The Economist: Russia would need 103 years to occupy all of Ukraine

Russia would need more than a century to seize all of Ukraine at its current rate of advance, according to new calculations by The Economist.

The magazine estimates that Moscow has captured just 0.4% of Ukrainian territory this year, with front lines remaining largely static since Kyiv’s first counteroffensive ended in October 2022. No major city has changed hands, and battle lines have barely shifted despite continuous fighting.

At the pace of the past 30 days, The Economist projects that Russia would not fully capture the four regions President Vladimir Putin has already claimed — Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhia — until June 2030. Expanding control across the entire country, the report says, would take an additional 103 years.

Analysts note that a sudden Ukrainian defensive collapse is unlikely. Continuous drone surveillance and precision strikes have made large-scale troop movements near the front suicidal, forcing both sides to rely on small-unit operations for minor territorial gains. Even when breaches occur, advancing large formations to exploit them has proven extremely difficult.

The publication’s “meta-estimate” of Russian losses underscores the heavy toll of this slow-moving war. Between the start of the full-scale invasion and January 2025, The Economist estimates Russia suffered between 640,000 and 877,000 casualties, including 137,000 to 228,000 killed. By October 13, those figures had risen by nearly 60%, reaching 984,000 to 1.44 million total casualties, with an estimated 190,000 to 480,000 dead.

By Sabina Mammadli