On 11 January 2026, something quiet happened.
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine had run for 1,418 days. Exactly the same length as the Soviet Union’s war against Nazi Germany, from 22 June 1941 to Victory Day on 9 May 1945. In those days, the Red Army fought from inside its own borders to the gates of Berlin. The Russian army today has captured roughly 20% of Ukraine, and still can’t take the whole Donbas.
Now the war in Ukraine became Russia’s longest war since the Great Patriotic War. By the time Tom Tugendhat and James Glancy sat down to record this week’s Warzones, the count was past 1,540 days and still rising.
This week on Warzones, we walk through what that means:
- Russia has now lost more soldiers in Ukraine (~325,000 KIA) than in every post-WW2 conflict combined, by an order of magnitude.
- Q1 2026 was Russia’s first officially recorded economic contraction of the war.
- Ukrainian deep-strike drones have knocked ~43% of Russian fuel production offline.
- April 2026 was the first…
