Russia’s president is the strong man, but the scratches in his image are obvious.
02/16/2026, 07:0402/16/2026, 07:12
Vladimir Putin likes to be the strong man. In a speech he said: “Our troops are marching forward with confidence and wearing down the enemy forces.” And US President Donald Trump likes to believe him. “The Russians have the upper hand, they always have,” Trump once said. “They are much bigger, they are much stronger.”
Vladimir Putin portrays Russia as invincible.Image: keystone
An ex-general in Ukraine, on the other hand, speaks of “old KGB games”. Today’s military adviser Volodymyr Haverlov warns that the US and Europe must not be fooled by Putin’s bluff. He’s just playing invincible to get her to give up. Ukraine doesn’t pay attention to Putin’s propaganda. Haverlov macabrely explains this as follows: “We kill his soldiers every day.”
It is therefore both embarrassing and dangerous for Putin when signs of Russian weakness contradict his narrative. When, for example, a study cannot see anything about his soldiers “marching forward with confidence” on the war front, but instead comes to what he sees as a downright malicious verdict: “Massive losses and tiny gains for a power in decline.”
The malicious study was prepared by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, CSIS. It estimates the losses of the Russian armed forces at 1.2 million soldiers – killed, injured or missing. The CSIS Center illustrates the immense number of 1.2 million with the following comparison:
“No other major power has suffered anywhere near as high losses in any war since the Second World War.”
According to the study, Putin has historically little to show for these historically high losses. In the past two years, Putin has only advanced 15 to 70 meters per day on his biggest offensives. “This is slower than in the most brutal offensive campaigns of the last century – including the infamous bloody one battle on the French Somme River during the First World War.”
The economy is groaning under the weight of the war
The economy is another arena where Putin is playing the same KGB game. According to the Institute for War Research (ISW) he wants to give the impression that the Russian economy could easily support the war financially.
“He probably wants to support cognitive warfare, which falsely claims that a Russian victory is inevitable.”
In reality, the economy is groaning and groaning under the weight of war. Inflation is particularly plaguing Russians.
Some cry in the supermarket. Others are angry. They give up. They shop in the evening when goods that would otherwise go bad are offered cheaper, as the Moscow Times reports. People with a sense of humor chase after pigeons in front of the camera or give them hungry looks. videos Social media is flooded with examples of such gallows humor.
According to the British «Times» In these videos, cucumbers have become the unofficial symbol of the plague of inflation. “They are now a luxury item,” complains one. Another person said they now eat mangoes and dragon fruit instead. Someone else takes the black humor up a notch:
“Cucumbers are the new gold.”
In fact, the official figures also show that cucumbers had the biggest price increase in January at 34 percent. After several such jumps, their price has now reached 400 to 500 rubles per kilogram, or the equivalent of 5 francs. This makes them similar in price to pork.
According to the official figures, there is no reason to cry. Prices rose by an average of ten percent in the first three years of the war and by around half as much in 2025. But wages have risen much more rapidly. Russians should still be able to afford cucumbers.
But household budgets tell a different story. A mother tells the Moscow Times that she has to forego beauty salons and can hardly afford to send her children to their education and courses. A pensioner no longer eats out and rarely eats meat or fish at home. Another hasn’t been to a café in a year and hasn’t bought new clothes in three years.
Inflation twice as high as in official figures
Foreign experts have come to the conclusion that the official figures show inflation that is far too low. A group of British universities estimates in one studythat true inflation was about twice as high in the first three years of the war. This creates a completely different picture of the Russian economy.
It did not experience a boom in the first years of the war. Corrected for actual inflation, it has either stagnated or shrunk slightly. The purchasing power of Russians has not increased, but has fallen by an average of around 5 percent. There were even losses of up to 20 percent for pensioners and employees in professions that did not benefit from the war.
That is why Putin is increasingly dealing with an angry population. A regional finance minister had to find out about this when he overzealously declared February to be the month of renunciation, as the Times reports. His fellow citizens should please see saving as a game, he said. His fellow citizens then expressed their opinion on the Internet. He quickly apologized.
However, Putin has other concerns than inflation. Oil prices are falling and so are his revenues. The economy is lacking workers. It hardly manages to replace Western industrial goods with its own. The population is aging rapidly. In addition, shaky loans are piling up because he is forcing banks to make loss-making loans to the defense industry.
Bankruptcies happen gradually, then quickly
If everything is supposed to be so bad, one can ask oneself why the Russian state has not already fallen into a financial crisis? A researcher from a Polish institute also investigated this question on behalf of the European Commission. His Answer: Putin began preparing for confrontation with the USA and the EU years ago – at least since his annexation of Crimea in 2014.
For this purpose, Putin had his own payment system set up. In this way, he became independent of the dollar and thus protected himself from US sanctions. He also had an infrastructure built to control the Internet. But Putin is gradually running out of time. He could perhaps extend survival for another year or two without risking an economic crisis.
Contrary to Putin’s bluff, Russia’s economy has suffered heavily from the war. Nobody knows how long she can withstand this. What is certain is that economic crises follow a certain pattern. The American writer Ernest Hemingway aptly described this in a novel. His character answers the question of how he became bankrupt as follows:
«In two ways. First gradually, then all of a sudden.”
(aargauerzeitung.ch)