Ukraine’s Four Coming Collapses, Parts 1-2

I wrote some time back: “With the front collapsing and the army on the verge of dissolving, Zelenskiy’s post-Maidan regime is deeply divided and in danger of dissolution, which could bring state collapse, internecine warfare, and widespread chaos” (https://gordonhahn.com/2024/12/10/the-second-great-ukrainian-ruin-revisited/). Below, I unpack these four imminent or potential collapses – collapses of the battlefront, Ukrainian army, Maidan regime, and Ukrainian state itself – , as this problem is crucially important to the issue of war or peace in Ukraine as well as the challenges that will be faced in any reconstruction. A dysfunctional Ukrainian army, regime and state will be disable Kiev from concluding any peace process and treaty that U.S. President Donald Trump or others might develop. In fact, the peace effort in which Trump is beginning to enlist Russian President Vladimir Putin will almost surely be foiled by a cascade of two or more of four momentous dysfunctions, collapses, and crises that appear to await Ukraine unless the war ends or a drastic change occurs in the correlation of Russian and NATO-Ukrainian forces. The first two of these collapses, of the front and the army, are certain to occur this year. The latter two – of the Maidan regime and Ukrainian state – could be held off until next year.

Ukraine’s Collapsing Defense Fronts

Ukraine’s defensive fronts have been slowly failing and increasingly collapsing over the last year. All last year, Russian territorial gains and, for the most part of the year, Ukrainian casualties have increased with each passing month, as I predicted would be the case over a year ago (https://youtu.be/P_MJi5H6HKU?si=rxRiaE0EglSgbclw at the 1:00:45 mark). The infamous Institute for the Study of War, a DC outfit that relies on Ukrainian propaganda and turns it into ‘data’, falsely claimed: “Russian forces gained 4,168 square kilometers (1,609 square miles, GH), largely comprised of fields and small settlements in Ukraine and Kursk Oblast, at a reported cost of over 420,000 casualties in 2024. Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi stated on December 30 that Russian forces suffered 427,000 casualties in 2024. ISW has observed geolocated evidence to assess that Russian forces advanced 4,168 square kilometers in 2024, indicating that Russian forces have suffered approximately 102 casualties per square kilometer of Ukrainian territory seized”(www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-december-31-2024).The propaganda element here lies mostly in the claim that Russia territorial gains were “largely comprised of fields and small settlements” and in the institute’s Russian casualty figures. The Russians seized ‘largely fields and small settlements’ because Ukraine’s landscape, like any country’s, is largely unsettled land and small villages. However, Russia seized several small towns and the key Ukrainian strongholds of Avdiivka, Vuhledar, Kurakhove, Selydove, Novosilevke, Toretsk, and almost all of Chasov Yar. The Russians may not have suffered 420,000 casualties in the course of the entire war, no less in 2024 alone. For 2024, the reliable Mediazona project — which, in affiliation with the BBC and the Russian opposition media outlet ‘Meduza” scours the Internet sources, social media, obituaries, and regional government announcements — found 120,000 Russians killed in battle between the beginning of the country’s ‘special military operation’ in February 2022 and the end of 2024. It found that at least 31,481 Russian soldiers died between January 1, 2024, and December 17, 2024 (https://zona.media/casualties, as posted on 3 February 2025). Even if one increases this by 50 percent, taking into account the typical 1:3 ratio of killed to wounded, one arrives only at a figure of some 180,000 Russian casualties in 2024—half of Ukrainian/ISW claims.

What’s going on here? The acceleration of what I called Russia’s ‘attrit and advance’ strategy was played down by ISW by accompanying the data on territorial gains with the Ukrainian Defense Minister’s and other Ukrainian military sources on Russian casualties in order to give the impression of massive Russian losses in disproportion to ‘modest’ territorial gains. This is done to support the Western myth that Russia throws away the lives of its soldiers in ‘human wave’ attacks. ISW studiously avoids the negative comparison perspective by omitting any mention of Ukrainian casualties, imitating the Ukrainian Defense Ministry and U.S. funded ‘Ukrainian’ news outlets such as Ukrainskaya pravda(www.pravda.com.ua/eng/).

