"Russia may be forming its last "fist": Expert names reason for war's continuation"

Despite numerous high-level meetings discussing the prospects for ending the war and occasional glimpses of peace, Russia, while claiming peaceful intentions, continues to launch attacks and kill Ukrainians.

Military expert and former SSU officer Ivan Stupak shared his insights in a commentary for TSN.ua regarding what went wrong, and under what conditions might Russia be forced to end the war.

“Every consequence has a name. This problem has one name — Donald Trump. At the start of Trump’s term, the British told me, ‘You’ll see, Trump will flood Ukraine with weapons and pressure Russia with threats, forcing them to the negotiating table. He’ll act quickly. Everything turned out to be the exact opposite,” Stupak says.

He continues: “If Trump limits himself to threats that are never implemented, those threats will never materialize. Russia now sees opportunities in this. If Trump imposed tariffs, targeted Russia’s shadow fleet, and continued applying sanctions, then we could talk about squeezing Russia.”

According to Stupak, Trump is yielding to Putin.

“He’s removing people from the White House who understand the Russian issue. It feels like he doesn’t want to end the war, and on the other hand, he’s somehow conceding to Putin. Yet recently, he ordered the destruction of a boat smuggling drugs off the U.S. coast with precision weapons,” the expert noted.

Stupak also mentioned that he has been deliberately analyzing Russia’s ground-based technical resources for the war.

“From February to July, there was a monthly decrease in the destruction of Russian equipment on the front lines. I focused on three parameters: air defense systems, armored vehicles (only 135 destroyed in July), and tanks (only 74 destroyed in July). The reasons? My first impression is a shortage, but suddenly they might be accumulating them somewhere to create a "big fist." Hiding large amounts of equipment from satellites is difficult, though,” the analyst asserts.

In Stupak’s view, the state of Russia’s economy, which he says is entering a recession — neither growing nor declining — could slow down, if not stop, Russia’s war against Ukraine.

“I expect that the state of the economy will eventually slow down Russia’s war effort. When? I don’t want to speculate — it’s genuinely unclear,” Stupak says.

Russia may be forming its penultimate "fist"

“Their recruitment pool for the war is steadily shrinking. In the second quarter, they recruited about 39,000 troops — for the entire quarter. In previous periods, it was 30-35,000 recruits per month. Russian military bloggers have started complaining that personnel from the military-space forces — technicians, refuelers, electricians — are being thrown into infantry roles, forming what might be the last or penultimate "fist,” the expert speculates.

Stupak also notes that after the fighting in Russia’s Kursk region, North Korean troops have not appeared on the front lines.

“It seems that for North Korea, it was historically important to assist Russia. They haven’t appeared on other fronts. Based on this logic, we can assume they won’t show up on the front lines for now. But technical assistance from North Korea to Russia has been provided,” he concludes.