Does Russia face military collapse by 2026? Inside Ukraine’s strategic assessment

As tank reserves deplete and production stalls, intelligence analysis points to a critical deadline for Russia’s war effort. Yet Putin’s ability to sustain low-intensity conflict challenges this timeline

Ukraine may be entering the final stages of its war with Russia, with the war potentially drawing to a close by the end of 2025 and early 2026, at least according to Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s Directorate of Intelligence. Budanov shared this projection based on intelligence data during the annual Yalta European Strategy meeting, an international platform that puts together prominent Western and Ukrainian figures.

As the initial invasion has evolved into an attritional war, understanding the enemy’s will to fight, their resources, and their ability to replace losses becomes critical in order to calculate the trajectory of war. The specific numbers provided by Budanov and backed up by expert analyses provide factual substance to the discussion, making it more valuable for projecting accurate timelines.

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While this has allowed Russia to preserve more advanced tanks like the T-90M, Russia’s Soviet reserves are depleting quickly, and the tank fleet is on a sharp decline.

OSINT analyst @Highmarsed, who tracks open-air storages and shares insights on X (formerly Twitter), provides a more detailed assessment. He reported that by 6 July 2024, Russia’s stock of T-55s had dropped by 31%, T-62s by 37%, and T-80Bs by 79%, with only 9% of T-72s removed from storage.

While these figures may not be exact, they provide a good idea about the rapid depletion of Russia’s tank reserves.

Additionally, OSINT analyst Naalsio, who tracks battlefield losses, estimates that by 4 October 2024, Russian forces had lost over 539 tanks and 1,830 vehicles in total (including tanks) in the Pokrovsk direction (formerly the Avdiivka direction) since 2023—numbers that far surpass Russia’s current tank production capacity.

Given that since the beginning of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has lost over 3,000 tanks (information that can be independently confirmed by open-source projects such as Oryx or Warspotting) Russia has lost more tanks than it had in its entire prewar active-duty tank force, as well as and over 30% of its most advanced self-propelled artillery and multiple rocket launcher systems.

A report from senior analyst Dara Massicot, published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, further details that Russia is expected to exhaust its stockpile of multiple Soviet-era military equipment by 2026.

There are also clear challenges in replacing Russia’s air force losses. Some older jet models are no longer in mass production, and the new jet production is less impressive. For example, Budanov noted that Russia plans to produce only 14 Su-57 fighters in 2024.

That being said, it’s not all bad news for Russia: its Iskander missile production, particularly the Iskander-M, has ramped up significantly. While Budanov didn’t specify exact numbers, this aligns with reports from the ground about Russia’s frequent use of these missiles.


Internal Russian analysis predicts Russia will lose its global status and only two superpowers will remain: the US and China.


Meunier paints a grim picture: in a country where over half the population relies on state subsidies, where the poverty rate exceeded 13% in 2021 (even with far lower poverty thresholds than in the West), -- and where 62% of Russians lack savings or the means to afford more than basic necessities, Russia risks facing a long-term economic crisis reminiscent of the one that preceded the fall of the Soviet Union.