When Russia invaded Ukraine, many expected a swift victory for Putin. Four years later, the story looks very different. In this video, we break down the two key reasons Russia is struggling: Ukraine’s game-changing drone strategy and a shocking revelation that suggests Putin has been misled for years. Discover how deep strikes, economic pressure, and battlefield innovation have shifted momentum, and why some believe Russia may have lost this war long before it began.
00:00 - The Reality of the War
02:56 - Ukraine’s Asymmetric Strategy
09:36 - Breaking Russia's Logistics
12:56 - The Bombshell: Putin’s Fake Reality
16:14 - Putin's Final Options
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SOURCES: https://pastebin.com/DjM6YXj9
00:00 - The Reality of the War
02:56 - Ukraine’s Asymmetric Strategy
09:36 - Breaking Russia's Logistics
12:56 - The Bombshell: Putin’s Fake Reality
16:14 - Putin's Final Options
Support us directly as we bring you independent, up-to-date reporting on military news and global conflicts by clicking here: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMilitaryShow/join
#militarystrategy #militarydevelopments #militaryanalysis
#themilitaryshow
SOURCES: https://pastebin.com/DjM6YXj9
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NewsTranscript
00:00When Putin launched his Ukraine invasion, everyone thought that Russia would win easily.
00:05The steamroller was coming and Ukraine was right in its path.
00:08But over four years later, everyone is looking a little stupid.
00:13Russia isn't winning.
00:14If anything, Putin has already lost the war, and it's all thanks to two things that have destroyed Russia's chances.
00:20Ukraine's strategy is one of them.
00:23It has done something unprecedented, especially through 2025 and into 26, that has changed the game.
00:30But there's something else, something that caused Putin to lose long before he even started his war.
00:35A bombshell has been dropped, and it reveals why Putin has failed so badly in Ukraine.
00:41But before we explore that bombshell, here's where the war stands right now, and how Ukraine created this situation to
00:47discuss.
00:48Right now, all of the momentum in Putin's war is in Ukraine's favor.
00:51A quick look at the situation on the ground reveals that.
00:54Despite launching a massive spring offensive that was supposed to cripple the Donbass and put Russia in a position where
01:01it could ask for whatever it wanted at the negotiating table, Ukraine is the nation that is gaining ground.
01:07The Institute for the Study of War reveals that May saw Russia steal about 40 square kilometers away from Ukraine,
01:13which is already a pitiful return for what is supposed to be a war-ending offensive.
01:17But it's made even worse for Russia by the fact that Ukraine liberated 280 square kilometers of its territory during
01:24the same month.
01:25Something similar happened in April, when Russia took 28 square kilometers but lost 116.
01:32We're seeing a turnaround in real time in 2026, but the reality is that Russia hasn't been doing well from
01:38the first few weeks of its campaign.
01:40Here's a little perspective.
01:41That steamrolling campaign that was supposed to cripple Ukraine in February 2022, all that Russia managed to achieve there was
01:48occupying 27% of Ukraine's territory, and Ukraine soon mounted a defense so fearsome that Russia was pushed back to
01:5518% by November 2022.
01:57It's almost as though Putin was misinformed about how easy Ukraine would be to defeat.
02:02How curious.
02:03Since November 2022, Russia has spent almost four brutal years claiming just another 1.5% of Ukraine, shedding enormous
02:12amounts of blood in the process.
02:14Ukraine's Ministry of Finance says that Russia has suffered over 1.38 million casualties so far.
02:21Putin's thirst for Ukraine and the sacrifices he has forced onto Russia are combining with a low birth rate and
02:27higher mortality,
02:28to the point where it's estimated that Russia's population will shrink by about 300,000 people annually up to 2050,
02:35geographical reports.
02:37And all of this is to gain territory equivalent to Los Angeles County since November 2022.
02:43Something doesn't add up.
02:45How has Russia failed so badly when it still has a clear manpower advantage and enough military hardware that Ukraine
02:52shouldn't even be able to get out of the blocks?
02:54The answer comes down to two things.
