I have not written an in-depth analysis of the war in Ukraine for two years. It is now time to summarize my previous 43 articles in the series.
- Right up until the day before the war began, every Chinese political commentator said that Putin was merely playing an elaborate strategic game and would not actually invade. Two months before the war, in my December 19, 2021 article, “History Has Pushed Putin Onto the Path Once Taken by Hitler,” I said that a Russian invasion of Ukraine was highly probable. That prediction came true.
- Twenty-four days before the war, on January 31, 2022, I wrote in “Putin: A Desperado Strapped with Explosives, Storming a Bank to Demand Money”: “Most Chinese political commentators, whether pro- or anti-Communist, worship Putin. In my view, Putin belongs in the same category as Hitler and Hideki Tojo. He is one of the most incompetent strategists in history.” That prediction came true.
- Three days before the war, on February 21, 2022, I wrote in “Damned Either Way: The Chinese Communist Party’s Ukrainian Nightmare” that Putin had decided to launch a full-scale invasion. I based this conclusion on the disappearance from public view of all seven members of the Chinese Communist Party’s Politburo Standing Committee following Putin’s attendance at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics. That prediction came true.
- Just over a month after the war began, I predicted in “In-Depth Analysis of the War in Ukraine (9): The Future of the Tank,” published on April 1, 2022, that even the world’s most advanced tank, the US military’s M1A2, would be vulnerable to destruction once removed from the American system of combined-arms warfare. The tanks were subsequently destroyed repeatedly in Ukraine and demonstrated no particular advantage. That prediction came true.
- After Ukraine launched its so-called “great counteroffensive,” I repeatedly argued in several articles that the Ukrainian military lacked the courage to mount a large-scale offensive. War is like rowing against the current: if you do not advance, you retreat. Russia would exploit Ukraine’s inaction to prepare for another major offensive. Over the following year or two, Ukraine did indeed lose the initiative on the battlefield. Russian forces kept it under pressure and continued taking territory. That prediction came true.
- In “An Overview of the War in Ukraine, the Middle East, and the Taiwan Strait,” published on August 26, 2024, I predicted that regardless of how incompetent the Ukrainian military might be, Russia was incapable of stopping Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian oil-refining facilities. Because oil and gas exports were Russia’s only source of income capable of sustaining the war, “the outcome of the war in Ukraine has already been decided. There is no longer any uncertainty.” That prediction is now coming true.
- Two years ago, in August 2024, I wrote my most recent article in the series, “In-Depth Analysis of the War in Ukraine (43): Invading Kursk Is Not the Ultimate Objective.” At the time, political commentators everywhere were celebrating what they described as Ukraine’s masterful strategy: a feint in Kherson while its real objective was Kursk. I said Kursk was not Ukraine’s true objective and that the operation was not a good idea. Ukraine eventually lost Kursk completely after paying a terrible price. That prediction came true.
Ukraine’s Breakthrough in Its Conception of Warfare Is Winning It the Initiative
Today, the Ukrainian army is not noticeably different from what it was two years ago. It still lacks the courage and perseverance demonstrated by American troops on the beaches of Normandy and Okinawa—charging repeatedly through concentrated enemy fire and stepping over the overlapping bodies of their comrades. I examined this issue in depth in “In-Depth Analysis of the War in Ukraine (41): How Do You Build a Valiant Army?.”
Over the past two years, however, Ukraine has broken through a limit of imagination that no one else in the world—not even the US military—has overcome. By doing so, it has regained the initiative in the war.
Since the beginning of the Second World War, the US military has led the world in military technology. After the war ended, the technological gap between the United States and every other country grew increasingly wide. In the final major war before the invasion of Ukraine—the 1991 Gulf War—the United States used stealth aircraft, precision-guided weapons, satellite reconnaissance, electronic warfare, and an integrated air-ground combat system to deliver an overwhelming blow against Saddam Hussein’s battle-hardened Republican Guard, part of a total Iraqi force numbering nearly one million. The Iraqi military was completely defeated within a few short weeks. The United States suffered 148 combat deaths, while as many as 35,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed.
