First Year of Full-Scale Invasion: What ruSSia Lost

February 24, 2023February 24, 2026

First year of full-scale invasion brings undeniable and serious consequences for Ukraine and the world. But consequences arrived for the aggressor country as well. Overall, they’re so obvious that no one discusses them as a set of consequences anymore. Statistics on various directions of the sick country’s activity get presented separately. But no one really tries to look at them together with a glance at how things stood a year ago. Well, almost no one — because someone did exactly that, and literally just recently, the federation classified almost all economic statistics.

We remember that about a year ago, right at the very beginning of the full-scale offensive, the enemy completely classified everything connected to combat losses. Moreover, before this operation started, the enemy didn’t particularly hide the number of personnel gathered at our borders, the number of tanks, other armored vehicles, aircraft, ships, and so on. On one hand, they counted on the effect of large numbers. On the other, they were so confident in their quick victory that they neglected rules regulating preparation for an offensive.

The Art of War They Never Read

Different times formulated these rules differently, depending not only on the era but also on the specific theorist formulating them for their troops. Nevertheless, the foundation remained common. Sun Tzu formulated it 2,500 years ago in his treatise “The Art of War.” He instructed showing the enemy that you are weak and powerless if preparing an attack. Vice versa — if you’re in defense, you must create the appearance of much larger forces than those you actually have.

In other words, the attacking side must hide the time and place of the offensive and certainly the composition of forces and means involved. As we now remember, the enemy did nothing of the sort and demonstrated no secrecy in concentration and deployment. Most likely, the Orcs¹ simply don’t know how to prepare something like this covertly. For formal cover of troop concentration, they told everyone they were conducting exercises near Ukraine’s borders. Allegedly, troops gathered there for exercises.

When the Lies Stopped Working

So they wanted to act this way and did act this way while everything was under their control and everything went as planned. But as soon as combat operations began on Ukrainian territory, huge losses started instantly. And these — they classified instantly. A bit later, the AFU General Staff began giving daily summaries of enemy losses, though the enemy spent almost two months claiming they had no losses at all. Even when simply gigantic flows of photos and videos started appearing — destroyed enemy equipment and piles of their military corpses — they still didn’t acknowledge losses. Approximately the same situation persists to this day.

But this is their internal affair. What matters to us is that the Orcs close data where the abyss of catastrophe reveals itself. If they’ve now added closing economic statistics to the closed data on losses, you can be certain the situation there develops the same way as with losses. For a very long time, they tried to juggle statistics to show that Western sanctions don’t work. After all, pootin publicly stated that the West would suffer from sanctions far more than his personal federation. This was an important element of their propaganda. But now — that’s it, this topic died, because without statistics you can no longer tell stories about how sanctions don’t work for them and how Europe freezes and starves. This means the situation changed so much that it’s better not to touch this topic at all.

Everything They Hide, Everything They Lost

Over this year, the Swamps² classified literally everything — losses in Ukraine, the state of the economy, any data including all officials’ incomes. This indicates that reality sharply diverged from the fairy tales the Kremlin feeds its herd — and they understand this perfectly well there. The only way to react to this: close the data and ban touching these topics with censorship.

So, the enemy started the invasion using an army that the world either openly feared or was wary of and clearly didn’t want to mess with. The world considered it sufficiently well-equipped and most importantly — having gained combat experience through rotation in Syria. Besides, it was numerous, and unlike any Western army, built on a dictatorship paradigm and therefore easily manageable. If necessary, it wouldn’t get stuck on some legal and ethical issues. That is, the world considered this army a cold, sharp instrument better left alone.

Pootin himself also assessed his own army’s capabilities approximately this way. Moreover, the strike grouping formed from contract soldiers considered professional fighters, unambiguously better trained than conscripts, reservists, and especially mobilized soldiers. As we now know, this grouping consisted of units gathered from across the country, and it included almost all contract soldiers from the Airborne Forces, naval infantry, and all kinds of special forces. The federation entered open war with such an army. A year passed, and this army no longer exists.

The Math of Annihilation

Simply by the number of killed, almost 150,000 today, this corresponds to the troops involved in the invasion. Moreover, using the known formula for loss ratios, you can say that for every one killed, three get wounded. Thus, we add 450,000 wounded to the 150,000 killed. Again, of those wounded, up to a third get written off as irretrievable losses. That is, they sustained injuries that don’t allow return to service. That’s up to 50,000. What does this give us?