Raw data, minus spin, shows that Russian forces’ territorial advances indeed did increase throughout the year on a nearly monthly basis with the possible exception of December, which saw a decline from November. As Western media finally began to come clean as to the fallacy of the ‘Ukraine is winning’ propaganda line in autumn of last year, the New York Times referenced the data of a military expert with the Finland-based Black Bird Group, Pasi Paroinen. It turned out that Russian gains were being made all along the front line from the north in Kharkiv to the south in Zaporozhe. Paroinen’s measurement of overall Russian gains through the first ten months of 2024 confirmed my own expectation of an intensifying Russian advance forward. Russian advances in that period amounted to over 1,800 square kilometers (about 1,200 sq. mi.) and occurred at an increasingly

SOURCE: https://x.com/Inkvisiit/status/1842606881443127459/photo/1

accelerated pace: “Half of Russia’s territorial gains in Ukraine so far this year were made in the past three months alone.“ “In August, Ukraine’s defensive lines buckled, and Russia rapidly advanced 10 miles.” In October, Russia made its largest territorial gains since the summer of 2022, as Ukrainian lines buckled under sustained pressure. October’s gains amounted to “more than 160 square miles of land in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region” alone (www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/31/world/europe/russia-gains-ukraine-maps.html). Russian forces advanced 2,356 square kilometers forward in September, October, and November 2024, making 56.5 percent of their 2024 territorial gains during this period (www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-december-5-2024and www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-december-31-2024).November turned out to be Russian forces’ most successful month in terms of territorial gains in 2024, “advancing at the notably higher rate of 27.96 square kilometers per day” in that month(www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-december-5-2024and www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-december-31-2024). 

ISW was careful not to compare Russia’s territorial gains in 2024 with those made in 2023, so as not to underline the crucially important trend of accelerating Russian advances and Ukrainian retreats, but France 24 Television took up the slack. It noted that the Russian army advanced in 2024 “seven times more than in 2023,” taking “610 square kilometres in October and 725 square kilometres in November. Those two months saw the Russians capture the most territory since March 2022, in the early weeks of the conflict. Russia’s advance slowed in December, coming to 465 square kilometres in the first 30 days of the month. But it is already nearly four times bigger than in the same month of the previous year and two-and-a-half times more than in December 2022 (https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20241231-russian-advances-in-ukraine-grew-seven-fold-in-2024-data-shows).

Now, a major collapse of Ukraine’s defense fronts along all or nearly the entire line of combat – which stretches from Kherson just north of Crimea to the east, then north through Donetsk to Kharkiv and Sumy – is imminent. Some fronts may hold longer but are unlikely to survive 2025. Russian forces are beginning to encircle the crucial industrial, mining, and transport hub of Pokrovsk, After its fall, which is perhaps two months away, Moscow’s army will have a relatively unimpeded march to Dnipro, Zaporozhia, and other less southern points on the Dnieper River. Then the territorial advance will continue to accelerate at an ever more rapid pace and could lead to major breakthroughs to the Dnepr (Dnieper) River at any time now because of the already disastrous and deteriorating state of Ukraine’s armed forces.

Ukraine’s Collapsing Army

         With the collapse of the front should come simultaneously or shortly following the collapse of Ukrainian military. The state of the Ukrainian military is indeed grave. It is not just suffering from a growing shortage of weapons but a shortage of personnel, discipline, morale, and capacity, which is crippled by corruption. 2024’s military mobilization has failed. Desertion and refusal to obey orders is rampant, and corruption not only plagues recruitment but also promotes high levels of absence without leave, reducing the number of Ukrainian troops who are actually fighting at the front.

