosław Sikorski, has penned a very direct op-ed in the October 9 New York Times. Putin’s “long-term goals have not changed: rebuild the Russian empire, undermine trans-Atlantic security guarantees, divide the West, and—last, but certainly not least—weaken the United States,” writes the Deputy PM. Four decades ago, the Polish statesman was a correspondent covering the war in Afghanistan between the Soviet Union’s armed forces and the mujahedin.
“The only way to bring him to a negotiating table is by making him realize that he cannot kill his way out of the mistake he made on 24 Februrary 2022, when he began the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. To do this, it is essential to continue to support Ukraine financially and militarily, and to undermine the foundations of the Russian war economy.”
Other equally strident voices are calling for the next Russian fighter aircraft to cross into NATO airspace to be shot down immediately, as well as for NATO warships to start sinking the vessels of Russia’s “shadow fleet.”This is the only way to “lay down a marker,” said one former senior NATO-nation military commander at the recent Warsaw Security Forum.
“A good beginning would be for the self-described MAGA acolytes in Hungary and Slovakia to listen to Mr. Trump and stop buying Russian oil, and to finally use the more than $200 billion of frozen Russian assets in Europe to give financial assistance to the victims of Mr. Putin’s war,” says Sikorski.
Russia, as “the largest country on earth, doesn’t need more land. It should take better care of what is already within its internationally recognized borders,” concluded Sikorski. “The leadership of Russia must understand that its attempt to rebuild Europe’s last empire is doomed to fail. The age of empires is over.”
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of the Asia Research Centre at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, specializing in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.
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Jim
October 12, 2025 at 1:35 pm
Putin Is Losing The Ukraine War.
How many times have we heard that refrain from the war supporter chorus? (It’s a large chorus, indeed, right up there with the The Tabernacle Choir.)
Just goes to show, a lot of lemmings are running off the cliff these days… such is the fever and desperation to avoid losing the war… theory has it the lemmings run off the cliff as disease overwhelms them and drives them into mass insanity.
And we’ve heard this refrain too many times to count.
What do they point at to back up their claims?
Well, the author refers to another war supporter, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, making unsupported claims, in other words, engaging in an extravagant hand waving exercise.
And, of course, the author claims things aren’t going well at the front for Russia, their Summer offensive failed.
The Russian strategy is attrition warfare. (Does the author understand the concept?)
The idea is to destroy the enemy forces, as a first measure, and then advance with little resistance. There still is the objective to take territory, but it’s secondary to destroying the enemy forces. This is right in line with Clausewitz who believed destroying the enemy’s military forces was key and often the primary means of achieving victory in a war.
Both sides minimize their own casualties and maximize the other side’s losses. But dead soldier exchange rates favor Russia considerably, that’s a fact. Look it up if you dare.
What’s happening at the front is that Kiev’s forces are thinning so much (amid drone warfare) it makes more sense to go with light infantry in many places, with flanking maneuvers and then rolling up the the trench or taking out the house or building in an urban warfare setting.
Why might Russia push harder than they have been? Because the effects of attrition warfare are beginning to be felt at the front for Kiev’s forces and Russia’s generals have determined the attritional effects can now be capitalized upon.
This piece is another in the chorus: we are winning, we just have to do it harder… harder… it’ll work (trust me).
What did someone say about doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result?
What’s the lesson of Peter crying wolf one too many times.
The author talks about Putin’s difficulties, fair enough.
But Kiev is getting the snot kicked out of it seemingly every night by a combination of drones & missiles.
And its sponsors (France, Britain, Germany) are suffering political crisis at home amid economic crisis and Italy isn’t doing much better… frankly, neither is the U. S.
Well, the author is correct, Russia is escalating, both at the front and over Kiev and many other areas. Nowhere is safe from Russian pinpoint missile hits on military bases and manufacturing centers and it’s Kiev which maybe in the dark this Winter without power, practically uninhabitable, everything frozen up.
hasta la vista baby!
bis-biss
October 12, 2025 at 4:44 pm
Countries that supply weapons and ammo to the banderovtsy nazis are on the wrong side of history.
Who would have done the very same sacrilegeous thing during ww2.
It would have been totally unimaginable for a neutral country, for example, like switzerland to supply weapons and ammo to adolf hitler’s nazis during the decisive period in the fight on the eastern front in 1944.
Following the failed 1943 kursk battle ordered by adolf hitler, nazi and soviet armies clashed in a series of ding-dong battles along the russo-ukro border region.
The breakthrough came when soviet units launched the autumn 1943 dnieper offensive that led to the capture of kviv (then kiev).
After successfully taking kviv, the soviets launched their early 1944 dnieper-carpathian strike that effectively broke the nazis’ large army group south into two pieces.
After THAT, it was downhill ALL THE WAY for the nazis.