From then on, the world’s military strategists—including America’s—could not imagine, even after snorting cocaine, any way of strengthening a military other than continually improving its level of military technology.
This was the limit of imagination that the entire world had failed to overcome during the 70 years since the war.
Ukraine’s military technology is far inferior to Russia’s. Its national strength, industrial scale, and population are also far smaller.
Yet the Ukrainians were the first people in the world to break through this limit of imagination that nobody had overcome since the Second World War. They recognized that there is an extreme asymmetry between the difficulty of striking targets on the ground from the air and the difficulty of defending against those attacks from the ground—the former is a hundred times easier, while the latter is a hundred times harder. They realized that this extreme asymmetry could be used to win the war.
A country with third-rate military technology such as Ukraine cannot manufacture the US military’s hypersonic, ultra-precise ground-attack missiles. It cannot produce ballistic missiles comparable to the American technology of the 1960s, as China and Russia can. Nor can it produce Russia’s S-300 and S-400 air-defense missiles, whose boastful reputation reaches the sky but whose actual capabilities are comparable to American technology from the 1970s.
Nevertheless, Russia cannot easily shoot down the suicide drones that Ukraine manufactures on an enormous scale. These drones cost only a few thousand or tens of thousands of dollars each. They cannot fly high or fast, make a great deal of noise, have large heat signatures and radar returns, and are powered by lawnmower engines. Yet Russia’s S-300, S-400, Buk, Tor, and Sosna air-defense missiles—each costing millions of dollars—cannot easily destroy them.
Even if those missiles were capable of shooting down every Ukrainian drone, spending millions of dollars to destroy a drone worth only tens of thousands would still represent a complete victory for Ukraine in terms of cost. Russia cannot manufacture enough of these expensive missiles, while Ukraine can produce drones in virtually unlimited numbers.
It is not merely Russia. Even the US military cannot guarantee that it can shoot down such extremely primitive suicide drones. During the first round of the US-Iran war, most US military bases in the Middle East were destroyed by Iran’s rudimentary suicide drones and ballistic missiles. The equipment destroyed included four or five THAAD missile-radar systems, each costing billions of dollars and requiring four years to manufacture. The US military rapidly exhausted its supply of air-defense and cruise missiles costing millions or tens of millions of dollars each.
Iran depleted America’s stockpile of exorbitantly expensive munitions by absorbing its attacks. It then used bargain-basement drones to strike US forces effectively, seizing complete control of the initiative and trapping the United States in a dead end from which it could not escape. For details, see “The US-Iran War: A Complete American Defeat (II).”
Russia and the United States are now paying a terrible price for their failure to overcome this 70-year limit of imagination.
Ukraine has now created an extremely efficient, comprehensive system for drone research, development, and production, with hundreds or even thousands of independent drone developers and manufacturers. Only six or seven days pass between frontline soldiers identifying a change in battlefield conditions and requesting a new drone capability, and a drone meeting that requirement entering combat. In the United States, this cycle takes months or even years. Meanwhile, Russian corruption has made progress in drone technology painfully slow. A proxy company controlled by politically connected insiders monopolizes drone development, leaving frontline soldiers with unreliable, difficult-to-use drones that frequently malfunction.
By now, Ukrainian drones have destroyed more than 40 percent of Russia’s oil-refining capacity, and long lines are forming at petrol stations across the country. Selling oil and gas has been virtually Russia’s only source of income since the war began, yet Russia is now seeking to import petrol from India.
Ukrainian drones have cut the roads used to carry fuel and supplies into Crimea. They are methodically destroying the peninsula’s oil-storage and refining facilities and its power plants, rapidly turning Crimea into an isolated island on which survival is impossible.
After achieving significant results in those operations, Ukraine began systematically destroying the enormous logistics and distribution centers belonging to Wildberries. This highly successful and efficient Russian equivalent of Amazon is part of the Russian economy’s circulatory system and provides effective logistical support for Putin’s war. Russia’s deficit in the first quarter of 2026 alone was twice its total deficit for all of 2025.
