Eurasia Press & News
Attrition rather than territorial movement is increasingly becoming the decisive factor shaping the outcome of the conflict in Ukraine.
A recent article published in the Kyiv Independent titled “Is Ukraine starting to win the war again?” tests the maxim that if you need to ask, the answer is probably “no.”
As the collective Western media has done since 2022, the Kyiv Independent cites “flatlined” Russian territorial gains and expanding drone strikes deep inside Russian territory (the article attributes them to Ukraine despite the New York Times admitting such strikes are enabled by the US Central Intelligence Agency and the US military) — all as evidence of growing Russian weakness and increasing Ukrainian strength.
A War of Attrition Is Not Measured in Territory or Headlines
In reality — and even as the article itself admits — the war is not one of territorial gains or headline-grabbing drone strikes, but one of attrition.
Russia is thus contributing toward a global effort to displace US primacy with multipolar alternatives precisely to undermine the very source of Wall Street and Washington’s menace to the entire world, not just Russia alone
At one point the article even admits, “The upper hand will be gained by the side in whose favor the long attritional fight is running.”
In any war of attrition, the primary factors lending leverage to one side over another is military industrial production and the ability to maintain or expand trained manpower. By implication this also means the ability to maintain the economic, social, and political stability required to support these enabling factors.
Here the Kyiv Independent concedes Russia wins out big in both categories, admitting, “Russia continues to be able to steadily recruit between 30-35,000 new soldiers per month, enabling Moscow to sustain its losses on the battlefield,” and that “Moscow aims to produce 7.3 million FPVs in 2026.”
While the Kyiv Independent claims the quality of those 30,000-35,000 Russian troops recruited each month is low, poorly trained, and poorly equipped in the field, it avoids discussing Ukraine’s recruitment struggles. This includes the fact that — unlike Russia’s recruited manpower, who voluntarily sign contracts — much of Ukraine’s manpower is pressed into service, sometimes literally being beaten into submission and dragged to the front line.
Regarding drone production, other Ukraine-based sources put Ukraine’s drone output somewhere around 4 million per year, or about half of Russia’s production numbers, according to the Kyiv Independent.
It should be pointed out that in addition to Russia outproducing Ukraine (and in reality, Ukraine’s American and European sponsors) in terms of drones — an area of supposed “Ukrainian” strength — Russia continues outproducing Ukraine and its Western sponsors in all other categories of conventional military power as well, from artillery shells and precision-guided missiles, to armored vehicles and anti-aircraft systems.
Imagining Victory
The article repeats recent talking points circulating throughout Wall Street-funded Washington-based policy think tanks regarding the cutting off of Russian forces from use of US-based SpaceX’s Starlink satellite communication network as well as high-profile drone strikes deep inside Russia threatening to risk what Western pundits call “breaking the key social contract at the heart of Putin’s rule”— that ”is, the illusion of peace at home while Russia wages war abroad.
However, none of these claims — whether real or imagined — impact the fundamental factors that either win or lose a war of attrition.
Drone strikes on Russia have targeted energy production, storage, and export facilities, manufacturing centers, and other infrastructure critical for both Russia’s military and economic viability. While these strikes have caused damage, it has not been at a pace greater than Russia’s capacity to repair and/or adapt to the strikes.
The drone strikes have raised the costs for Russia of the ongoing US proxy war but have not changed the overall math of attrition that favors Russia due to its structural advantages. And while this might seem like a fundamental failure for the US, it is actually precisely what US policymakers set out to do as laid out in policy papers stretching back years before the Russian operation began in 2022.
The US Seeks to “Extend” Russia, Not Necessarily Defeat it in Ukraine
What the drone strikes also achieve is the creation of a psychological effect — not on Russia’s leadership or population, but on the Ukrainian population and the wider Western public, especially the European public.
Creating the illusion of success and the possibility of eventual victory is essential to politically justify the immense amount of public resources being redirected from social programs and infrastructure into arms and ammunition production, vehicles, logistics, and training programs, as well as the astronomical amounts of money being spent to prop up the Ukrainian government, economy, and Ukrainian society.
The illusion of success and imminent victory also convinces Ukrainians themselves to continue fighting on. A proxy war cannot continue if the proxies themselves succumb to defeatism driven by compounding battlefield realities.
It should be remembered that provoking and prolonging proxy war with Russia in Ukraine — not necessarily “winning” it — was/is a stated US geopolitical objective.
In the 2019 RAND Corporation paper, “Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground,” a wide variety of “measures” were proposed — all of them meant to be implemented in concert to create pressure on Russia both within its borders and along them — hoping eventually to precipitate a Soviet Union-style collapse.
