It used to be a war between armies, now it is a war of the people. War used to end by defeating the enemy’s army, now war ends by defeating the enemy’s people. None of us knew that before this war and we had to learn it for the first time… The military defeats shake the people’s confidence in their government, the opposition strengthens and gains power, and government falls. And then when the whole system is rotten and ripe for decay, general collapse ensues. – Erich Ludendorff, 1917[1]
The general situation on NATO’s eastern flank remains largely deadlocked.
Ukraine, through its creativity and a wall of drones, keep the Russians largely at bay. The stalling of negations by the Russians have gone on for so long that even President Trump seems angered and frustrated. On September 24th Trump claimed that Ukraine could “win all of Ukraine back in its original form”, marking, in the words of two BBC analysts, a “major shift” in his position on the war with Russia.[2]
A few days later Vice President JD Vance criticised the Russians rejection of “bilateral or trilateral negotiations”, with the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) noting that “Kremlin officials continue to demonstrate their lack of interest in good-faith negotiations with Ukraine” and noted that the Vice President stated that Russia has refused to sit down in any meeting with Ukraine or Ukraine and the United States.[3]
During the night of Sep 27 to the 28th Russia conducted the third largest combined drone and missile strike on Ukraine since the war began, with a total of 643 projectiles being used in the attack. So much for Russian peace. [4]
Indeed, the ISW noted on September 18 that the Kremlin “continues to demonstrate its commitment to its original war aims in Ukraine” with the Russian foreign minister Lavrov demanding that any peace settlement ensures Russias “legitimate security interests” and solves the “root causes of the war” – two euphemisms for “Russia’s original war demands, which Kremlin officials have continuously asserted Russia will achieve either militarily or diplomatically.”[5]
On the same day the ISW argued that Russian victory is not inevitable, and that Ukraine and the west “can leverage several key Russian weaknesses to force Putin to change his calculus and engage in good-faith negotiations.”[6]
As the Russian Senator Dmitry Rogozin noted in an interview with the Bloknot media outlet and published on the Russian social media site VKontakte on September 19, “parity in equipment, training and morale between Russian and Ukrainian forces stalls momentum on both sides”, adding that “any military equipment brought 20 kilometres of the line of contact, on either side, would get burned.”[7]
As Russia and Ukraine appear to be in a military deadlock with the frontline seemingly at an impasse – what can be done?
I suggest that the solution, or at minimum, inspiration, is to be found in history. Not in the tactical battles of the past, but rather the strategic solution to a seemingly impenetrable wall. The First World War and the collapse of Imperial Germany in the autumn of 1918 offers a glimpse of what may be possible with regards to the Russian problem today.
The solution may lack the military elegance of the manoeuvres coveted by our manuals and doctrines but offers the possibility of a strategic and decisively political solution to the current military conundrum.
The German case in World War One, is a tale of both military and economic defeat.
On the military front, The Germans launched their last throw of the dice, Operation Michael, in late March and early April 1918 with the biggest offensive since the start of the war. Hindenburg and Ludendorff, the de-facto military dictators of Germany, “gambled everything on a crushing blow in the west” and within two weeks the Germans had sustained 230,000 casualties and were beginning to slow down.[8] Hindenburg and Ludendorff went “for total victory in 1918 – a last desperate game of va banque – only to see it fail.”[9]
“Rarely has a nation”, Peter Hart wrote in his extraordinary book The Great War 1914 – 1918, “been so comprehensively defeated in the field as Germany was in 1918. Her armies were reeling back and were totally unable to defend the German frontier… At sea the Germans had been bottled up… In the air the German pilots were fighting bravely, but were severely outnumbered fast running out of aviation fuel. Her allies, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria, had all been brought to their knees. There was no hope anywhere for Germany: this was a total defeat writ large.”[10]
During the war around a total of approximately 2 million German soldiers died on the battlefield. Total losses for France and British Empire amounted to a roughly 2,5 million (1,4 and 1,1 respectively). The Russian Empire suffered 2 million casualties and imploded. Hart writes that the German army performed incredibly, while some German generalship was “outstanding: ingenious and intuitive, aggressive and brutally simple, boldly heroic and sensibly cautious – there were many ways to win a battle.” Yet despite this, “the allies eventually won on the battlefield because of a massive superiority in numbers and resources.”[11]
Yet Germanys defeat was not only a military one, but one also forced upon them through economic hardship at home.
In 1993 N. P. Howard discussed the role that the allied blockade on Germany played on the German economy and its people.
Howard argues that Germany’s western armies began to collapse “after the halting of General Ludendorff’s spring offensive, for want of food and supplies.”[12]
The Blockade, he wrote, “contributed greatly to the reduction of supplies of food from all sources of the Central Powers by over 50 per cent in the final year of the war. Its impact increased population loss and spread death and disease, as famine encroached upon the civilian populations of Central Europe.”[13]
By October 1918 famine conditions were prevalent in “many cities and regions”, with “a reduction of 50 per cent of the food supply to the population… the reduction in the consumption of protein foods amounted to over 80 per cent.”[14]
German countermeasures included “all-out submarine warfare to food rationing, and from local crop requisitions to the plundering of occupied territories”, which in an ironic twist, “only added to the hardships of civilians.”[15]
Howard cites a Swedish newspaper which in January 1918 reported that German life insurance companies claimed, “that the death rate of the civil population was beginning to compete with the death rate on the battlefields.”[16]
In October, the social democrat Scheidemann, brought into the German cabinet, reported that “We have no longer any meat. We cannot deliver potatoes because we are short of 4,000 rail cars every day. We have absolutely no fats left.”
