Victor Yagun

Deputy Chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine in 2014-2015, Major General of the SBU reserve15:38, 18.06.26

History knows many empires. They all lost wars: the British, the Ottoman, the Austro-Hungarian, the French, the Spanish. Defeat in itself was never fatal. What proved fatal was another moment: when society began to realize that the authorities were no longer able to explain reality and were forced to replace it with myths.

Modern Russia has effectively built an entire political system to avoid precisely this moment.

In February 2022, the Kremlin launched the war on the belief that the Ukrainian state would collapse within days. Russian state media openly prepared for a victory parade in Kyiv. Propagandists discussed the impending division of Ukraine, a change of government, and a “historic reunification of lands.”

More than four years have passed. There’s no parade in Kyiv. Instead, there are hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded, record military spending, international isolation, sanctions pressure, a demographic crisis, and a gradual economic collapse.

It would seem like a classic example of strategic failure. But not in the Kremlin’s frame of reference.

There, any event automatically becomes proof of the correctness of the decisions made.

The failure of the offensive on Kyiv was transformed into a “gesture of goodwill.” The retreat from the Kharkiv region became a “regrouping.” The loss of Kherson was “a necessary decision to preserve troops.” The destruction of the Black Sea Fleet flagship was an event that “did not affect the execution of combat missions.” International sanctions became a “spur to development.” International isolation was “proof of sovereignty.” The decline in investment was “liberation from external dependence.”

The result is a surprising formula: any outcome confirms the correctness of the policy. If you win, the leadership is brilliant. If you lose, the leadership is wise. If the situation worsens, it’s temporary. If it worsens further, it’s a necessary sacrifice for the sake of future greatness.

Logic has come full circle.

The history of Russian statehood as a whole demonstrates an exceptional ability to transform catastrophes into political myths.

After the Battle of Tsushima in 1905, the Russian Empire lost virtually its entire fleet in the Far East. The world witnessed a crushing defeat. Domestically, the public was primarily told of the sailors’ heroism and moral superiority over the enemy.

After World War I, the Russian Empire ceased to exist altogether. But just a few years later, the Bolsheviks presented this catastrophe as a natural stage in historical progress.

After Afghanistan, the Soviet leadership avoided the word “defeat” for decades, even though this war became one of the factors in the subsequent crisis and collapse of the USSR.

Today, we see the same pattern. Instead of analyzing mistakes, we assign blame. Instead of accountability, we engage in propaganda. Instead of evaluating results, we endlessly generate new explanations.

In fact, the Kremlin has created a political engine that runs on a special fuel: the inability to admit one’s own mistakes.

For a democratic system, admitting a mistake is a self-correcting mechanism. For an authoritarian system, admitting a mistake often means undermining its legitimacy. This is why an authoritarian regime is willing to lose money, territory, equipment, allies, and even generations of citizens, but is unwilling to give up the myth of its own infallibility.

And therein lies the main weakness of the Russian model. After all, tanks can be manufactured, missiles can be assembled, even a new army can be mobilized. What’s impossible is to indefinitely maintain the gap between reality and the official picture of the world.

Sooner or later, any system reaches a point where numbers, coffins, the state of the economy, and people’s everyday experiences begin to speak louder than the television.

That’s when empires suffer final defeat. Not just on the battlefield, but above all in the minds of their own citizens.

History shows that this is the most dangerous kind of defeat. It cannot be saved by “goodwill gestures,” or “regroupings,” or new monuments, or yet another parade. Because after faith in official reality has been lost, a state may continue to exist for some time, but at that point, an empire is already beginning to end its history.

(C)UNIAN 2026