With 24 February 2026 having marked the fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ‘Special Military Operation’ has now been waged for longer than the Soviet Union fought Nazi Germany in the Second World War.

The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) has warned, however, that, while the conflict continues to impose a significant cost on Russia, its capacity to produce war materiel shows no sign of abating.

During a presentation in London on 24 February 2026 to mark the launch of the 67^th edition of the IISS’s The Military Balance, the institute’s director general and chief executive, Dr Bastian Giegerich, noted that Russia’s central bank has managed to keep Russia’s war machine going.

“The IISS assesses that Russia spent USD 186 billion on defence in 2025: the equivalent of 7.3% of its GDP and up from 6.7% in the previous year,” said Giegerich. “While its military expenditure increased by just 3% in real terms, compared with the 56.9% in 2024, this could be largely the effect of financial reforms and efficiency measures in the Ministry of Defence. Indeed, since 2021 Russia’s military spending has effectively trebled.

“Moreover,” Giegerich continued, “we judge that by 2030, and assuming that production and recruitment continue at the same pace, Russia will be capable of closing the shortfalls that exist between its current land power and equipment holdings and those required to meet its new, expanded force structure. In sum, there is little indication that Russia’s ability to continue its war against Ukraine for the fifth year is diminished, and its threat to wider Europe is growing.”

During a Q&A session with a panel of IISS experts following Giegerich’s main presentation, Warsight asked whether available manpower would put a brake on Russian capabilities in Ukraine, given reports of high casualty rates in what Russian deserters have referred to as near-suicidal ‘meat storm’ assaults. The UK Ministry of Defence, for example, assessed in November 2025 that Russia had probably suffered around 1,140,000 casualties by that point (including both killed and wounded) since launching its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Henry Boyd, the IISS’s senior fellow for military capability and data assessment, replied, “We’ve obviously seen Russia suffer a higher rate of loss at the end of last year, going into the start of this year, partly related to their position to pursue a more aggressive offensive stance. At the moment, the rate of loss is outstripping their ability to capitalise that, so that would put pressure on that current operational posture if that were to continue, but they do have the option of scaling back on some of their offensive activity to counter-balance that. And it’s also worth bearing in mind that Russia does have as an ultimate fallback option the ability to conduct a wider mobilisation of the Russian state and Russian people, should it really feel the need to bolster personnel resources for this war. So, as we’ve seen in the past, Russian loss rates tend to promote a change in operational approach, more than an abandonment of Russian operations altogether.”

Nigel Gould-Davies, the IISS’s senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia, added that “There are growing signs that Russia’s rate of recruitment has begun to fall short of its monthly losses. There is some early data in the last couple of months to indicate that. There are also growing concerns among Russian recruiting officers about the quality as well as the quantity of new blood, that they are really dredging some some pools of alcoholics and the drug addicted and the frankly sick and lame.

“I think the most interesting thing about the way that Russia has fought this war is that it has not compelled its own citizens, for the most part, to fight the first major war that Russia has fought where it’s not relied on a large, mass conscript army,” Gould-Davies noted. “And that, I think, indicates this awareness in the Kremlin that there is not widespread genuine enthusiasm for the war. The real question that faces the Kremlin in due course, if these trends continue, is whether it will order some form of forced mobilisation. It did that once in September 2022, late and briefly. And it knows that that imposed all sorts of new anxieties and pressures on Russian society. [The Kremlin is] very reluctant to do that, so it will be a moment of truth if Russia has to take that step.”

Lastly, Tom Waldwyn, the institute’s research fellow for defence procurement, noted that another aspect of the manpower issue is Russia’s industrial workforce. “We’re finding a lot of Russian defence companies are struggling to recruit because the incentives that your people are being offered to join the armed forces instead are draining the pool of workers,” he pointed out. “So it’s not just about the people in uniform, but it’s also about the industrial production element behind it, which has got a number of different problems that it is trying to deal with next.”