Russian President Vladimir Putin can no longer conceal the cost of his Ukraine war from the Russian public. There are fuel shortages throughout the Russian Federation. Videos show hundreds of automobiles lining up to get a few liters of gasoline at gas stations around Moscow. Gasoline sales to civilian vehicles in occupied Crimea have been suspended as the Ukrainian blockade of the peninsula takes effect. Russia continues to make painfully slow progress in its efforts to capture territory in Ukraine and at a staggering cost in casualties.

“…sound out idols... by pos[ing] questions here with a hammer... scrutiny will reveal that they are actually hollow and meaningless—not the high, noble standards of conduct that their proponents claim them to be." — Friedrich Nietzsche

Twilight of the Idols

Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov recently says that Ukraine has successfully regained the strategic initiative on the battlefield and Kyiv’s use of long-range weapons to hit targets deep inside of Russia is aiming to force Moscow to end the war through asymmetric attrition. Ukraine has recently intensified precision strikes 20-300 kms behind Russian lines to isolate Russian infantry, destroy high value air defense systems and disrupt the flow of supplies to the front line. The long-range drone campaign is systematically targeting Russia’s energy infrastructure with devastating economic and psychological effect.

Vehicles are lining up to cross the Kerch Strait bridge following successful Ukrainian drone strikes on the Tavriiska thermal power plant, major electrical substations and the Kerch and Dzhankoi oil depots. These strikes have caused blackouts in Sevastopol and Simferopol, the two largest cities in the peninsula. The panic caused by the energy shortages and the fear of total collapse has led many to flee, causing the massive backups at the bridge—with sometimes as many as 2,500-3,000 vehicles lining up to cross. The Crimean Peninsula is the crown jewel of Putin’s campaign against Ukraine which he re-ignited with its annexation in March of 2014.

But Crimea is just one of the many challenges facing Putin. Omsk is burning, having been struck on July 6 by Ukrainian forces in their deepest strategic strike of the war. The Omsk oil refinery is located approximately 2600 kms from Ukrainian territory and is Russia’s largest oil refinery and its top producer of gasoline. There are still lingering oily black clouds over Moscow from the June 18 Ukrainian strike on the Gazprom Neft refinery in southeast Moscow—just ten miles from the Kremlin. The refinery was struck by over 200 drones and sent thick greasy black clouds of burning petroleum directly over the high-rise and residential areas fthat are avored by Moscow’s elites. The clouds created “black rain” and forced disruptions at Moscow’s four airports.

A few weeks before, there were oily black clouds over St. Petersburg as Russia hosted its annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in early June. International visitors to the Forum (whose attendance has seen a significant drop since 2022) were re-routed to avoid risk of Ukrainian drone strikes and to avoid the clouds of burning petroleum. This read like quite the humiliation for the architect of Russia’s current economic disaster.

As devastating as Ukraine’s attacks have been, the situation on the front is even worse.

A recent thinktank study indicates that Russian forces have suffered 1.4 million total casualties including 450,000 deaths on the battlefield. Approximately 32% of Russian casualties result in death, a fatality ratio that is much higher than modern Western military standards would allow. Reports by analysts and Russian military bloggers indicate that once a Russian soldier is deployed directly into an active combat zone, their average life expectancy drops to just 20-25 minutes. The average survival time for a raw recruit measured from the moment they arrive at a regional training ground to their death in Ukraine, ranges from ten days to three weeks. Even by the Russian standards that were established for casualties in World War II, these losses are staggering and must be causing alarm bells to go off amongst Russia’s elite leadership. There is more visible criticism of how Putin is conducting this war than has even been seen before.

On the diplomatic front, challenges for the Russian president are rising. This week’s NATO summit is yielding results on Europe’s commitment to defense spending and re-armament, led by Germany which is considering incurring state debt to finance defense spending which would be unprecedented for a postwar German government. Putin’s confidence in his ability to count on President Trump to put pressure on Ukraine to end the war on terms that are favorable to Moscow may be eroding and Trump has recently acknowledged Ukraine’s success in the war.

