Ukraine War: The Month That Dismantled Russia’s Express Victory

From “the war is over” online claims to Russia’s northern withdrawal

On February 25, 2022, the day after the invasion began, a conclusion circulated as fact: Kyiv had fallen and the Ukraine war was over. This assertion, repeated without nuance, summed up the sentiment in parts of Spanish digital discourse about the conflict. A Russian victory seemed a matter of days. One month later, troops expected to parade through the capital were withdrawing from the country’s north.

The timeline of a forecast that unraveled

An ordered record of these predictions allows reconstructing the sequence without embellishment. On February 24, the day the offensive started, data collection began. The next day, the conclusion was stark: how quickly Kyiv and Ukraine had fallen, adding that the fight was finished. By February 26, a specific scene was anticipated: Ukrainian citizens coming out to welcome Russians in a triumphal march through the capital.

The turn came naturally. On March 23, the same record noted that a week later, Russians were retreating from the north. Less than a month separates the first certainty from this note. Neither the capital fell nor was there a parade. Setbacks were given names, and in this chronology they were labeled the “Kyiv feint” or simply “FINTARRA”: the retreat supposedly being a diversionary maneuver.

Why was Ukrainian collapse taken for granted?

The forecast relied, according to the compilation itself, on borrowed certainties: an invincible Russian army, symbolic resistance, and an economy unaffected by sanctions. Conclusions chained together on this ground, each more definitive than the last, without anyone testing the first premise.

Alongside military predictions came energy forecasts. Some claimed gas prices would not rise and electricity bills would stay flat, citing Algerian pipeline capacity figures that, per another user, never added up. One recorded phrase captured the illusion: “Pilingui will win and all these news stories will disappear like tears in rain.”

The NATO standoff and the insurgency argument

One central Russian demand was that the Alliance commit to never admitting Ukraine. Official responses maintained that “NATO’s door remains open,” as US diplomacy emphasized. Far from closing, this standoff became the negotiation’s core.

A subtler technical argument emerged: a country cannot join the Alliance while maintaining an open territorial conflict on its soil. This also applies to Moldova and Georgia. Sustained insurgencies in those territories function, under this reading, as doors locked from within, explaining why Moscow keeps active hotspots rather than extinguishing them.

The battle for narrative and counting casualties

Amid exchanges, seemingly solid military reasoning appeared. Most striking: every fallen Russian soldier means one less bullet for Ukrainians. Presented as strategy, the logic suggests each own loss wears down the enemy—an argument many readers received with disbelief.

Tone shifted toward mockery, turning the compilation into more than an anecdote. The stated intent from the first message was to create eternal record: fixing who said what and when, so failed predictions wouldn’t dilute over weeks. Reviewing the sequence shows, in days, the jump from total victory to orderly retreat.

The disorienting data point

Less than a month separates the phrase declaring the war over from the note recording Russia’s northern withdrawal. That short gap was all the terrain needed for the forecast to collapse. The war hadn’t ended. It had just begun, with a different script than announced.