All the way to berlin.
Now, that’s actually happening in donbass today, except that today powerful backers are now aiding the nazis.
TO HELL WITH THRM !!!
Jim
October 12, 2025 at 9:05 pm
There’s another reason Putin is escalating.
Putin gave an address and question & answer session on the final day of the annual gathering of the Valdai Club, in Sochi, Russia, on October 2, 2025.
Putin was later criticized by Russian politicians, analysts and commentators alike for being too conciliatory towards Trump and there were rumblings & rumors of dissatisfaction with the progress of the war.
So much so, Putin was forced to make a televised speech clarifying his prior statements & comments, sounding tougher and more prepared for heightened military action.
And Putin gave an address to the men & women serving in the Russian armed forces honoring their service & patriotism, and dedication to duty.
The internal Russian criticism of Putin, I believe, has resulted in more presidential pressure to speed up the war possibly beyond what the Russian generals originally envisioned when preparing and strategizing their attrition plan of warfare (drones were not anticipated during preparation… this may have impacted the timing).
Look, the criticism is clear: don’t let the enemy hang around until the fourth quarter, knock’em out in the middle rounds (or earlier), before their sponsors get enamored with how plucky & tough these guys are for fighting it out to the last round… and cheering them on.
But this isn’t a game or a boxing match.
By the fourth quarter of war, if you will, generally, one side or the other doesn’t have the same compliment of men & equipment from what they had at the start.
One side has been winning, i.e. destroying more men & equipment than the other side.
Still, emotions are high and very much a part of war and giving your enemy the idea they can still win… somehow… by hanging around, as they say, in the sports’ world, is bad.
Putin has heard the criticism and responded.
Presto, escalation at the front & beyond.
Swamplaw Yankee
October 12, 2025 at 11:48 pm
The inner beltway reader has a dedicated lefty pinkoe monitoring group at their service. Why read “Amerasia” magazine when todays spy equivalent of the Service Cabal, is hard at work enforcing the “RED COMA”.
As the inner beltway readers note, zero interest in the morphology of the USA intelligence service ever appears in this op-ed site. Congress has admitted in print that they have near zero idea of how efficient or penetrated their DNI, et al, is in the past 25 years.
One notices that Stalin’s Igor Gouzenko saved the USA from Truman and Dean Acheson. Only because Gouzenko’s wife had the strength to drag a huge weight of top secret files about Ottawa, Canada did the Truman inner beltway get ball kicked to wake up. MI-6 saved the Gouzenko’s from the NAZI-like GRU agents out to kill Gouzenko, while Truman vigorously hunted down leaks to Joe Mc Carthy.
Truman as POTUS was not interested at all in long term Commie agents/spies sucking America dry, Truman was in deep ennui, paranoid focussed on stopping facts of his malfeasance as POTUS in this area from surfacing via public McCarthy revelations.
Same today in 2025. As ruuzzkie ( read commie) agents/ spies set America’s State Department policy toward their boss Putin, everyone in the “RED SECURITY COMA” Obama POTUS + now MAGA POTUS elite drown in ennui as their inability to even think about the geopolitical importance of Ukraine drags on thru the years. The muscovites can not believe their agents effectiveness.
The Hitler-Stalin pact reality never ever come close to a hit on elite Washington. Information gathered on ruuzzkie spies from then was ignored for a good dozen years. Truman allowed Stalin to install the commie Mao Tse tung and Stalin’s theft of the USA atomic top secrets.
Who are today’s Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, et al? The USA MSM just swallows the ruzzkie NAZI-like FSB propaganda form 2012-14 that POTUS Obama did not betray the WEST and SELL out NATO.
The USA just believes the Harry Potter Magic propaganda that Putin, Lavrov shows out from their bullshit stables of fiction.
Having some ruuzzkie type lover keyboard some Wikepedia facts about the 1710 Ukrainian constitution just blatantly shows the inner beltway readers how the USA just can not “defend” itself in the MAGA POTUS era. Otherwise, prove with facts that the DNI knew every fact about the terrorist Bin Ladin HQ In South Parkdale, Toronto that successfully whacked the WTC. The reality in the USA is missing about why the DNI protects the data + identities of those who covered over the highly funded terrorist Bin Ladin HQ for so many decades. Yeah! The USA can not protect itself so do not hold your breath waiting for 2025 MAGA POTUS to lay charges on 2014 POTUS Obama Cabal.
Conversely, the 2025 MAGA POTUS ( + his elite) just can not, will not, state in public to PUTIN that PUTIN immediately depart from all illegally occupied Ukrainian soil.
Polish speaker Sikorski was synoptic. “The largest country on earth does not need more land”. The age of empires is over.
The problem: who inside the inner beltway even read Sikorski In the NYT?
