Putin’s not-so-special ‘3-day operation’

Russia’s so-called “3-day Special Military Operation” has now outlasted the Soviet Union’s own defining war.

The Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany ran from 1941 to 1945. What was sold in February 2022 as a lightning campaign has dragged on far longer, and, crucially, it did not begin in 2022 at all.

This is now the eleventh year of Moscow’s attempt to subjugate eastern Ukraine.

From the seizure of Crimea and the instigation of war in Donbas in 2014 through to full-scale invasion, the objective has remained constant: to deny Ukraine sovereignty and agency. The methods have changed and the rhetoric has shifted, but, the outcome has stubbornly refused to bend to the Kremlin’s will.

Since 2022, Russia’s campaign has been waged with the full weight of the Russian state and with backing from an increasingly narrow and uncomfortable circle of partners.

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North Korea supplies artillery shells, missiles, and rarely acknowledged, regular troops. Iran provides drones and technical support while Belarus offers territory and infrastructure, serving as the launch platform for the full-scale invasion itself. China and India, meanwhile, arguably provide diplomatic cover and economic lifelines through energy purchases and muted criticism. Alongside this sits a rotating cast of poorly trained foreign fighters, mercenaries, in all but name, drawn from multiple continents to invade a democratic, sovereign state in Europe.

And yet, despite all of this, Russia is still struggling.

The gap between Vladimir Putin’s imperial ambition and battlefield reality has become impossible to hide. Territorial gains are incremental and costly while casualties are measured in the hundreds of thousands, with estimates approaching 1.2 million. Equipment losses have forced a regression to older systems, improvised solutions, and even the reintroduction of animals for logistics.

The not-so-special “3-day Special Military Operation” has now lasted longer than the Soviet “Great Patriotic War” (1941–45).

Actually it’s been eleven years of trying to subjugate Donbas.

Just since 2022 backed by North Korea, Iran, Belarus, and the full weight of the Russian… pic.twitter.com/ueTfV62QJU

— Shaun Pinner (@olddog100ua) January 12, 2026

Mobilisation has always been cyclical and coercive, this, not the profile of a confident great power executing a decisive campaign; it is the behaviour of a state grinding forward because it cannot afford to stop. While Russian propaganda no longer sells victory, it manages damage, increasingly unable to suppress the internal reality of failure.

At the same time, Moscow’s influence abroad is visibly shrinking. In Syria, Russia’s once-vaunted role as Assad’s indispensable protector has been diluted by resource constraints and competing priorities. In Venezuela, the Kremlin’s posture has proved largely symbolic, big on rhetoric and light on leverage, particularly when compared to the speed and clarity with which other powers can act. Even Iran, a key wartime enabler, is a partner of convenience rather than alignment, pursuing its own interests that increasingly diverge from Moscow’s, particularly as it faces mounting pressure from the United States. Russia has become a bystander in global shifts.

Most revealing of all is Russia’s growing dependence on Pyongyang and Beijing. A country that once claimed parity with global superpowers now leans on a sanctioned, impoverished state for basic munitions while relying on China as an economic backstop. This is not partnership between equals. It is hierarchy. Russia has become the junior party, constrained by the very relationships it once believed would insulate it from pressure.

Against this backdrop, Ukraine’s endurance matters. A nation facing a nuclear-armed aggressor, backed by authoritarian allies and global hedging, has not collapsed. It has adapted, innovated, and held. Eleven years on, the project to erase Ukraine has failed.

So don’t undersell it. Ukraine is still standing, not because this war is easy, but because the assumptions that underpinned Russia’s “3-day operation” were wrong from the start.