POLITICS: Four years into war on Ukraine, Putin’s bluff must be called 

Vladimir Putin is bluffing.

Four years into Russia’s war on Ukraine, his hand at the negotiating table is not remotely as strong as he wants the world to believe.

The president of Russia faces tough choices with no easy way out. He has resorted to feigning strength to try to push Ukraine and the United States to give in to his demands during peace talks because he cannot achieve them through force.

A close look at Russia’s situation, both militarily and economically, paints a very different picture from the one Putin wants us to see.

His country’s forces seized only 0.8% of Ukraine’s territory in all of 2025. And they’ve paid a staggering price for these marginal gains: 92 casualties for every square kilometer they seized.

For years, Russia has been enticing military recruits by offering substantial financial compensation. But the budget is struggling to keep up with these payouts — and not enough citizens are signing up to continue Putin’s bloody war.

Russia is now starting to suffer more casualties on the battlefield than it can recruit.

Its economy has not collapsed, but it is weakening after four years of intense war spending and neglect of the civilian sector. There is a massive labor shortage of about 1.5 million workers. The defense sector has been growing throughout the war, but the Kremlin estimates even this will slow significantly in 2026.

Russia has tapped into its gold reserves to maintain unsustainable spending as the share of oil and gas revenues filling the nation’s coffers has been dropping — and is expected to decrease further in 2026. Putin has already spent down much of his country’s sovereign wealth fund, leaving its gold as the last available reserve.

He has even had to ban some gasoline exports after successful Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries this summer caused gasoline shortages and cut refining capacity.

Food prices have risen sharply, indicating that Russia’s true inflation rate is much higher than the Kremlin claims, driven both by the diversion of manpower into the military and the huge financial incentives offered to recruits, among other factors.

These problems put Putin in some sticky situations.

Calling up more men to fight, for example, takes them out of the labor force and strains a defense industrial base that is already working in overdrive to keep military equipment and weapons flowing to the frontline.

Putin’s temporary solution? Importing tens of thousands of Indian laborers. But this will not be enough to fuel a war that consumes nearly half a million Russians per year.

Valuing regime stability, Putin won’t just prioritize guns over butter.

He made a tacit social contract with his people after a September 2022 partial call-up resulted in upwards of 900,000 Russians fleeing the country. That’s when he adopted the approach of relying on volunteers, but that is now running dry.

It’s believed he’s preparing to start limited, rolling call-ups to offset falling recruitment rates and maintain attacks. Such involuntary mobilization will sorely test his citizens’ willingness to die for his war.

Putin would much prefer that Ukraine surrender before he must take such politically risky action.

That’s why he has been trying to convince President Trump that Russian troops are on the verge of overrunning Ukraine’s defenses.

But Ukraine-held Donetsk is one of the most fortified and well-defended areas of that country. Taking it will likely require years and hundreds of thousands more Russian losses.

Yet Putin still refuses to compromise. He keeps insisting that Ukraine, the US and NATO surrender to the full list of demands he first issued in 2021 and 2022.

Such apparent confidence is part of his negotiating strategy. It’s a facade meant to intimidate, and Putin is betting that he can sustain it just long enough for the US and Ukraine to fold first.

It is time to call Putin’s bluff.

With recruitment rates declining, inflation rates rising and his troops’ ability to actually seize the territory he so desires in question, it won’t be long before Putin has to force his population to suffer economic hardship — and death.

Putin thinks he can play the US and Ukraine at the negotiating table, strong-arming them into giving him what he can’t afford to take on the battlefield — so that he can further stall making the tough decisions he has spent the last four years avoiding.

It’s time to recognize that there’s a difference between a superpower and a bully, and ramp up the pressure on Putin.

Christina Harward is the Deputy Russia Team Lead at the Institute for the Study of War.