Putin Won. Russia Didn’t.

Ukraine points to its survival, its army, its identity forged under fire. Russia points to occupied territories, destroyed cities, and the slow grind of attrition. Both sides produce their own evidence, their own narratives.

But the question itself may be wrong.

It makes more sense to ask it differently: who is winning — Russia, or Vladimir Putin?

The Casino Owner

If you look at the system rather than the slogans, the answer becomes uncomfortable.

Putin is winning.

War has not weakened his position — it has consolidated it. Sanctions, isolation, international condemnation — all of this exists on paper. But inside the system he controls, his power has only become more concentrated, more insulated, more absolute.

Think of it this way: Russia is not a state in the classical sense. It functions more like a casino.

Putin is the owner.

The citizens are the players.

They bring money — through taxes. They bring bodies — through mobilization and contracts. They bring compliance — through fear or inertia. The system feeds on them.

And like in any casino, the owner doesn’t lose when the building burns down. He already extracted the value.

A State That Consumes Itself

Over the past years, Russia has undergone a quiet but massive redistribution of assets.

Western companies left — or were pushed out. Their businesses were absorbed. Domestic assets were consolidated. Entire sectors became more tightly controlled by people connected to the inner circle.

At the same time, the state shifted toward its most profitable activity: war.

Military spending exploded. A significant part of it is classified. Trillions are spent without transparency, without accountability, without public scrutiny. This creates a perfect environment for extraction — where losses are socialized, and gains are privatized.

From the outside, it may look like decline. From the inside, for those at the top, it looks like opportunity.

The Illusion of Stability

There is a persistent argument: that ordinary Russians, at least for a time, did not feel worse off — that consumption remained relatively stable, that wages in certain sectors even grew.

But there is a simpler and more telling indicator: how much people spend on food.

When that share approaches 50% of income, it signals stress. Not growth. Not prosperity. Stress.

People may still be buying things. They may still be adapting. But the structure beneath is shifting. Spending moves away from long-term goods — cars, housing, investments — toward basic survival.

This is not improvement. It is contraction disguised as resilience.

Winners and Losers Inside Russia

The war did create winners — but not in the way propaganda suggests.

Certain groups benefited:

• segments of the defense industry
• contractors tied to military supply chains
• individuals receiving large, one-time payments for military service or death compensation

But these are not stable gains. They do not build sustainable wealth or development. They are bursts of money that burn quickly.

At the same time, the middle class — small and medium businesses — took the hit:

• loss of capital
• loss of workforce
• increased pressure from the state

In other words, the war redistributes upward and inward — toward the system, away from society.

Ukraine: A State That Exists — and Doesn’t

If Russia’s paradox is that the ruler wins while the country loses, Ukraine has its own contradiction.

Ukraine has clearly won something fundamental: subjectivity.

Before 2022, the idea of Ukraine as a fully independent political actor was fragile — both externally and internally. The full-scale invasion destroyed that ambiguity. A different Ukraine emerged — one that fights, organizes, adapts.

That Ukraine is real.

But at the same time, there is another Ukraine:

• dependent on external financing
• struggling with corruption and internal competition
• facing massive economic and infrastructural losses

Half the budget comes from outside. Entire sectors rely on foreign support. The country exists between agency and dependency.

It is, in a sense, a state with agency on the battlefield and limitations everywhere else.

The War Economy No One Talks About

There is another uncomfortable layer.

War generates enormous money flows — not only inside the warring countries, but globally.

Supply chains adapt. Energy routes shift. Defense contracts multiply. Entire industries expand.

Even paradoxical situations become normal:
American companies extracting oil in Kazakhstan and transporting it through Russian territory — while the two countries are officially in confrontation.

This is not an anomaly. It is the system working as designed.

Losses are often nationalized. Profits are privatized. And across borders, interests align more easily than narratives admit.

The Myth That Never Delivers

At the core of Russia’s trajectory lies a persistent myth: a vision of a great, sacred state with a historical mission.

For centuries, this myth has promised a future of strength, purity, and dominance.

It has never delivered.

Instead, it repeatedly redirects attention backward — to a constructed past, to selective memory, to cycles of reset. Every hundred years, roughly, the system collapses into crisis and rebuilds itself around the same narrative.

This is what Russian thinkers themselves sometimes call a “track” — a path that cannot be exited.

The system reproduces itself not despite failure, but through it.

So Who Wins?

If you separate the system from the country, the answer becomes clearer.

Russia, as a society, pays:

• in lives
• in lost development
• in shrinking horizons

Putin, as the system’s operator, benefits:

• from consolidation of power
• from control over resources
• from the transformation of crisis into capital

Ukraine, meanwhile, exists in a dual state:

• stronger than ever in identity and military experience
• weaker than ever in economic and structural terms

And above all of them sits a broader reality:

war is not a zero-sum game between nations — it is a multi-layered system where different actors win at different levels.

The tragedy is that those who pay the highest price are the least represented in that system.

And they are rarely the ones who decide when the game ends.

Oleg Cheslavsky’s “The Russian Myth” is now available on Amazon and Apple Books.