Russia turns the war around: the story of the Russian advance

Russia turns the war around and the narrative changes sides

The war in Ukraine has entered a phase in which the Russian advance is no longer a hypothesis and has become the axis of the story. The starting point is a message proclaiming a return to war with a litany of "one country, one homeland, one nation, one people, one God", attributing to Ukrainian troops the start of surrender talks. The piece cites the Spanish newspaper Público as its source, which immediately triggers a paradox running through the whole conversation: a pogre outlet serving as argumentative ammunition for Moscow's supporters.

What is actually being discussed when people say Russia is advancing

The central claim is that Russia has gone from resisting to pushing forward. Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigú put Ukrainian losses since the beginning of the year at more than **80,000 soldiers** and **14,000 pieces of equipment** destroyed, including more than **1,200 tanks** and armoured vehicles. These figures are repeated as proof of the shift. The sceptical response does not deny the advance, it relativises it: forces move forward "a few metres a day", just as in the Ukrainian summer offensive, and the feeling is one of stalemate, not breakthrough.

The other front is weapons. The arrival of F-16 fighters is presented as the factor that could change the equation. Some argue that today's F-16s incorporate modernised components that put them on a par with much later aircraft, while others point out that they are arriving "few, very few". The counterargument is that their real value lies not in the aircraft itself but in the intelligence supporting it, and that is where the F-35 comes in as a silent force multiplier.

The religious axis: from communist crusade to Christian crusade

The thread splits down the middle when religion enters. One side argues that Russia is today the Christian beacon of the West against a West that has supposedly embraced nihilism. The other responds with data on religious practice: attendance at the Russian Orthodox Church stands at around **1%**, and the churches are fuller of propaganda than of worshippers. The discussion drifts towards family, abortion, alcoholism and social breakdown, and ends in an exchange of accusations over who is instrumentalising God.

The historical paradox noted is a subtle one: religion survived forty years of communism in Russia "by a hair", but it survived; in Spain, forty years of National Catholicism left a result that is debated as being worse. The conclusion drawn is that faith is measured not by official discourse but by practice, and there the numbers favour neither side.

NATO: from defeated to main beneficiary

One of the most interesting turns in the analysis is the argument that, whoever wins on the ground, NATO has already won. The alliance is intact, has taken in two more countries and has turned the Baltic Sea into its own lake. The argument is rounded off with the reading that pushing Ukraine against Russia served to drag the European neutrals —Sweden, Finland and, on the list of pressure, Switzerland, Austria, Moldova, Serbia or Bosnia— into the Atlantic orbit.

The other reading is the American win-win: if Ukraine holds out, Russia is destabilised and fragments; if it collapses, its western half falls under Atlantic influence and the energy ties between Europe and Russia are broken. In both scenarios, it is the European taxpayer who pays.

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With these ingredients, the most reasonable prediction is that the narrative of the Russian advance will keep gaining ground in the media as long as casualty figures and destroyed equipment remain the only verifiable data. What is not written is how long a front that advances metres without breaking anything can hold.