Putin’s reliable ally in Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, seems also to be reconsidering the state of play and his enthusiasm for allowing Moscow to drag Belarus deeper into the conflict with Ukraine. resident Zelensky recently demanded Belarus take offline four relay facilities in Belarus’s Brest and Gomel regions near the Ukrainian border. These relay stations acted as signal boosters for Russian drones used to attack Ukrainian cities. The relays have been taken offline.

President Zelensky has just authorized a forty-day intelligence and security operation to heavily amplify pressure on the Kremlin to end the war. He is arguing that Russia’s elites live in Moscow and St. Petersburg and therefore, the war must be brought to their doorsteps. He also predicted that “When not one hundred drones but a thousand start reaching Moscow…Putin will be advised to move somewhere beyond the Urals. Zelensky is right and Ukrainians know Russia better than anyone in the West.

Despite the pressure he is under, it is too early to count Putin out. He has largely and cleverly managed his tenure as Russia’s leader. He is still two years short of Stalin’s 29 year record at the helm, but he is getting close and in his 27 years of running Russia, he has dug his tentacles deep into every level of the country’s power structure and has certainly accumulated kompromat on any potential rival or replacement. Many have speculated that if Putin departs the scene, his replacement could be an even worse partner for the U.S. and the West. I won’t argue that any replacement or coalition that follows Putin will be less anti West than Putin, but whatever constellation follows, they will not have the benefit of having roots and leverage as deep in Russia as Putin does.

For the moment, Putin still has escalatory options he can use to respond to increasing pressure.

In recent weeks, Russia has taken steps to close or severely restrict seven critical railway border crossings and road traffic crossings into Finland, Estonia, and Latvia. Apparently, negotiations are under way to restrict crossings into Kazakhstan and other central Asian states. The motivations for the abrupt closures are unclear but they suggest that Putin may be considering a mass mobilization and is trying to stem the likely departure of military age males to avoid the departures that have occurred since February 2022.

Mobilization alone will not solve Russia’s problem of shortages of equipment and training for conscripts as well as Russia’s World War I-style battlefront tactics. President Zelensky spoke on the margins of the NATO summit this week and said Ukraine is causing over 30,000 Russian casualties a month.

Putin can also rattle the nuclear saber again, but that is likely to be largely ignored as has his previous saber rattling. Most experts are confident that Putin has received firm guidance from his only remaining reliable ally China that he should not open the nuclear Pandora’s box in Ukraine.

The intelligence and security services in the Baltic States, Sweden, and Poland have recently assessed that Putin may try a provocation against one of the bordering NATO states in order to force an Article V action—which he hopes Trump would reject. But few analysts think Putin would risk an all-out war against NATO. That would be a path that could only accelerate Ukraine’s path toward NATO membership and could lead to further disasters for the Russian military, which many experts considered to be the most powerful conventional military in Europe prior to February 2022.

Putin’s most likely response to his current challenges is to continue to take advantage of weaknesses in Ukraine’s air defenses, particularly against ballistic missile attacks and hope that at some point, Ukraine’s morale weakens and pressure increases on Zelensky to end the war on terms that are more favorable to Russia. Such a change in Zelensky or Ukraine is inconceivable to any rational analysis of the current state of the war, but Putin is clearly not rational.

The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.

Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

I was sitting in the front seat of a “Yandex Taxi” in Moscow in the summer of 2018, dropping off some friends after we had drinks together at a local bar. As the driver, a Russian male in his 50’s, maneuvered through traffic, he asked me if the couple were Americans? “Yes. They are Americans.” “How about you?” he asked. “I am also an American.” Hearing this, the driver continued “You know, 10 years ago I started a small company in Moscow and was doing pretty well. Business was not bad and I enjoyed being an entrepreneur. But then after 2014, when foreign sanctions were placed on Russia my business started to suffer. The Government here claims that sanctions actually ‘help’ our economy, but not in my case. Two years ago I had to shut down my business completely and now I’m driving a taxi to make money to support my wife and daughter.”