02:56Ukraine's genius strategy and a bombshell that reveals that Putin has no idea what's really happening and hasn't from the
03:03very start of the war.
03:05We'll start with the strategy.
03:07Since 2025, Ukraine has changed the way that it fights against Russia.
03:11In the early years of the war, Ukraine tried to match and overcome Russia on the ground.
03:15When Ukraine wanted to liberate territory, it did so by launching ground offensives, as we saw in the summer of
03:212023,
03:22when Ukraine launched a massive counter-offensive that ultimately failed to achieve its goals.
03:27That approach played right into Putin's hands, even though Russia was failing to make much progress of its own.
03:33He wanted Ukraine to destroy its own military by smashing it against the much larger Russian army.
03:38Sure, a lot of Russians would die, but so would plenty of Ukrainians, leading to Russia coming out on top
03:44in an attritional war.
03:46So Ukraine changed tack.
03:49Starting in 2025, the country's focus switched from ground offensives to an asymmetric strategy designed to do two things.
03:57Cripple the Russian economy and, as Ukraine moved into 2026,
04:01take advantage of a new generation of drones to shatter the Russian rear in the occupied territories.
04:06On the economic front, long-range strikes that penetrate deeper into Russia than Putin could have ever anticipated
04:13have been playing a huge role in ruining Russia's economy.
04:16These kinetic sanctions, which go hand-in-hand with the 26,655 traditional sanctions
04:23that Ukraine and its allies have levied against Russia, are doing enormous economic damage.
04:29And 2025 was the year when Ukraine committed fully to this strategy.
04:33The Economist has the numbers.
04:35It says that Ukraine launched 335 strikes that were at least 100 kilometers away from its borders
04:42between 2022 and the end of 2024.
04:45In 2025, that number rocketed up to 658, almost doubling in one year what Ukraine had achieved during the previous
04:53three.
04:53And in 2026, assuming that Ukraine maintains its current pace, it will have executed well over 800 deep strikes against
05:02Russia,
05:03many of which target the oil and gas facilities that Russia relies on to keep money flowing into Putin's war
05:08machine.
05:09And that is the key.
05:10Cut the energy lifeline and Russia's entire economy struggles as a result.
05:15The impact of this aspect of Ukraine's asymmetric strategy, particularly in 2026, has been pronounced.
05:21On May 12, the Moscow Times reported that Russia had been forced to cut its forecast for gross domestic product,
05:27or GDP, growth from 1.3% down to 0.4%, as Ukraine's strikes racked the country's energy sector.
05:35Russia's economy also contracted by 0.3% during the first quarter of 2023,
05:40which is a sharp turnaround from the growth that the transformation into a wartime economy had delivered to Russia during
05:45the early years of the war.
05:47Ukraine can take credit for many of Russia's economic woes,
05:50and some are already predicting that Russia has entered the endgame in terms of what its economy can do to
05:55recover.
05:56The Kiel Institute is among them.
05:58In a June 11 piece, it said that Russia's wartime economy has reached its limit,
06:02as the assets in Russia's Liquid Sovereign Wealth Fund have dropped to just 1.8% of GDP in April
06:08from 6.5% at the beginning of the invasion.
06:11Oil and gas revenues also fell off a cliff during the first quarter of 2026, declining by 45% year
06:17on year.
06:18That's Ukraine's doing.
06:19It's hard for Russia to sell oil and gas when its refineries and terminals are burning.
06:24These 2026 economic problems are just the start.
06:28The reality that Putin faces now is that Russia's economy hasn't been strong at any point during the Ukraine war,
06:35even when Russia was claiming growth.
06:37The Kremlin claims that Russia's GDP grew by about 13% between 2020 and 2024,
06:44before Ukraine's deep strike strategy really took hold.
06:47But that may have been a lie, and there's a lot of that going around in Putin's inner circle.
06:52According to Sweden's foreign minister Maria Malmöstenegard, an analysis of Russia's nighttime luminosity index suggests
06:59that the country's GDP actually contracted by 8% during this time period.
07:04This is an interesting way to measure, but it's one with precedent.
