War as Sacrifice: Why Russia is Burning Its Own Army – Igal Levin

On June 16, 2026, Israeli military analyst Yigal Levin wrote about the war of Russia against Ukraine as a phenomenon that is difficult to explain with the usual logic of military calculation. His text is not just an emotional reaction to the latest losses or the usual criticism of the Kremlin. At the center of his thoughts is another question: why does a state with a huge army, General Staff, resources, and imperial ambitions spend years throwing its forces head-on at fortified Ukrainian lines, achieving minimal results at the cost of colossal destruction of people and equipment.

Levin calls this war one of the strangest he has had to study or see.

And this strangeness is not in the fact that Russia is waging an aggressive and criminal war against Ukraine. That is already obvious.

The strangeness lies elsewhere: Russia is waging it as if it is turning its own army into expendable material.

According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as reported by ‘Ukrainian Pravda’, by June 16, 2026, the total combat losses of Russian forces since the start of the full-scale invasion were estimated at approximately 1,385,420 personnel. It is important to clarify: this category includes not only the dead but total losses — killed, wounded, missing, and incapacitated. Therefore, Levin’s thesis about the possible approach of the dead to half a million should be perceived as an analytical assessment, not as an officially confirmed figure.

Why Levin considers this war strange

The main question Levin poses is harsh: why, after the failure of the quick dash to Kyiv, did the Russian leadership not change the very logic of the war? In the spring of 2022, the Kremlin tried to take Ukraine with a cavalry charge — quickly, roughly, counting on a political collapse. This calculation failed.

After such a defeat, a normal military system should have sought other solutions. It could have changed direction, changed pace, worked through logistics, sought a political exit, increased pressure on weak spots, rebuilt the army for the new reality. But Russia, according to Levin, did something else: year after year, it began throwing people head-on at the most protected Ukrainian positions.

Wars can be bloody. Losses sometimes become part of the strategy if the army gains a decisive result for them. But here, as Levin emphasizes, the cost and result do not match. Russia pays with people, equipment, economy, the future of its regions, and the quality of its army, but does not achieve a military victory that could justify such a cost.

That is why his text contains a heavy formula: it resembles not a war in the usual sense, but a sacrifice. The army does not serve the goal; the army itself becomes what is burned for the continuation of the process.

Cost without victory

Over the years of war, Russia has lost not only people. It has lost a huge number of tanks, armored vehicles, artillery, vehicles, air defense systems, aviation, fleet, and guided missiles. As of June 15, 2026, according to the General Staff of Ukraine, Russian losses were estimated at 12,025 tanks, 24,763 armored vehicles, 44,082 artillery systems, and more than 351,000 operational-tactical level drones. These figures are also a Ukrainian assessment and require careful reading, but even in this form, they show the scale of the depletion of the Russian military machine.

Levin looks at this not from the perspective of pity for Russian soldiers. His question is much colder and therefore stronger: why does the Kremlin need an army if it has been destroying it for years? If Russia has ambitions, if it wants to threaten Europe, pressure Ukraine, bargain with the USA, and remain an imperial center, it needs a combat-ready army. But the current model of war does the opposite — it turns the army into a stream of meat for frontal assaults.

This is what makes the Russian strategy strange. It is not just cruel. It is self-destructive.

Ukraine also made mistakes, but changed its approach

Levin does not idealize Ukraine. He openly acknowledges that in 2023, the Ukrainian army also advanced on well-fortified Russian positions and gained a tough experience. But the difference, in his view, is in the reaction to the mistake.

Ukraine, having been burned, began to seek other military solutions. It developed robotics, drones, new forms of strikes, logistics operations, changes in directions, and unconventional ways of pressure. The Kharkiv operation became an example of maneuver. The liberation of Kherson — an example of pressure on supply and isolation of the grouping through strikes on bridges. Later, the Ukrainian army increasingly moved the war into the technological plane.

In June 2026, The Guardian wrote about long-range Ukrainian strikes on Russian military and industrial facilities, including a plant in Cheboksary more than 900 kilometers from the front line, as well as the development of Ukrainian drone forces. This is precisely the type of war where the stake is not only on infantry in frontal attack, but on logistics, technology, range, and vulnerable nodes of the enemy.

