Foreign Policy > Russia

Russia Is Struggling Badly

It went into Ukraine imagining a swift and decisive victory, but after four years, its energy and business sectors are increasingly fragile.

Allan J. Feifer | May 14, 2026

It went into Ukraine imagining a swift and decisive victory, but after four years, its energy and business sectors are increasingly fragile.

While the world is focused on Iran’s negotiating style, many have missed that Russia uses the same tactics: Both regimes use negotiations not as honest brokers, but as tools for strategic messaging, pressure, and delay, and they do so because it’s always worked. Today, though, when it comes to Russia, Donald Trump is dealing with a very badly weakened nation.

Russia anticipated a swift, decisive campaign in Ukraine. Instead, the war has exposed the limits of Moscow’s military and political reach. Ukraine—which Vladimir Putin expected to fracture or fold—did the opposite. It absorbed the initial shock, adapted, and then pushed back Russian forces from large swaths of territory in 2023 and halted Russian gains in 2025.

Those reversals didn’t just redraw maps; they shattered a widely held belief (including this author’s) that Russia’s conquest was inevitable. It has also sent a message to Russia that NATO is more unified than thought. Europe is waking from its socialist slumber and has embraced what a Russian win in Ukraine would mean for it. Consequently, Europe is writing big checks to forestall such a possibility.

As the war grinds on, the strains within Russia are evident. Russia’s internal security apparatus shows signs of fatigue and fragmentation, the defense-industrial base is not keeping pace with battlefield losses, and the energy sector—long the backbone of Russia’s geopolitical leverage—has taken hits from Ukrainian missile and drone attacks, sanctions, sabotage, and declining exports. Even with a much larger population than Ukraine’s, Russia is facing manpower shortages that are forcing increasingly politically risky mobilization actions.

Russia is not on the brink of collapse. But it does underscore a simple reality:........

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