Among these measures was “providing lethal aid to Ukraine.”
Under “benefits,” the RAND paper noted that:
“Expanding U.S. assistance to Ukraine, including lethal military assistance, would likely increase the costs to Russia, in both blood and treasure, of holding the Donbass region. More Russian aid to the separatists and an additional Russian troop presence would likely be required, leading to larger expenditures, equipment losses, and Russian casualties. The latter could become quite controversial at home, as it did when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.”Under “risks,” the paper admitted that triggering a war with Russia in Ukraine might lead to “disproportionately large Ukrainian casualties, territorial losses, and refugee flows” and “might even lead Ukraine into a disadvantageous peace.”
In other words, the arming of Ukraine by the US would not only knowingly provoke a war with Russia, it would likely end in Ukraine’s destruction and defeat.
However, in the process, tremendous costs would be exacted from Russia, pressure placed on it militarily, economically, and politically, and it would contribute to a broader campaign of encirclement, containment, and overextension toward what the US hopes eventually results in Russia’s collapse.
Other measures mentioned in the paper revolve around Russia’s energy production and exports. The paper lists such measures as “hinder petroleum exports” and “reduce natural gas exports and hinder pipeline expansions.”
Even before the paper was published, and of course, ever since, the US has actively implemented all of these “measures.” This includes placing a growing number of sanctions on Russia and coercing US proxies to follow suit. The US has also outright attacked pipelines, including the Nord Stream pipelines as well as others, as part of attacks attributed to “Ukraine.”
At one point, the RAND Corporation paper proposes undermining Russian energy exports to Europe by ramping up US LNG exports to Europe as an alternative. The paper laments that “reducing European peacetime consumption of Russian gas has a medium to low likelihood of success.”
Of course, the solution the US employed was to take “peacetime” and turn it into perpetual wartime.
The continued implementation of this long-standing US policy of belligerence toward Russia has spanned every US presidential administration throughout the 21st century, including both the previous and current Trump administrations.
The purpose of the proxy war is to “extend Russia” by constantly increasing the cost of the war in Ukraine, Ukraine which the US itself deliberately provoked by “providing lethal aid to Ukraine,” while also permanently disrupting peacetime and the flow of Russian energy to Europe that peacetime had enabled.
A Division of Labor: Europe Working For, Not Against Washington
It should be noted that the February 2025 US directive delivered to Europe by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth demanding Europe “double down” on its support and involvement in America’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine continues to be implemented faithfully and enthusiastically by Washington’s European proxies.
This includes a recent proposal by NATO’s secretary general that member states “commit 0.25 percent of their GDP to Kyiv,” as reported by Politico, in addition to the increase of NATO spending from 2% of each member state’s GDP to 5% already demanded by the US and now being implemented.
As long as these US objectives continue to be advanced by the US proxy war in Ukraine against Russia, the war will continue — whether the US says so openly or hides behind its disguise as a “neutral mediator” for the war it itself provoked while portraying Europe and even Ukraine itself as “obstructions” to a supposed US-mediated “peace.”
For Russia’s part, Moscow must certainly understand this, yet goes along with the US narrative likely for one practical reason — to allow the US an exit ramp if and when Russia resolves the war in Ukraine on the battlefield.
Unfortunately, the US is not running short on proxies — even if the war appears to be drawing to an end in terms of grinding Ukraine down through attrition, the US is willing, capable, and actively preparing to feed the rest of Europe into the proxy war next, meaning Russia will then have to repeat the entire process again, but against a much more dangerous combined European force including member states armed with nuclear weapons.
Thus, until the very source of the conflict is addressed — Washington’s pursuit of global primacy and its use of war, proxy war, and a wide variety of other multi-domain strategies to do so — the US will find ways of perpetuating its “extending Russia” policy, which — in turn —i s one part of a much greater strategy aimed ultimately at containing the rise of China and asserting US hegemony worldwide.
Russia is not simply fighting back against this US proxy war in Ukraine. Russia is faced with a US campaign of encirclement targeting Russia all along its peripheries far beyond just Ukraine.
Russian victory in Ukraine alone will not be enough to defend Russia from US encroachment and aggression. Russia is thus contributing toward a global effort to displace US primacy with multipolar alternatives precisely to undermine the very source of Wall Street and Washington’s menace to the entire world, not just Russia alone.
Only time will tell the final outcome of not only the proxy war taking place within Ukraine – but the much wider global struggle between the multipolar world’s attempts to build faster than US-led unipolarism can destroy.