07:08S&P Global explains that nighttime luminosity is a big economic indicator for several reasons,
07:13perhaps the most important for Russia being that they indicate how active supply chain and industry nodes really are.
07:19If the lights aren't on, then nobody is making money, at least not as much as Russia was claiming to
07:24make.
07:25With this context, we see the deep strike aspect of Ukraine's strategy doesn't necessarily create a new problem for Russia.
07:31It builds on an issue that has existed since the invasion was launched, and it's only getting worse as more
07:36oil burns.
07:38We've seen similar lies in terms of Russia's inflation figures.
07:41In 2024, Russia claimed that inflation was 10%.
07:44That's too high, and it led to Russia's central bank hiking up interest rates to 21%,
07:50which is a killer for anybody who needs a loan, be it an individual or a business.
07:55But by mid-2026, Russia seemed to be getting a handle on things.
07:59Inflation was down to 5.2%, the Kremlin claimed.
08:02However, Swedish military intelligence says otherwise,
08:05claiming that Russian inflation is closer to 15%,
08:08which makes Russia's already weakened capacity for military spending even weaker than it has already become.
08:14And not even the closure of the Strait of Hormuz that resulted from Operation Epic Fury has done much to
08:19help Russia here.
08:20Oil prices may have risen, but Ukraine's deep strike campaign has expanded to the point
08:25where it's able to hit the terminals Russia uses to export its oil,
08:29often multiple times to shut them down completely.
08:31We saw an example of that on June 14th, when Ukraine confirmed,
08:36when it had once again hit Tuapso port, from which 20% of Russia's seaborne oil sales.
08:40We see all of Russia's economic pain.
08:43Ukraine switching to an asymmetric strategy with a heavy emphasis on deep strikes
08:47has created so many of the economic challenges that Russia now faces.
08:51And if not creating, then Ukraine's long-range drones accentuate problems that already exist.
08:57The logic is clear and very simple to follow.
08:59So, hurt Russia's economy and you cripple its war machine.
09:02But that's not all that ingenious strategy boils down to.
09:06As Russia itself deals with constant aerial bombardments,
09:09Ukraine has been executing the second part of its strategy,
09:12which focuses on the occupied territories.
09:15Combined, these two tactics are what will lead to Russia losing the war.
09:18And remember, there's still the bombshell that put Putin on the back foot from the start.
09:22That bombshell changes everything that we thought we knew about the Ukraine war.
09:26Before we dig deeper into all of that, this is a reminder that you're watching The Military Show.
09:31If you're getting valuable insight from the channel, hit subscribe so you never miss a video.
09:36Earlier, we told you that Ukraine has moved away from launching large ground campaigns against Russia's forces.
09:42However, we also told you that Ukraine has come out ahead in April and May when it comes to territory
09:47gain.
09:47How is that happening if Ukraine isn't sacrificing large numbers of soldiers to retake that territory?
09:53Two words, mid-range strikes.
09:55Throughout 2026, Ukraine has accompanied its intensified deep-strike campaign inside Russia
10:00with a mid-range strike campaign made possible by the emergence of a new generation of drones
10:05that allow Ukraine to hit the Russian rear in occupied territories.
10:09Ukraine has spent much of the year using these drones to strike Russian targets in the range of around 50
10:14to 200 kilometers,
10:16with May alone seeing Ukraine carry out almost 2,000 such strikes, per President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
10:23This campaign cripples command posts, air defenses, and troop gatherings behind the lines.
10:28And under the logistics lockdown program, which Ukraine officially announced at the end of May,
10:33and builds on this mid-range strike campaign,
10:35Ukraine has also been taking out record numbers of Russian supply vehicles and fuel trucks,
10:40all of which traveled throughout the occupied territories to provide logistical support to soldiers on the front.
10:45In May alone, Ukraine's defense forces took out 8,612 Russian vehicles and fuel tanks
10:51on top of its other mid-range strikes.
10:54Highways, particularly those feeding into Crimea, are under constant attack.
10:58And all of this adds up to a horror situation for Russia.