The military mobilization passed and being carried out this year with such a debilitating effect on the economy and society is failing to replace current losses at the front with completely inexperienced recruits with low to no morale (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8yMTGKURYU). There are reportedly no more volunteers, and by spring some Ukrainian officials report the situation will be irretrievable. Moreover, almost all new recruits are old or unmotivated, The Economist reports (https://ctrana.one/news/475629-nekhvatka-soldat-v-vsu-stanet-kritichnoj-vesnoj-the-economist.html). Commanders at the front, such as commander of the drone battallion of Ukraine’s 30th mechanized brigade, confirm that the 2024 mobilization has been an absolute failure, and there are now too few men to replace battle losses (https://ria.ru/20250113/mobilizatsiya-1993456847.html?utm_source=yxnews&utm_medium=desktop&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fdzen.ru%2Fnews%2Fstory%2F1af5d353-85ec-5374-a9d8-e07753fbda13). The mobilization that does occur is carried out by harsh, frequently violent measures. Verkhovna Rada deputy Aleksandr Bakumov from Zelenskiy’s own ‘Servants of the People’ party declared in session that mobilisation in Kharkiv Region is coerced, resembling filtration of Ukrainian population (referring to practice of detaining, beating, and torturing citizens of occupied areas in an ostensible search for fighters and collaborators), with exits from the city blockaded by ‘recruitment’ press gangs and lawyers of mobilized men get beaten. Small businesses are undergoing mass closures because of lack of workers willing to go outside for fear of being pressed into the army. Others have reported falsification of data at recruitment offices to justify recruitment (https://ctrana.one/news/478468-v-verkhovnoj-rade-zajavili-o-bespredele-ttsk-v-kharkove-video-vystuplenija.html and https://x.com/leonidragozin/status/1881280945644605814). There are numerous reports and videos of violence being used by recruitment gangs. In the end, what can be said for an army, the military system of which needs to force citizens to fight, even forcefully seizing priests leading a religious procession and sending them to the front? (https://ctrana.one/news/476680-v-rovenskoj-oblasti-ttsk-zabral-svjashchennika-svjato-troitskoj-tserkvi.html).

In addition, many men are fleeing the country in greater numbers in order to avoid Ukraine’s desperate and draconian  forced mobilization measures, sometimes at great risk to their lives and to sociopolitical stability. Most recently, Western governments have reportedly been pressuring Kiev to extend the mobilization to the age cohort of 18-25, which would bring a near catastrophic demographic collapse to a population already depleted by some 30 percent because of war deaths and emigration (https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-war-biden-draft-08e3bad195585b7c3d9662819cc5618f). Even the recrutiment centers themselves are attempting to avoid the draft. When Rada deputies proposed closing the personnel shortage by creating a brigade from among the mobilization gangs, the chairman of the mobilization centers claimed there were not enough of them to form full brigade (https://ctrana.one/news/475129-v-ttsk-objasnili-pochemu-nelzja-vsekh-ikh-rabotnikov-poslat-na-front.html). Low numbers of volunteers and failed mobilization are creating distoritions in force structure. ‘Zombi-brigades’ or ‘paper brigades’ are partially-manned units merelycalled brigades in order to impress Western donors and facilitate corruption for commanders who seize the salaries designated for non-existing personnel (https://ctrana.one/news/476359-bezuhlaja-raskritikovala-komandovanie-vsu-za-situatsiju-s-brihadoj-anna-kievskaja.html).

The large number of desertions from the Ukrainian military, a phenomenon wholly ignored in the Western media for three years, were revealed finally in November to have exceeded 100,000 since the war began (https://apnews.com/article/deserters-awol-ukraine-russia-war-def676562552d42bc5d593363c9e5ea0). This would amount to perhaps more than 10 precent of the Ukrainian army at its present size, given Zelenskiy’s recent claim it numbers 800,000 (https://t.me/stranaua/183652). Moreover, more than half those desertions occurred in the first ten months of 2024 alone (https://apnews.com/article/deserters-awol-ukraine-russia-war-def676562552d42bc5d593363c9e5ea0). This is already desertion on a massive scale and includes mass desertions (https://www.ft.com/content/9b25288d-8258-4541-81b0-83b00ad8a03f; https://ctrana.one/news/476730-zhurnalist-bojko-rasskazal-o-problemakh-v-vsu.html). Military blogger Yurii Butusov, Servants of the People deputy Maryana Bezuglaya, and others reported late last year on the desertion of an entire 1,000-man brigade trained in France immediately upon their arrival at the front. This may have been a case of commander’s unsuccessful attempt to form what are called ‘zombi-brigades’ (https://ctrana.one/news/476748-jurij-butusov-zajavil-o-massovom-dezertirstve-v-brihade-vsu-anna-kievskaja.html and https://ctrana.one/news/476359-bezuhlaja-raskritikovala-komandovanie-vsu-za-situatsiju-s-brihadoj-anna-kievskaja.html). Indeed, military personnel have questioned the recent practice of creating new brigades when existing ones are woefully undermanned, apparently suspecting the corruption scheme lurking behind this practice (https://ctrana.one/news/474755-v-vsu-objasnili-zachem-sozdavat-novye-brihady-vmesto-popolnenija-sushchestvujushchikh.html). One Ukrainian commander told a Polish newspaper that sometimes in battle there are more deserters than killed and wounded (https://t.me/stranaua/180095).

