Waiting for Trump

All around the world, leaders are waiting for the outcome of the November 5 elections, not least Vladimir Putin whose strategy for war is based in good part on the expectation of a Trump victory.

While many around the world are watching the US presidential election with a great deal of anxiety, for fear of what a victory by Donald Trump would mean for America’s engagement in the world, quite a few world leaders are betting on a Trump victory to help them out. Topping that list is Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose strategy counts on Donald Trump returning to power next January. (Another is Benjamin Netanyahu, also waiting on Trump, who I will look at in my next post.)

Putin won’t be able to sustain the current pace of the war and resulting losses in men and materiel for much longer. He’s looking to Trump to help end the war on terms favorable to Moscow—just as the former president has promised.

Russia Goes for Broke

Since last October, Russian military leaders have launched a full-on assault against Ukraine designed to break the capacity and will of the Ukrainian military and people. It started with a massive bombardment of Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, notably its power generation capacity, which has now been depleted by more than half. Repeated missile and drone volleys have successfully evaded dwindling air and missile defenses, leaving Ukraine with a hobbled power and electricity sector that has left much of the country in the dark for hours on end. With winter approaching, ordinary people are facing a many brutal months with vastly diminished power and, in many cases, heat.

At the same time, Russia’s military has accelerated its brutal assault in the East with the goal of breaking through Ukrainian defense and capturing the entire Donetsk region and perhaps more. Over the past six months, it has capture more than three hundred square miles of territory, including overrunning key defensive and logistic hubs that form much of the basis for Ukraine’s defense in the East. It is still hard going, and Ukrainian defensive efforts are intense, focused, and able to inflict massive damage on Russian forces.

While Russian gains have been significant, its losses have been truly staggering. In September alone, Russia lost on average nearly 1,300 killed and wounded—a monthly total of almost 38,000 killed and wounded. In the past six months, its casualties are well over a thousand killed and wounded each day! Overall, British intelligence estimates Russian losses at over 650,000 since the beginning of the full-scale invasion—more than the entire population of Wyoming.

Except for a small-scale mobilization in September 2022, when Ukraine’s rapid advances in the north, east, and south was threatening Russia’s ability to hold territory it had conquered since 2014, Putin has refused to order a full-scale mobilization fearing that the political backlash would be severe against a battle he still calls a “special military operation” rather than the full-scale war it has long been. Instead, the military has had to rely on volunteer recruits, while conscripts are kept off the battlefield. The difficulty in recruiting enough men too replace the heavy losses of its meat grinder approach to the war is clear in the large bonuses now on offer to those who join the fight. For example, in one region, authorities raised the bonus for signing from 800,000 rubles ($8,300) in August to 3M rubles ($30,000) today—about five times more than the average annual salary of a worker in the region. But with a recruitment target of 30,000 per month, those kinds of signing bonuses are simply unsustainable.

One indicator of Russian desperation is the confirmation that North Korean troops are soon to join the fight. Some 3,000 North Korean soldiers are now training in Northern Siberia, and a total of 12,000 troops should be available soon. It’s unlikely that they will join Russian frontline forces in the East, given the casualty rates Russia has suffered. More likely is that they will deploy inside Russia to help liberate territory Ukraine has seized in the Kursk region. The idea that the great Russian military must depend on foreigners to liberate its own land is simply amazing. But the larger point is that Russia is running out of troops.

If Russian manpower losses are truly staggering, so are its equipment losses. According to one estimate, in the year since Russian forces intensified their fight in the Pokrovsk region, which started with the assault on the town of Avdiivka, Russia has lost about five divisions worth of equipment—some 1,830 tanks, armored vehicles, infantry fighting vehicles, multiple rocket launchers, and other heavy armor. Its total forward movement during those 12 months was all of 25 miles.

While Moscow is spending vast sums of money to turn its economy into a war economy, devoting nearly half of all government spending to the war, it simply cannot produce enough equipment to replace this rate of losses for so little gain. For the past few years, Russia has refurbished old Soviet-era stocks it kept in storage, but not only does much of that equipment fail on the battlefield but the storage sites are running empty. Meanwhile, sanctions are hindering new weapons production. According to one recent study, war production leveled off in 2024 and unless new factories are built and staffed (itself difficult, given competing manpower demands) Russia will start to run out of its ability to conduct the kind of high intensity, attritional warfare that has been its mainstay for the past few years by 2026.

Trump to the Rescue

As the war enters its fourth year in early 2025, Putin will be looking for an out. And Trump will be more than happy to help provide him one. Trump has frequently boasted that he will end the war in “one day,” even before his inauguration. While he has not said how he will do that, Putin clearly is hoping that Trump will immediately cut off all military aid to Ukraine and offer a deal that he can accept. Indeed, Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, has suggested that a deal could consist of Russia keeping the territory it has occupied, a demilitarized zone separating the forces with heavy fortifications on the Ukrainian side, and a Ukrainian “guarantee of neutrality,” meaning no NATO and, likely, no EU membership.

Such a “deal” would be music to Putin’s ears—it is essentially what Moscow offered in February. Of course, no Ukrainian leader could ever accept an agreement long these lines—neither ceding territory nor circumscribing its sovereignty in any other way. Ukrainians have not fought, suffered, and died for more than 10 years of war only to surrender to Putin’s terms. But to Putin, that may be Trump’s problem, not his.

So long as Putin has the US president on his side, Ukraine cannot win the war, and Russia won’t lose. That is why the Russian president has put all his chips on a Trump victory on November 5—and spent countless millions of dollars to try and sway the election Trump’s way.