By the time the allies and Germany were discussing the conditions of the armistice, the British negotiator, Admiral Wemyss, reported that “that the term that causes the
greatest consternation among the German delegates is the blockade…”[17]
It is also noteworthy that the first offensive action undertaken during the war by the British (on august fifth) was a secret operation in which the British ship, the Alert, conducted “one of the first strategic acts of information warfare in the modern world”, cutting of Germany’s underwater cables. The Alert had “cut off almost all of Germany’s communications with the outside world. It had hit the kill switch.”[18]
So, what can we learn from the case of Imperial Germany and of her collapse, and how do we translate this into the present situation?
I suggest here a similar, but different, approach. Where good artists copy, great artists steal. The same may be said of strategists.
Clearly, the current situation, as of the first week in October, may be described as a stalemate. Neither Russia nor Ukraine give any indication to have the resources in manpower or equipment for a breakthrough of strategic significance. Manoeuvre appears neigh impossible, and drones rule.
What can be done?
If Ukraine cannot currently win through strictly military operations on the battlefield, the need for political action becomes more the clearer. If Russia cannot lose on the battlefield, it must be made to lose in the political arena. If the war is not untenable at the front, in needs to be made untenable in the Kremlin and the ruling clique.
The European Union and its current levels of support for Ukraine is clearly insufficient, and may be described, generously, as the bare minimum. Robin Brooks, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute, has been tracking the surge in trade between European countries and countries in Central Asia, the Caucasus and Turkey that has taken place in the last three years. According to Brooks, this trade “has nothing to do with genuine exports to these places… this is about circumvention of western export controls, with the ultimate destination for these goods being Russia.”[19] Countries like Germany and Italy have, to quote Brooks, “a massive transshipment problem and pretend like nothing’s wrong.” Similarly, almost half of the Russian shadow fleet “consists of oil tankers that were sold to Putin by Greece’s shipping oligarchs.”[20]
According to Brooks transshipments and continued sales make “Russia’s economy stronger and help Putin in his war on Ukraine.”[21]
It should therefore not come as a surprise that The Times of London could report in late September 2025 that more than “three years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the war still feels distant in Moscow… The apparent attempt by the Kremlin to shield Moscow from the realities of the war has been largely, if not totally, successful.”[22]
BBC Russia and Mediazona, who have verified the deaths of more than 130,000 Russian soldiers, had by late September 2025 only been able to verify that 242 draftees from Moscow had died in Ukraine since February 2022 – with a population of 13 million, it is one of the lowest rates in the country.[23]
In the same article The Times reported the sanctions, “that many expected would crippled Russia’s economy have so far failed to make a significant dent on living standard in Moscow.”
However, cracks are beginning to show in the façade of the Russian economy, and the signs have been there for quite some time, if one was paying attention.
Already in June 2025 Maxim Reshetnikov, the economy minister, stated that “Judging by the business sentiment at the moment, we’re basically already on the brink of falling into a recession… The numbers show [the economy] is cooling off.”[24]
An anonymous senior official at NATO told the BBC Russian service the same month that the alliance expects Russia to be able to sustain its military campaign in Ukraine through at least 2027, and that despite mounting domestic economic pressures, “the alliance estimates that the Kremlin has enough resources to finance the war for several more years…”[25]
The NATO official further stated that “Russia’s military-industrial base is already operating at full capacity and that any further expansion of weapons production is likely unfeasible.”[26]
By the end of June Putin approved changes in the Russian budget, including sharp reductions “in the plan for oil and gas revenues and sequestration of financing key projects to support the national economy.” The new budget projects that oil and gas revenues to be 24 per cent lower than projected, and the budget deficit will “exceed the original plan by three times – 3.8 trillion Rubles instead of 1.2 trillion.” [27]
In April, The Moscow Times reported that the cost recruiting Russian contract soldiers have “soared five times compared to April 2024, and if the current pace continues, it will cost the Russian treasury 730 billion Rubles by the end of the year.” This is roughly half the annual budget for all higher education systems in Russia, and twice as much as the “national project ‘Healthcare’ which amounts to 369 billion Rubles this year.”[28]
The same month, George Barros, leader for the ISW Russia team, told the New York post that “Russia can likely only afford another 12 to 16 months of fighting at its current pace, with about 30,000 to 45,000 Russian troops killed or injured in Ukraine each month since its 2022 invasion began…”[29]
As such, according to Barros, “the center of gravity for this war is the continued international support for Ukraine. There will be a a military solution to this conflict – it just depends on, will it be a Russian victory in some form, or a Ukrainian victory in some form?”[30]
Since these comments were made, Russia’s position has worsened. Their supposed summer offensive came largely to naught, at the expense of thousands of dead Russians.