Desertions are one symptom of lax discipline and especially low morale increasingly plaguing the Ukrainian army. Commanders are reporting that 90 percent of their troops on there frontlines are new, coercively mobilised men (https://ctrana.news/news/475190-v-vsu-sejchas-vojujut-v-osnovnom-zhiteli-sel-horodskim-lehche-sprjatatsja-ot-ttsk.html; https://t.me/rezident_ua/25314 (video); and https://ctrana.one/news/476730-zhurnalist-bojko-rasskazal-o-problemakh-v-vsu.html). Sources in the Ukrainian General Staff report similarly (https://ctrana.one/news/476708-kuda-ischez-million-ukrainskikh-soldat.html). Thus, desertions are accompanied by unauthorised retreats, which are increasing in frequency. For example, hundreds ran from battle at one point last autumn in Vugledar (Ugledar) before it fell (www.ft.com/content/9b25288d-8258-4541-81b0-83b00ad8a03f). Vugledar was once a solid stronghold, which in 2023 Russian forces stormed tens of times with no results. Ukrainians soldiers are refusing to carry out operational orders because they amount to suicide operations and are beginning to surrender as whole units, in one case nearly a full battalion (e.g., 92nd Combat). Indeed, refusals to follow orders or undertake counteroffensive measures are increasing. In one recent case, the Azov Brigade’s chief of staff, Bogdan Koretich, accused a Ukrainian general of such poor command that he was described of being resonsible for more Ukrainian war dead than the Russians, forcing his removal (www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/06/24/7462293/). At lower levels, commanders are being fired in large numbers (https://strana.news/news/467266-itohi-852-dnja-vojny-v-ukraine.html). At the same time, field commanders publicly criticize high-ranking commanders and staff for strategic incompetence and negligence (https://ctrana.one/news/476695-ofitser-vsu-obvinil-komandovanie-i-eho-tupye-prikazy-v-sozdanii-kurakhovskoho-meshka.html). One reason for the disintegrating discipline and morale is that there is no relief for troops, as there is no long term demobilization or time away from the front other than that coming from episodic brief rotations of troops—a consequence of insufficient troop numbers. Soldiers and their relatives have been lobbying for well over year for a law on demobilization that would routinize long rotations for troops to visit home, but no such law is visible on the horizon. Such would likely lead to a fatal troop shortage and the Ukrainian army’s full rout on the battlefield.

However, perhaps the main problem in the Ukrainian army, as in the rest of the Ukrainian state and society, is corruption. It is endemic and omnipresent in arms production and procurement, mobilization (draft evasion by bribe), purchasing of leave and absence from the front, and manning brigades. One Ukrainian Defense Minister told a journalist that the problem is „catastrophic“ (https://ctrana.one/news/476708-kuda-ischez-million-ukrainskikh-soldat.html). Independent Rada deputy Anna Skorokhod claims that only 15 percent (!) of servicemen on the personnel roles are serving at the front, with large numbers either non-existent (dead souls) in service or having bribed their way into hiding somewhere in the rear (https://ctrana.one/news/476708-kuda-ischez-million-ukrainskikh-soldat.html and https://t.me/southfronteng/47472). 