The Ukrainian army, however, continues to defend fortified positions, while Russia continues feeding batch after batch of fresh troops into the Ukrainian meat grinder. Russia suffers more than 1,300 casualties every day, including more than 1,000 deaths. According to reliable intelligence from the Central Intelligence Agency, a Russian soldier sent to the front survives for an average of 23 minutes. By comparison, the average survival time of an American soldier in the European theater during the Second World War was between 420 and 600 days (ChatGPT)!
Seven hundred thousand Russian soldiers have been killed since the war began. If the war continues for another four years, Russian military deaths will exceed 2.7 million!
Russian frontline officers devote all their energy to extracting their soldiers’ generous allowances and deceiving their superiors. NATO’s intelligence apparatus has discovered that the Russian high command frequently bases its strategic planning on the assumption that Russia has captured areas that, in reality, remain under Ukrainian control.
This happens because Russian company- and battalion-level commanders frequently order soldiers to infiltrate Ukrainian-controlled territory, raise a Russian flag on a prominent building, record a video, and then withdraw. The commanders use these videos to claim credit and obtain rewards from their superiors, while the soldiers involved are frequently wiped out.
In this way, every level of the Russian military exploits those below it and deceives those above it. By the time the information reaches Putin, hiding in a bunker protected by layer after layer of defenses, he hears that everything on the front is proceeding according to plan and that victory is just over the horizon.
From the Perspective of Ukraine and NATO, This Situation Could Hardly Be More Perfect
If Putin knew the war’s true condition, he would probably abandon his completely unrealistic demand that Ukraine withdraw from vast areas of territory and agree to a ceasefire along the current front line.
Under pressure from Comrade Vladimir Trump, the FSB’s undercover agent, Ukraine would be forced to accept the ceasefire. Putin could then employ his formidable diplomatic skills and, with Comrade Trump’s cooperation, drag negotiations out for several years while securing a partial lifting of Western sanctions.
After several years, Russia would have restored its national strength and—with China’s cooperation—rebuilt a more advanced military. Putin would then return and attack again. This outcome would be virtually certain.
But today, the deception passed upward through every level of the Russian military has convinced Putin that he is winning. He therefore intends to continue the war.
And what will be the result?
In an article published on July 17, 2024, I wrote:
The inevitable result of this war is that Russia will exhaust itself, be reduced to a third-rate country, and withdraw from the stage of international politics. Only when the Russian people reach the following condition will they, like the Japanese people during the Second World War, realize that they have run headfirst into a brick wall:
Nine homes in ten stand empty; nine households in ten are bereaved.
Nine factories in ten are shuttered; nine shops in ten are stripped bare.
Nine armies in ten are routed; nine ships in ten are laid up.
Nine villages in ten are overgrown; nine cities in ten are desolate.
Unless its suffering reaches this level, the barbaric animal species known as Russia will never accept NATO’s position.
Judging by the current trend—a trend that can only continue to accelerate—the outcome described above is highly probable.
The current state of the war in Ukraine is precisely the state that every good person in the world wants to see.
The Next Stage of the War
The Ukrainian army will not remain indefinitely in its fortified defensive positions.
As Russia’s oil and gas resources are gradually exhausted and its economy continues to deteriorate; as its supply of military recruits steadily dries up; and as the flow of weapons, ammunition, and supplies to the front continues to decline, Russian morale will sink and its combat effectiveness will steadily weaken.
With NATO’s support, Ukraine’s intelligence system has a complete understanding of this process. Once a certain tipping point is reached, even Ukraine’s less-than-valiant army will be capable of launching an overwhelming offensive against Russia’s feeble forces.
The resulting transformation of the battlefield will remind us of the final year of the Chinese Civil War, when the attacking troops could run until their legs gave out and still fail to catch an enemy army that was disintegrating before them.
We are now in the quiet period before the great transformation.
做个明白人 