If we translate the arenas in which Imperial Germany was defeated – militarily and economically – we find glimmers of hope for Ukraine.
By the beginning of September, Putin was forced to deny that Russia was in a recession, despite the central bank stating that, technically, it was. A graph published by the central bank the same week showed that gross domestic product shrank for two consecutive quarters – “a standard definition of what economists call a technical recession.”[31] September also saw the steepest decline in the Russian service sector since December 2022.[32]
Though a full-blown blockade with the immediate humanitarian consequences that Britain brought unto Germany during the Great War may not be sought after in 2025, a robust sanctions regime targeting key sectors of the Russian economy is of utmost importance. Robin Brooks has shown that it is insufficient. Even under western sanctions, oil and gas account for “30 per cent of Russia’s income.”[33]
On the military front Ukraine is holding the line. But a Russian defeat on the battlefield and the home front will require more from its allies.
Ukraine meanwhile, is taking matters into its own hands and in some ways trying to solve both issues simultaneously.
Using long range drones Ukraine is targeting a key Russian asset – and strategic vulnerability – its oil and gas monopoly. At the end of September Philip Ingram claimed that Ukraine is “turning Russia’s sprawling oil and gas empire into a chain of infernos” – attacks which threaten “severe fuel shortages – which put immense pressure on Moscow’s ability to carry on fighting.”[34]
One OSINT researcher referred to the Ukrainian campaign as “kinetic sanctions” – “imposing economic damage on Russia’s oil sector, which is central to state revenues and the war economy.”[35]
By the end of august Reuters calculated that Ukrainian drone attacks have forced the Russian offline oil refining capacity to a record high – “up 65% from previous estimates based on maintenance plans…” In august Ukrainian strikes “knocked out around 17% of Russia’s refining capacity.”[36]
A month later, Reuters wrote that Russia is “seeing shortages of certain fuel grades as Ukrainian drone attacks reduce refinery runs and high borrowing costs mean private filling stations can’t afford to stockpile fuel, according to traders and retailers.”[37] The attacks have “reduced Russian oil refining by almost a fifth on certain days and cut exports from key ports, pushing Moscow close to reducing its oil production.”[38]
By the beginning of October, less than two weeks after the above Reuters article, the Kyiv Post reported that 38 per cent of Russian primary refining capacity was offline, leaving the Russian domestic market short by “roughly 20% of demand.” The Kyiv Post cites Seala, which claims that seventy per cent of the outages are a direct result of Ukrainian drone attacks. Between the first of August and September 19th, Ukraine have launched at least 21 separate attacks on Russian oil refineries.[39]
At this rate, Russia will shortly have to import oil and gas for domestic use, both increasing the costs for the Kremlin, as well as decreasing their income from exports.
Europe meanwhile, can increase its support for Ukraine in a rather simple way. A number of European countries hold €260 billion in frozen Russian state assets. Seizing them outright would allow Ukraine to spend the money on weapons and rebuild the country. However, this would require legislation in a number of countries (Belgium being a major one, with €190 billion in Russian assets held there). The legal dispute over eventual “countermeasures” needs to be addressed at a European level, and individual countries protected behind the EU.[40] The EU needs to start pushing its weight around and not be constrained by the threat of a UN Veto by Russia.
Other suggested measures, as reported by The Times of London at the end of September[41], include the EU and Britain creating a “drone wall” to protect NATO’s eastern flank; using the frozen Russian assets to underpin a $160 billion interest-free loan to Ukraine; and finally the introduction of the 19th round of EU sanctions which would hit the Russian oil and gas industry. Importantly, it will include secondary sanctions on China if it buys Russian oil, as well as banning the import of Russian LNG from January 1st 2027 – a year earlier than previously planned.[42]
Combined Ukrainian and European measures will come a long way to strangle the Russian economy. The proposed utilisation of the frozen assets would be a game changer on the battlefield. By the end of September US Vice President JD Vance confirmed that the United States is “looking at” sending Tomahawk missiles. This would represent a “significant upgrade for Ukraine’s arsenal, especially in terms of long-range strike capabilities”, according to Federico Borsari, a fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), as it would “allow Ukraine to deliver a much heavier payload against targets compared to what it’s using now.”[43]
In June 2023, Margaret Macmillan, Professor Emeritus of International History at Oxford, wrote that[44]:
“In the spring of 1914, few thought that a land war between major European powers was possible… Much the same held true in the early weeks of 2022… In 1914, the major powers had only offensive war plans, predicated on quick victories… In 2022, Putin made much the same mistake.”
Like the great diplomat Kennan who wrote that “Our first step must be to apprehend, and recognize for what it is, the nature of the movement with which we are dealing.”[45], Macmillan reminds us that “ One of the lessons of Russia’s war in Ukraine is that Western strategists need to pay more attention to how leaders elsewhere see their own countries and histories…”
History, if we care to listen, is a great teacher. As with the collapse of Imperial Germany at the end of the war, the noose around Russia, militarily and economically, is tightening.
Time, this vital commodity, is not on Russia’s side.