This is how Ukrainian officers describe the mass-scale of corruption in the army. Ukrainian army captain: “Due to false reports about the presence of personnel, the commanders of the directions receive false information. And they operate with ‚dead souls‘, developing combat plans. For example, somewhere the Russians have broken through a section of the front, the commander gives an order to a certain brigade to send a battalion with an attached group to reinforce. In fact, the battalion has been gone for a long time, its number is no more than a company — some have bought off their way to the rear or deserted. As a result, there is nothing to close the breakthrough, because of the threat, the flanks of neighboring brigades begin to crumble.”

Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff source: „If we take how many Russian troops we have at the front on paper, then if the Russians have an advantage in numbers, it is less than twofold. But that is on paper. In practice, the situation is different. Let’s imagine a separate section of the front. According to the papers, there are 100 people on our side, and 150 on the Russian side. That is, the enemy’s advantage is insignificant. With such numbers, it is quite possible to keep the defense. But during a real battle, the situation is radically different. At most 40 of our 100 people participate in it. And often even less. The rest are deserters, who simply refuse to fight, and the like. And Russians have 140-145 out of 150 people going into battle. In total, the advantage has already more than tripled. Why does this situation exist? Our army was initially based on a core of volunteers, ATO veterans, and highly motivated soldiers who went into battle without coercion and took the initiative. Russians had a big problem with motivation from the very beginning. But they worked on this issue and gradually created their own military-repressive system of coercion. And it works by sending soldiers into battle and stopping cases of insubordination and desertion. We did not create anything like this. And I doubt that we are even capable of creating such a system. Our state system is too weak and too corrupt for this. And now that the volunteers have died, died of injury, or simply burned out, and the army is being replenished with fake conscripts who have close to zero motivation, there are no ways to force them to fight. A separate problem is the quality of the command staff and the combat management system. There are also very big failures here, because many experienced commanders died and a worthy replacements do not always come after them.” (https://ctrana.one/news/476708-kuda-ischez-million-ukrainskikh-soldat.html).

Moreover, corruption reaches to the top of the Ukrainian military establishment (as it does the civilian). The suspension of U.S. assistance to Ukraine until April and the investigation of U.S. weapons provision to Kiev announded by the new administration of President Donald Trump reverberated in the Ukrainian capitol leading the opening of an investigation into procurement practices of the Defense Ministry and of Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, whose predecessor Aleksey Reznikov, was also ousted under suspicion of massive corruption (https://ctrana.one/news/479090-v-tspk-zajavili-chto-nabu-otkrylo-delo-protiv-rustema-umerova.html). Umerov moved immediately to fire the head of the procurement organization, but she refused to leave her office (https://ctrana.one/news/478920-marina-bezrukova-otkazalas-pokidat-post-hlavy-ahentstva-oboronnykh-zakupok.html). There have been rumors for months that Zelenskiy was seeking to oust Umerov, and in the wake of the investigation announcement calls for his resignation are mounting (https://ctrana.one/articles/analysis/479131-pochemu-aktivisty-atakujut-umerova-i-poterjaet-li-on-kreslo-ministra-oborony.html). This adds crisis to crisis, dealing one more blow to the military establishment at a pivotal time during a catastrophic war.

Ukraine’s endemic and universal corruption has seen the fake or outright lack of construction of fortifications at the front, bringing us back to the previous section on Kiev’s collapsing frontlines (https://ctrana.one/news/464654-foto-nedostroennykh-ukreplenij-v-kharkovskoj-oblasti.html).

This is state of corruption, low morale, and incapacity reminiscent of the late, recently collapsed Syrian army of Bashir Assad.

This sort of Ukrainian army or its collapse is a threat to both the Maidan regime and Ukrainian state. The troops of a collapsed Ukrainian army will become a force that can be marshaled by a military or civilian leader towards the execution of a coup and perhaps a neofascist revolution or by peripheral and local figures to establish separate fiefdoms. Recall that during the Maidan demonstrations, leaders in Lvov and elsewhere first broached the idea of separating from then Yanukovych-controlled Ukraine. After the Maidan revolt and Yanukovych’s overthrow, it was Crimea and Donbass that moved towards separatism.