Russia, according to Levin, repeatedly returns to the same model: press with mass, lose thousands, advance slowly, then repeat this on the next section. Tactics may change, equipment may be updated, drones may become more important, but the basic logic remains the same — people go into the meat grinder.

Operational art against inertia

In a military sense, it is not just about who attacks and who defends. It is about the ability of the army to choose the place, time, direction, and method of action. Operational art is not ‘going forward at any cost’. It is the ability to find a weak spot, create an advantage, break the enemy’s logistics, force him to react, rather than endlessly battering against a prepared wall.

Levin precisely says: with a front of enormous length, Russia repeatedly chooses the heaviest and most protected directions. This does not look like a search for victory. It looks like a system that is used to spending people because it cannot or does not want to count their cost.

In this sense, Ukraine, despite all its problems, has shown the ability to learn. Russia has shown the ability to endure its own destruction.

Why the Russian army agrees to this

The strongest part of Levin’s thought is the question not only to the Kremlin. Yes, Putin and the top leadership bear political responsibility for the war. Yes, the General Staff plans operations. But the war lasts not one month and not one year. Within this system, there are thousands of senior officers, tens of thousands of junior and middle commanders, a huge apparatus of management, supply, communication, intelligence, and control.

Why do they continue to participate in a strategy that grinds their own army?

The answer can only be complex. The Russian army is built on fear, hierarchy, and subordination. The officer corps is not an independent political force. Junior commanders often do not make decisions but execute orders. Propaganda turns the war into a religious-imperial ritual. Repressions and show punishments make any resistance dangerous.

But even considering this, the question remains. After all, it is not about philanthropy. Levin speaks of banal utilitarianism: if you need an army, you cannot endlessly destroy it against the enemy’s fortifications. If you need an economy, you cannot extract people and resources from it for years. If you need equipment, you cannot throw it into attacks where the result does not match the losses.

Prigozhin as a symptom, not an exception

In Levin’s text, the figure of Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Wagner PMC appears separately. He calls it almost the only noticeable case when part of the Russian military machine tried to get out of the meat grinder and rebel against the logic in which people are thrown to destruction.

How it ended is known. Prigozhin’s rebellion was stopped, he later died, and the system received a signal: arguing with the hierarchy is more dangerous than participating in a self-destructive war. For Russian commanders, this became not a lesson in military art, but a lesson in fear.

Therefore, the rest continue to remain silent. Some believe. Others are afraid. Others earn. Some hope to survive. Others no longer see a way out. But the result is one: the Russian army remains inside a war that eats it itself.

Why the word ‘sacrifice’ is so accurate here

The formula ‘sacrifice’ sounds harsh, but it is precisely what explains why Levin’s text is so gripping. In a normal war, the army is a tool. The state sets a goal, calculates the cost, seeks a way to win or exit the conflict with an advantage. In the Russian war against Ukraine, the army increasingly looks not like a tool, but like fuel.

People are sent not where a decisive result can be achieved, but where they are ground down. Losses do not stop the system but become part of its rhythm. Each new assault seems to prove not Russia’s strength, but its willingness to destroy its own population to maintain the myth of an offensive.

This is what makes the Kremlin’s war not only criminal but historically strange. Russia wants to appear as a great power but behaves like a state that destroys its own main resource. It wants to scare the world with its army but turns this army into expendable material. It talks about the future but pays for the war with people who could be that future.

For the Israeli audience, there is a separate important lesson in this. War tests not only the strength of weapons but the quality of the state. The army, society, officers, elites, economy, and political leadership either create a survival system or turn into a mechanism of self-destruction. Ukraine, paying a terrible price, seeks new solutions because it defends its existence. Russia, having started aggression, sinks deeper into the logic where the war itself becomes the goal.

Therefore, Levin’s question remains the main one: if Russia has been burning its own army against Ukrainian defense for years, then this no longer resembles a rational strategy for victory.

It resembles a ritual of an empire that cannot stop.