Russia will not collapse this year, but the war has passed the point of diminishing returns for Moscow. Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, argued that time is increasingly working against Russia - a reversal of the assumption that has dominated much of the Western debate.
As "Hvylya" reports, Kofman presented this analysis in a special Foreign Affairs podcast episode marking four years since the full-scale invasion. The full conversation transcript is available on our website.
The economic picture is grim. Russia faces stagnation, compounded by low oil prices and forced discounts on sales to countries like China. A regional budgetary crisis directly affects recruitment and contract bonuses. "Industrial production of civilian goods is slowing, and military production is leveling off too," Kofman said. The core question he posed: how long can Moscow sustain budgetary outlays of 40% of government spending on the war, at roughly 8% of GDP? His estimate: perhaps through 2026. But beyond that, "nothing improves for Russia - not economically, not in manpower or equipment availability."
On the military side, Russia managed to reduce equipment losses by shifting to tactics that produce much higher manpower casualties. But this created a new problem: unrecoverable losses approaching recruitment rates. "They won't run out of people, but they'll have difficulty sustaining the same pace of offensive operations this year unless something changes significantly in casualties or recruitment," Kofman explained.
The country is increasingly vulnerable to external shocks, he warned. Moscow's shadow fleet is already faltering, and the Kremlin has no credible plan for what the war looks like if it drags from 2026 into 2027. The war, Kofman concluded, "hit the point of diminishing returns probably by the end of 2024" - and every month since has only deepened that reality.