11:02Supplies aren't getting to where they need to be,
11:04and that's creating opportunities for Ukraine to launch targeted counter-attacks.
11:09Rather than the large ground assaults which typified the early years of the war,
11:12Ukraine now weakens Russia in the rear before launching flash operations on the ground,
11:16which take out the increasingly isolated groups of Russian soldiers
11:20that are trying to hold the territory they've stolen.
11:23Couple that with Ukraine's lethal defenses,
11:25and you get things like two consecutive months of Ukraine holding a net territory gain over Russia.
11:30Range is everything Ukraine's strategy against Russia,
11:34and it's the one thing that Putin never expected Ukraine to have.
11:38Ukraine's long-range strikes penetrate two and a half times deeper in 2026 than they did in 2022.
11:44According to Ukraine's Ministry of Defense in April,
11:47that amounts to being able to hit Russian targets consistently at distances up to 1,750 kilometers.
11:54That's huge, and it's why Russia is losing so much ground and being embarrassed so heavily on the front.
11:59Plus, these strikes aren't all that Ukraine is doing.
12:02Russian soldiers still need to be eliminated on the front,
12:05and that's what Ukraine's FPV drone-infested kill zones are for.
12:09Short-range reconnaissance and strike drones constantly patrol up to 30 kilometers beyond the front lines,
12:14on the hunt for Russian soldiers and equipment that are trying to reach the front to launch assaults.
12:19It's a recipe for disaster.
12:21Take one dash of ruining the Russian economy,
12:24add a pinch of mid-range strikes destroying the rear,
12:26and combine it with a hefty dose of FPV drone attacks against soldiers on and around the front,
12:31and you get a war that Putin is losing.
12:33But we said that Putin had lost the war from the start.
12:36What we're seeing in 2026 is the culmination of a year-long Ukrainian strategy.
12:41But there's still the little matter of the bombshell we've mentioned to address,
12:45and that bombshell shows us that Russia's president had lost the war from the start
12:49because he had no idea what he was stepping into.
12:51We won't keep you waiting any longer.
12:54Putin has been lied to for years about almost everything that has anything to do with Russia.
12:59It always seemed strange that Putin managed to massively underestimate Ukraine when he launched his invasion.
13:05The strength of Ukraine's immediate defense seemed to catch Russia off guard,
13:09leading US and European officials to suggest that Putin had been misled
13:13about the true strength of Ukraine's military from the start.
13:16Those officials didn't know how right they were.
13:19On June 15th, United24 media and the Moscow Times revealed that Putin lives in an alternative version of reality
13:26that is being fed to him by Russian state television.
13:29That's according to former Russian propagandist Dmitry Skorobutov,
13:33who claims that Russia's state-owned television stations have been delivering separate,
13:37off-air news broadcasts that are tailor-made to put a smile on Putin's face since 2011.
13:44These broadcasts aren't even what the Russian people see.
13:47They are made solely so that Putin sees the good news,
13:50whether it exists or not,
13:51and completely avoids the bad news that would perhaps give him some idea
13:55of how things are really going with his Ukraine invasion.
13:58How does Skorobutov know all of this?
14:00He's the former editor-in-chief of the VESTI program on Rosia 1,
14:05so he was directly responsible for pumping what we can unironically call fake news into Putin's eyes and ears.
14:11It worked like this, Skorobutov says of a project that was codenamed The Main Viewer.
14:16Let's say a regular VESTI episode aired at 8pm, after which the production crew stayed.
14:21We were given instructions on what news to keep in that broadcast,
14:24what to add, where to embellish things, and what to remove,
14:27so that Putin would later be shown the ideal picture of beautiful Russia today.
14:31In other words, that he is such a good president.
14:33Putin has been isolated from reality in this way for years, the former propagandist says.
14:39And suddenly so much of the Ukraine war makes sense.
14:42Assuming that this program is still in place,
14:44it means that Putin hasn't been seeing any news of Russia's failures in Ukraine,
14:48or anything that could upset him, since long before the war began.
