Is Putin going to roll the dice in a nice, limited, special hybrid operation against Europeans to rescue his war effort against Ukraine?
The war goes on. Russians walk into the meat grinder every day to "achieve" this:
The average daily Russian rate of advance in 2025 was 13.24 square kilometers per day — higher than the daily average of 9.87 square kilometers per day in 2024.
ISW notes revised Russian assault tactics and new battlefield interdiction as causes. I assume a major reason for the increase in territory taken is that Ukraine prioritized killing Russian troops while minimizing their own casualties rather than holding territory in 2025. Ukraine's front is manned thinly. There are too few troops to hold the ground but the front is thick with firepower to kill Russians advancing through the front line kill zone.
That kind of defense is good. But to hold the line you need reserves able to counter-attack and drive back the equally thin attackers. For all the happy talk about the Ukrainian defense belts that Russia will eventually need to defeat, that problem of counter-attacking will apply. Russia will penetrate those lines--at a high cost, of course-- and expand bridgeheads across them. And continue the offensives.
That Russia doesn't advance broadly against Ukraine's defense makes me suspect that Russia doesn't have the manpower superiority on the front that they constantly claim as proof of inevitable victory. I recall that in world War II, once Germany lost the front-wide initiative, Russia was able to mass troops to achieve large superiority over the targeted section of the Axis front by stripping quieter sections. But since Germany wasn't in the position to attack in order to exploit that--or really even identify the thin spots--the Russians got away with it. Is something like that going on now?
While the war rages, Russia is pulling Belarus into a closer orbit, using its territory for Russia's aerial bombardment of Ukraine. Which has uses if Russia wants to threaten NATO.
Since retreating from Kyiv in April 2022, Russia has now failed in four of its five strategic objectives: political subjugation, economic sustainability, regime stability and international standing. Only in territorial control does it hold a pyrrhic advantage. But a declining power is often more dangerous than a rising one. Facing an economic spiral and depleted conventional forces, Vladimir Putin is entering a window of maximum danger. We must prepare not for a resurgent Russia but for a desperate one: 2026 will be the year of hybrid escalation. Escalation, which the UK’s Foreign Secretary, in December 2025, on the 100th anniversary of Locarno, boldly stated was already ‘flagrantly visible’.
But Russia has lost step 3 of what made their "hybrid warfare" appear effective in 2014: "Russia attacked Crimea. Russia denied attacking. And the West went along with Russia’s fiction." [emphasis added]
Yes, that loss of the final step is not yet complete. But the direction is clear (back to RUSI):
Europe has been slow to build credible hybrid deterrence – a capability it is only now recognising and wanting to address. Its failure to establish clear thresholds for ‘grey-zone’ attacks has created a gap: Incidents of sabotage, cyberattacks and information operations are still largely treated as isolated crimes rather than elements of a well-formed Russian hybrid doctrine. NATO is finally moving – with its top commander and Secretary General outlining shifts in policy – here too Putin’s window for action is closing.
An accelerated Russian subliminal war on Europeans will force that change to treating subliminal attacks as Russian warfare.
That's dangerous if it escalates to open war. Already, Russia's verbal aggression has prompted NATO to rearm. Which makes NATO more capable of fighting Russia if Putin insists.
Consider that Russia's attempt to build a ground strategic reserve has apparently failed:
Russian forces are currently unable to build out a strategic reserve and will therefore likely be constrained to grinding, slow advances at their current rate and scale in the coming year.
Russia hoped a big offensive would finally break Ukraine. Ukraine still fights. Now it is NATO's turn as the target?
Provoking war with NATO would be an amazingly stupid outcome given that Russia's turn to attacking Europeans covertly to intimidate them and pry them away from supporting Ukraine is motivated by weakening Russian ability to defeat Ukraine alone on the battlefield.
Shades of Hitler's justification for invading the USSR in 1941 as a means to end Britain's reason for remaining in the war, eh?
Does Putin get the Mussolini treatment before a Russia-NATO conventional war begins? Or after?
Have a super sparkly new year.
UPDATE (Monday): To be fair, Putin's vodka-addled pet nuke monkey sees a lot of things that aren't there:
Russia's former president Dmitry Medvedev said he could envisage abduction operations against other world leaders similar to the US action in Venezuela, naming German Chancellor Friedrich Merz among them.
NOTE: ISW updates continue here. Also, I put war-related links and commentary in the Weekend Data Dump.
NOTE: You may also read my posts on Substack, at The Dignified Rant: Evolved.