The Ukrainian Regime Splits, Then Falls

         With the military’s collapse or even on the verge of its collapse, one should expect intensifying political instability with internal infighting intensifying as whatever remains of something resembling a front line moves towards Kiev. Russian forces will reach the Dnieper by this summer and perhaps take territories along much or all of its length this year. With the fall of industrial giants, such as the cities of Dnipro and Zaporozhe, rump Ukraine will be reduced to a country of western Ukrainian shopkeepers in a decimated economy, society, and polity, assuming the Russians assume to stop at the Dnieper. Already HUR chief Kyryll Budanov and Office of the President (OP) chief Andriy Yermak are at odds with each other, with rumors circulating for months that Zelenskiy is preparing to fire Budanov (https://gordonhahn.com/2024/12/10/the-second-great-ukrainian-ruin-revisited/ and https://ctrana.news/articles/analysis/471395-pochemu-kniha-o-valerii-zaluzhnom-aktivizirovala-obsuzhdenie-eho-politicheskikh-perspektiv.html). In late January, Pro-Maidan regime Ukrainskaya pravda reported that Budanov shocked Rada deputies in a closed door meeting by stating that if peace talks did not begin soon, processes would begin that would lead to Ukraine’s destruction (www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2025/01/27/7495459/ and https://membrana-cdn.media/video/upr/custom-193959-20250127-desktop.mp4?r=62418). There has been some cooperation in the opposition between Zelenskiy-fired armed forces commander Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhniy and former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko (https://gordonhahn.com/2024/12/10/the-second-great-ukrainian-ruin-revisited/; https://www.politico.eu/article/kursk-russia-incursion-objections-war-in-ukraine-volodymyr-zelenskyy/; and https://ctrana.news/articles/analysis/471395-pochemu-kniha-o-valerii-zaluzhnom-aktivizirovala-obsuzhdenie-eho-politicheskikh-perspektiv.html). Both have been investigated for supposed treason by Zelenskiy’s prosecutors and the secret police, the SBU, and subject to political attacks by the OP (https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=9599452636751203&id=100000596862745). The head of the parliamentary group of Zelenskiy’s ‘Servants of the people’ party in Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada, David Arakhamiya is said to be on the outs with OP and will soon be replaced as party group chairman (https://ctrana.one/articles/analysis/478897-uvoljat-li-hlavu-fraktsii-sluha-naroda-arakhamiju-i-chto-zhdjot-shmyhalja.html). Arakhmiya is one of the few Ukrainian figures to acknowledge that Ukraine had nearly concluded a peace agreement with Russia in March 2022 top put a quick end to the war but that the West scuttled the agreement by refusing security guarantees and urging Kiev to fight. Recently, as the new Trump administration has out peace negotiations back on the agenda, Arakhamiya seemed to encourage the process – one Zelenskiy has been cool if not bhostile to – by noting he was in contact with Kremlin-tied Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich and good ties with Republicans in the U.S., likely increasing Zelenskiy’s suspicions of Arakhamiya’s loyalty (https://ctrana.one/articles/analysis/478897-uvoljat-li-hlavu-fraktsii-sluha-naroda-arakhamiju-i-chto-zhdjot-shmyhalja.html).