The USA is an empire. The new MAGA POTUS Trump needs to wake up his elite to win for the WEST. The 1000 year old Ruuzzkie ethnic dream of Genocide to extirpate Ukrainians just to seize the FREE real estate must be stated in public by Trump.
A con man has the inner ability to quickly stop an ancient con gambler. Stop Putin from his inner desires to be a sex-slave trader of Ukrainian children! That destroys Putin, his genetic desires, his need to meat grinder maintain a line of Genocide inside Ukraine. -30-
Baloney emanates from MAGA POTUS White House Clown shows like the Whackkooff 3 ring circus. Trump + Whaackooff just can not state in public why the 2014 POTUS Obama betrayed the WEST and sold out NATO by his covert-like Unilateral green light of the geopolitical loss of NATO’s ownership of Ukraine’s Crimean soil, Families and Black/Azov Sea jurisdictional zones.
The old trick of 1986 Serbia was shoved in 2014 smoothly somewhere into the POTUS Obama’s cognitive zone; the only issue in 2014 Ukraine is de ruuzzkie speaking issue.
Bankotsu
October 13, 2025 at 3:05 am
lol. I have been hearing of Russia losing the war since Feb 24 2022.
Bankotsu
October 13, 2025 at 3:06 am
“Putin Is Losing the Ukraine War”
Pigs can also fly, my friend.
The Voice of Reason
October 13, 2025 at 8:49 am
Does the author really think anyone believes him?
The propaganda got all out of whack when it was saying Ukraine will collapse if the US didn’t fund…well, US funding is long gone. And now, guess what, Ukraine is winning anyway! And just because theyre winning, see, we must now pour more money into the “investment”.
Do these clowns really think we are all that stupid?
It has been a slow downhill for Ukraine since November 2022. This fall looks like the trend will accelerate.
Whereas a month ago Ukraine couls have de facto held the parts of Zaporozhye and Kherson it held, by the end of this winter that probably wont be possible. In November of 2022 they probably could have frozen the line of contact where it was…but they wanted to re take all lost territory back then.
Permanently one step behind the curve. By this time next year they’ll have conceded everything Putin has asked for since 2022 but those terms will already be obsolete- Russia will hold substantially more territory.
George
October 13, 2025 at 8:49 am
I love reading propaganda. That’s why we’ve supported the most corrupt country in the world that bombs its own citizens. You must be American.
Jim
October 13, 2025 at 9:24 am
Yes, that’s the way Banderites see the World, if you don’t put out for them, well, you’re worthless and no value to them.
And bad things will happen to you.
This echoes Zelensky’s February meeting in the Oval Office, when Zelensky said bad things will happen to you (America) if you don’t give us money & weapons.
At that point Trump cut in and cutoff Zelensky because he recognized the gangster/mafia style threat when he heard it.
“You got nice business there Joey, sure would be a terrible thing if something bad happened to it.
We can make sure nothing bad happens, but you gotta give us money to do that, and if you don’t, well, this is a tough neighborhood… bad things happen… we wouldn’t want bad things to happen, but no money… what can we do?”
That’s Zelensky. And Banderites the world-over… don’t give us money & weapons… then you deserve bad things to happen… to you.
… and you’ve always been a stink hole of a country and never any good from the start if you don’t give us what we want.
Like I said, Mafia-style tactics and attitude.
You’re fools to put up with that kind of stuff.
They deserve nothing for their implied threats and insults.
… and they see you as weak and pathetic, a chump… if you give in to them… and say it behind your back… after you give them the money.
Andrew P
October 13, 2025 at 9:47 am
It is hard to cut through the propaganda and know how the combatants are really doing. Trump is doing everything he can to up the price for Putin, and Russia is hurting. But how much is Ukraine hurting? We don’t know. At some point one of the combatants will start to throw in the towel. We just have to sit back and wait for that to happen.
Jim
October 13, 2025 at 10:39 am
Yes, they do think people are that stupid.
Or not informed… an understandable ignorance.
Let’s face it, John Q. Public has a lot on his mind other than a map half-a-world away which at a distance doesn’t seem to change much.
They play on that… that’s their big card… ignorance.
And, the hubris & arrogance to take advantage of Americans preoccupation with their own lives, their families, job, paying the bills, and community activities, or just shooting the breeze down at the pub.
Taking advantage of innocence is the most despicable thing I can think of. But these Banderites and their lackeys have no conscience… they don’t think twice about taking advantage… anyway they can.
Too much of that in Washington… and the lying… the lying will bring down our Republic.
Do they think about that? Never.
The actual best interests of the Republic never crosses their minds.
Hoepper
October 13, 2025 at 11:13 am
I’m just wondering how much of our hard earned money gets laundered through the tax system and ultimately ends in the pockets of reality averse shysters like Reuben.