Putin Will Not Yield: Pressure and Pain Won’t Sap Russia’s Resolve in Ukraine

Foreign Affairs | Michael Kimmage, Maria Lipman

Russian President Vladimir Putin is expanding military operations in Ukraine despite mounting economic costs, inflation, and Ukrainian deep strikes targeting Russian infrastructure. CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s recent diplomatic visit to Moscow failed to secure concessions from the Kremlin. The Russian regime has instead intensified internal repression, barring the antiwar Yabloko political party from parliamentary elections and imprisoning opposition figure Lev Shlosberg for 11 years.

Domestic political resistance remains virtually non-existent. Over a quarter century of centralised control over state media, oligarchs, and the Russian Orthodox Church has insulated Putinism from public discontent. Former banker Andrey Klepach was dismissed from a state-controlled development bank in August after acknowledging technological losses to Ukraine. While Levada Institute polling from August 9 shows growing public preference for peace negotiations, Putin views subjugating Ukraine as integral to state sovereignty. The autocrat faces no internal precarity. Armed with sufficient manpower and missile production, Moscow continues its war of attrition alongside European sabotage operations.

Comment

Moscow’s reliance on rapid, continuous industrial attrition relies heavily on Rostec’s state-subsidised defence production lines to offset high battlefield expenditure in Ukraine. By prioritising raw shell volume and missile assembly over advanced microelectronics, the Kremlin accepts long-term technological stagnation in exchange for immediate theatre-level output. Former Vnesheconombank chief economist Andrey Klepach’s public warning highlighted how this heavy industrial bias sacrifices global competitiveness to sustain frontline attrition.

This structural trade-off forces the Russian armed forces to rely on low-cost, mass-produced systems like the Shahed-136 loitering munition rather than high-precision strike assets. Consequently, long-term modernisation plans for platforms like the T-14 Armata main battle tank remain indefinitely stalled.

Strategic Question for Discussion

Which factor presents a more severe long-term constraint on Russian warfighting capability — the technological bottlenecks exposed by Andrey Klepach or the industrial prioritisation of low-cost platforms like the Shahed-136 over advanced platforms like the T-14 Armata?

The available evidence points toward technological bottlenecks in microelectronics as the more decisive constraint on Russian combat power. While Rostec can sustain mass production of low-cost Shahed-136 munitions, the inability to domesticate advanced semiconductors permanently caps the operational performance of next-generation systems like the T-14 Armata.

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