That is, over the year, enemy losses killed and wounded totaled about 600,000. Of these, irretrievable losses amount to about 200,000. This means the professional army got utilized. Yes, its scraps remained in the form of staff officers and a very small part of field personnel. But if on February 24 last year, the professional army entered Ukraine — where each contract soldier carried several years of service on their shoulders — now such personnel are rare. They had exercises and training behind them. The overwhelming amount of enemy personnel continuing to fight consists, at best, of reservists. But even they’re already becoming rare inclusions in unit compositions, and mobilized soldiers replace them.

From Professional Army to Cannon Fodder

This is already a completely different contingent, both in motivation and training. The first year of full-scale invasion proved what happens when you send professionals and then replace them with poorly trained conscripts. Where maneuver warfare needs demonstration, they can’t do anything. If it’s not about a frontal attack but something more complex, they compensate for the lack of skills with the quantity of these mobilized soldiers.

One of the most effective types of maneuver actions is the raid, which includes a swift attack and then a swift withdrawal. This inflicts maximum damage on the enemy, and they don’t have time to zero in their artillery on attacking forces. But withdrawal maneuver is known to be more difficult than attack. Therefore, personnel must be trained and motivated to conduct something similar while taking minimum losses themselves and inflicting maximum damage on the enemy. Only a well-trained unit with appropriate personnel can execute this. Without proper training, losses will be too large and the unit won’t complete the assigned task.

What the World Learned About ruSSian Military Power

The presence of trained personnel represents that very military power potential opponents respect. And the AFU knocked all this out. Yes, new military equipment flows there, but it already represents patches on a large mass of old stuff pulled from conservation. A year ago, everything entered “brand new.” All units were staffed with needed personnel. They had everything required by staff table, without antiques. No desperate guns from 1945. No light armor produced in the mid-50s and pulled not even from conservation but from the scrap heap.

In general, the Swamps de facto lost the army that frightened the whole world. The world came to the conclusion that if russians themselves show such results using their own weapons and equipment, this means russian weapons are shit and russian soldiers are shit. If so, the former reverence at the mention of the red army is gone and will never return. Now destroyed Pidar³ tanks stand at russian embassies in various countries around the world, visually demonstrating what Ukraine turned this very power into. After all, this power generated authority, and it rested on it and on natural resources — which also developed problems.

The Economic Collapse Nobody Talks About

A year ago, the Swamps were considered the world’s largest supplier of oil and gas, with prospects for growing market share globally. The first year of full-scale invasion changed all that permanently. Now russian oil gets bought by countries you can count on one hand’s fingers. They buy it at such low prices that it’s already hard to understand whether any profit remains from such trade or not. Same with gas. In essence, moscow itself left the richest gas market in Europe, and other exporters already took its place.

And we shouldn’t forget that over the past year, the Swamps got thrown out of a whole series of international organizations. Participation in these organizations forms the status of any civilized country. Moreover, it closely approached the question of exclusion from the UN Security Council — something that didn’t happen during the harshest crises in Soviet times. If so, the Kremlin’s authority collapsed below the lowest mark in the entire history of both russia and the USSR. Plus, right now, methodically and unhurriedly, the brand of war criminal burns onto it. The process already launched. As we all know, everything concerning war crimes has no statute of limitations. Over this year, consensus formed that pootin must appear before a war crimes tribunal, as Milošević and Karadžić did before him — only in this case, the defendant’s bench will be much longer.

The Question No One Asked Before the First Year of Full-Scale Invasion

And most importantly, over this year, the Swamps became a problem for the entire world. Given that the USSR was such a problem on the same territory, and before that, the tsarist empire, a question arises. Is it worth leaving this entity in the same dangerous form so it relapses in several decades? More and more of the world’s powerful figures arrive at a negative answer to this question. And this — in just one year of the first year of full-scale invasion that changed everything russia thought it knew about itself.

¹Orcs – a common term for Russians who support or participate in the armed aggression against Ukraine. Dehumanizing? Yes. Accurate? Also yes.

²Swamps – an ironic name for Russia, emphasizing decay, stagnation, and filth. The Commander of the USF, Robert Browdie, and most soldiers use this word.

³Pidar (pronounced “pidar”) – Ukrainian military slang for a Russian service member. In radio communications, the word “Pidar” sounds shorter and clearer than “Enemy” especially under EW.