Hearing his story, I wondered if this man blamed the U.S. for the sanctions and their impact on his life. “I’m sorry to hear about your troubles” I said. The driver must have understood what I was wondering, and he responded “Don’t misunderstand me. I do not blame you or your country for my problems. I don’t blame the U.S. for the sanctions. No. I blame our “great leader”. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. He is the reason for the sanctions. He decided to invade Ukraine in 2014 and, as a result, we were hit with sanctions. And for what reason? Why? Because it would make my life better? Is my family's life better? No. Because it pleased his ego. Because he wanted to feel important and get attention. No. I don’t blame anyone but our own President and his selfish ego.”

This conversation took place during the 2018 World Cup, which was hosted by Russia. Speaking about that event, the driver continued “look around? Look how much money Putin has put into hosting the World Cup. Billions of USD. Our money. The people’s money? Building a new stadium. Re-paving roads, cleaning up cities and refurbishing airports. Teaching police officers and bus drivers how to speak some English and translating street signs and metro signs into English to accumulate the thousands of foreign tourists coming to attend the World Cup. It is all a big show for Putin. An opportunity for him to show off to the world. But will any of this benefit us, the Russian people? Will we see any return on our investment? No. I doubt it. If there is any profit from all of the tourism, it will go into the pockets of Putin and his friends. My family and I will never see any benefit from hosting the World Cup in Russia.”

Last night, watching South Korea play Mexico in the 2026 World Cup, I was reminded of that conversation. If, by any chance, the driver was wrong in 2018 and Russia saw some benefit from the influx of tourists that visited Russia in the summer of 2018, there is little chance that the benefits continued after February 2022, when Putin decided to up the ante and expand his aggression against Ukraine. That disastrous decision has not only resulted in the humiliation of the Russian Armed Forces, deaths of hundreds of thousands of Russians, crippling of the Russian economy but it also resulted in the increasing isolation of Russia. If hosting the World Cup in 2018 was meant to present Russia as a tourist destination for foreigners, how many tourists would dare visit Russia today?

According to some estimates, the Kremlin spent over 11 billion USD to prepare Russia to host the World Cup in 2018. Cities like Moscow and St Petersburg were given makeovers. Other Russian cities that hosted matches had to build new stadiums, and Moscow had to invest billions to build or modernize infrastructure. All part of a Kremlin campaign to present Russia to the world as a modern and developed country. Classic soft power strategy.

At the time, the strategy appeared to work. Hundreds of thousands of World Cup fans poured into Russia. Downtown Moscow was filled with foreign tourists. Despite the political tensions between the U.S. and Russia at the time, and the fact that the U.S. did not even qualify for the World Cup in 2018, Americans made up the largest number of foreign visitors to Russia during the World Cup. During that period, many of the visitors came away with a positive impression of Moscow. Of Russia. Of Russians. Many had a great time celebrating and partying. Russia had a great marketing opportunity to present itself to the world.

Unfortunately, my taxi driver was right. The 11 plus billion USD invested by the Kremlin in Putin’s soft power gamble was erased by Putin’s ego. His gambit to assert full control over his western neighbor in February 2022 led to a significant decline of tourism to Russia and a darkening of Russia’s image in the eyes of the world. How many tourists today would seriously consider visiting a country that is accused of committing war crimes against the Ukrainian population? A country run by an oppressive regime that regularly kills its critics and has forced millions of its own citizens to flee abroad to seek refuge. A country that itself is now being regularly targeted by increasingly effective drone strikes in response to Putin’s continued attempts to terrorize Ukraine. As World Cup fans watched Mexico and South Korea play on 18 June, how many would seriously be interested in visiting the Russian capital, which was covered in dark, black toxic fumes rising from a fire caused by a Ukrainian strike against a Russian Oil refinery in Moscow? I suspect not many.

I often think of that Russian taxi driver, who was trying to make a living after his business was forced to close because of Russia’s growing economic problems in 2018. At the time he understood that without Putin’s ego and poor decision making, there would have been no sanctions. Markets would have remained open to Russia goods and businesses. And, like many Russians I knew at the time, he did not blame Washington, Brussels or Kyiv for Russia’s economic problems. He rightly blamed Putin. And I suspect more and more Russians today feel this way – even if they are afraid to openly admit it.

All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the US Government. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying US Government authentication of information or endorsement of the author's views.

The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.

Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief