Why Ukraine was never able to beat Russia

Ukraine vs Russia: Kyiv's impossible military victory

On the night of 10 June 2025, Russian cruise missiles and Geran drones razed the UK visa application centre in Kyiv. It was not a typical military target, but the message was clear: Russia could strike wherever it wanted. That attack, which also hit facilities in Boryspil, Odesa and Chornomorsk, was a reminder that Ukraine's war is not an even contest.

The demographic and territorial imbalance

Ukraine has gone from 50 million inhabitants to around 20 million. Millions fled and will not return. Those who left found in the war the perfect excuse to escape a country that, even before the conflict, was a "dung heap" — to use the term that appears in the analyses — that everyone who could fled. The remaining population is not enough to sustain an economy, let alone a prolonged war effort. Moreover, Russia has been eating up territory: it is at the gates of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, close to Zaporizhzhia, besieging Kharkiv and threatening Sumy, just 15 kilometres from its artillery. The loss of half the territory, including the industrial Donbas, is an increasingly real hypothesis.

NATO's role and the strategy of attrition

Some analyses argue that the war was never designed for Russia to be defeated, but for it to bleed slowly, triggering internal discontent. NATO supplies weapons, intelligence and Starlink, without which Ukraine would have collapsed within weeks, as seen in February-March 2022. But that aid does not change the fundamentals: Ukraine cannot expel the Russian troops or bring Moscow to heel. Its only possible "victory" is to hold out and prevent Russia from achieving all its objectives. The result is a war of attrition that, according to the sources, has caused more than a million casualties and left the country dependent on Western aid to pay even the salaries of its civil servants.

The real cost: an unviable country

Corruption, the murders of opponents and the ban on political parties have worsened the democratic crisis. Industrial production is destroyed, the debt is astronomical and reconstruction will take decades. Anyone who thinks Ukraine can win the war ignores the data: a population halved, a shrinking territory and an economy in a coma. Meanwhile, the real winners are the United States, which has weakened Russia without moving a single soldier; China, which trades with both sides; and Russia, which keeps the richest regions. Europe, for its part, bears the cost of sustaining a failed state.

The question raised in analytical circles — "did anyone really think Ukraine could defeat Russia?" — finds its answer in the numbers: it was never possible. The war, designed as a balance of power between a hormonally boosted weakling and a strong one that cannot deliver the final blow, has only left a country bled dry. Moscow has already consolidated its gains and is pressing on the front. The question now is not whether Ukraine will win, but whether it can even survive as a viable state.