14:51And it seems that the falsification goes beyond special news programs created for Putin.
14:56On May 29th, the New Voice of Ukraine reported that Putin's military commanders
15:00are giving Russia's leader false maps that inflate Russia's gains to hide the fact that Russia's
15:06offensive has not only slowed, but is actively losing ground.
15:10Putin's unwanted confidence about the dominance of Russia is cast into a very different light now.
15:15Those demands for the fall of the Donbass by September may not come from arrogance,
15:20but from genuinely having no idea how badly Russia is doing in that region right now.
15:24When Putin declared that Russia had captured Bukhovsk and Vovchansk at the end of 2025,
15:29despite neither city having fallen,
15:31he may have been told by commanders that Russia's soldiers had succeeded.
15:35Heck, on June 13th, Putin claimed that Russian soldiers
15:38can't raise their heads due to Ukraine's drones,
15:41as though that was some sort of revelation rather than a reality that existed for years.
15:45Is this information that has managed to slip through the carefully woven net of lies around Putin,
15:49resulting in him only just figuring out that drones might just be a problem in Ukraine?
15:54We can't know for sure, but what we now know is that Russia's president has been operating
15:58with a false picture of reality in Ukraine, Russia, and basically everywhere else for years.
16:04But now, as even Russia's commanders and propagandists can no longer hide what's happening in Ukraine,
16:09Putin might finally be getting a glimpse of the truth.
16:12Russia had lost from the start, and Ukraine is driving the knife in.
16:16And that leaves Putin scared and desperate.
16:19Putin might finally realize that Russia is losing the Ukraine war on multiple fronts.
16:23Don't get us wrong, that doesn't mean he is no longer a dangerous man.
16:26If anything, that realization could make him more unhinged,
16:29as he looks to expand the war that he started beyond Ukraine's borders and into European NATO territory.
16:35The humiliation of it all may be too much for Putin to bear,
16:38meaning he will reject peace and try to go down swinging,
16:41rather than accept the fact that he lost because of Ukraine's brilliance,
16:45his own ineptitude, and the lies that were being funneled to him by yes-men for well over a decade.
16:51However, this danger comes from desperation, and that means it can't last.
16:55As Russia's problems deepen, Ukraine's European allies have opportunities to twist the knife
17:00with more sanctions and greater levels of support,
17:02which will lead to more pain for the Russian economy,
17:04and even better results for Ukraine on the battlefield.
17:08Mounting Russian losses, combined with lackluster volunteer recruitment,
17:11are already pushing Putin closer to mobilization,
17:14which will be a massively unpopular move
17:16that could just be the catalyst for his people to finally turn their backs on him.
17:20If Putin tries to avoid that, he either has to scale back Russia's military activity,
17:25which will be the death of his already faltering invasion,
17:28or make greater demands on an economy that he has already flushed down the toilet,
17:32creating even more hardship and pain for his people.
17:36Putin is running out of options,
17:38but the obsession that drives him means that he no longer has any way out.
17:42Putin needs Ukraine now more than ever.
17:45He promised Russia would claim Ukraine in days.
17:47He was wrong.
17:48For over four years, Russia has been humiliated and beaten down for the world to see,
17:53and now Ukraine has the perfect strategy for taking Russia down for good.
17:58The steamroller has been turned around.
18:00Now, it's Putin and Russia that are in the steamroller's path and waiting to be crushed.
18:05And outside of negotiating a peace agreement that fails to give Russia anything that Putin promised,
18:10Russia's president has no way to escape from a war that he lost
18:13without realizing from the moment he launched his invasion.
18:16As for Ukraine, it keeps ramping up its strategy,
18:19making Russia more desperate than ever before.
18:22We mentioned the logistics lockdown program.
18:24We saw what that program really meant when Ukraine set up its Armyansk bridge trap
18:29and took out 50 Russian vehicles in a matter of minutes.
18:31Discover what the mid-range strike campaign really means by watching our video.
18:35And if you enjoyed this video, remember to hit subscribe
18:38so you can catch what's coming next from The Military Show.
18:41And thank you for watching.
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