Russia’s New Strategy — What You Need to Know About Ukraine Two Years Into the Full-Scale War

Jakub Ferencik
6 min readMar 21, 2024

We have all been wrong about this conflict before. Many, including Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, Volodymyr Zelensky, didn’t think it would happen before it did. More recently, many thought that Ukraine would have had a more successful counteroffensive since it succeeded in similar efforts before.

So, we’ve been wrong. Nonetheless, there are some reasons to believe that Russia is benefiting from the stalemate more than Ukraine. Of course, at the rate both sides are amassing casualties, no one is winning. It’s a deeply unsustainable conflict for both sides. Nonetheless, Russia is more resilient than most economists predicted it would be. And that’s a problem.

Russia’s new strategy is to outlast the enemy and let demagoguery come back to the U.S., France, Germany, and other important allies of Ukraine.

Let me explain.

Photo by Hassan Pasha on Unsplash

Despite criticism that Ukraine’s efforts have resulted in a “stalemate,” the truth is not so simple. In fact, as mentioned above, at the rate of loss for both Ukrainians and Russians, this most certainly cannot be a stalemate in the long term. At a certain point, Ukrainians or Russians will have to give in to the casualties and retreat in some way.

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Jakub Ferencik

Journalist in Prague | Author of “Up in the Air,” “Beyond Reason,” & "Surprised by Uncertainty" on AMAZON | MA McGill Uni | 750+ articles with 1+ mil. views