This regime infighting is compounded by the unfulfilled revolutionary aspirations of its ultranationalist and neofascist wing, which led the Maidan takeover in the first place a decade ago in February 2024. Most recently, the founder and former leader of the neofascist Right Sector groupand and advisor to former Ukrainian army top commander Zaluzhniy, Dmitro Yarosh, repeated his call for the completion of the neofascist revolution on his Facebook page: “As it turned out, during the Dignity Revolution and the Russian-Ukrainian War, Ukrainian nationalists became the main factor in the Ukrainian national-liberation struggle in the 21st century… I am a Ukrainian Nationalist – sounds proud both in Ukraine and across the world. The next power after the War for Independence should be nationalist. Otherwise, we will once again be led down an unbreakable cycle of national humiliation, corruption, degeneracy, moral degradation, economic decline, inferiority and defeat… Therefore, after the War for Independence, the wise, courageous and noble should rule in Ukraine. Glory to the Nation!” (www.facebook.com/dyastrub/posts/pfbid07fbi3Z2u8VLPQU1eESuQq9vPhBF9XY5gHe96TKnnXMnty8FZD89ghB9REvyiNgvil). The neofascist Azov Brigade’s leader and commander Andrey Biletskiy sounded the alarm about the army in December and called for wide-ranging reforms perhaps in a bid for military and even state leadership (https://t.me/rezident_ua/25291). In sum, the Zelenskiy government has opponents, even enemies in every camp in Russian politics, from the military to moderate nationalists to the neofascists, even in his own largely discredited and corrupt Servants of the People party (https://ctrana.one/articles/analysis/478897-uvoljat-li-hlavu-fraktsii-sluha-naroda-arakhamiju-i-chto-zhdjot-shmyhalja.html).

These developments inside the elite are compounded by Zelenskiy’s collapsing popularity and trust ratings in society. Gen. Zaluzhniy is favored over Zelenskiy in the most recent opinion surveys in Ukraine. Ukrainians’ trust in Mr Zelensky declined precipitously from 80% in May 2023 to 45% a year later, according to America’s National Democratic Institute (https://www.economist.com/briefing/2024/09/26/ukraine-is-on-the-defensive-militarily-economically-and-diplomatically). A recent Ukrainian opinion poll by the Social Monitoring Center in Kiev shows that only 16 percent of Ukrainians are prepared to vote for Zelenskiy in any future presidential election, and 60 percent would prefer he did not run. At the same time, Zelenskiy-dismissed Zaluzhniy would lead in any such election and be backed by 27 percent, according to the poll (www.thetimes.com/world/russia-ukraine-war/article/zelensky-popularity-poll-fallen-three-years-war-stzqf5bpn). According to the Presidential Office’s earlier in-house opinion polls as well, Zelenskiy today would lose a presidential election to Zaluzhniy. The fired general registers as Ukraine’s most popular political and military figure, according to other recent polls (https://ctrana.news/news/459385-opros-o-politicheskikh-simpatijakh-k-zaluzhnomu-rezultaty.html). In trust ratings, Zelenskiy has fallen to third place – after Zaluzhniy and the head of military intelligence (HRU) Budanov, whom the President’s Office is reportedly trying to fire (https://ctrana.one/articles/analysis/475099-kak-skladyvajutsja-otnoshenija-trampa-i-ukrainskoj-vlasti-.html). The stumbling block may be Budanov’s long-standing ties to U.S. and Western intelligence (www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/world/europe/cia-ukraine-intelligence-russia-war.html and http://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/17/us/politics/ukraine-drones-biden-support.html). In a more recent survey both Zaluzhniy (71.6 percent) and Budanov (46.7) retained hire trust ratings than Zelenskiy (40.8 percent) (https://t.me/stranaua/183673). All of the above strongly suggests that the regime is splitting behind the scenes, and Zelenskiy cannot hold the situation together as crises at the front and in the army mount. The Maidan regime is threatened by a regime split into competing factions each putting forward its own claim over the sovereignty of the Ukrainian state or parts thereof. Zaluzhniy’s reported contacts with oppositionist Poroshenko would mark the defection of a key Maidan regime actor to the political opposition to Zelenskiy. Such defections are instrumental in regime transformations, whether transitional or revolutionary. One needs only to recall the effect Yeltsion’s defection from the reforming CPSU Soviet regime of Mikhail Gorbachev had on Soviet politics, aggravating polarization both to the ‘left’ and ‘right’ of Gorbachev’s perestroishchiki and leading to the August hardline coup against them both and ultimately the collapse of the USSR.

On top of all this, the regime’s stability is being shaken by the Trump administration’s to push for peace talks with Moscow and, just recently, its implied move to have Zelenskiy removed from the presidency to facilitate those negotiations. The February 2 call by Trump’s envoy for his Ukrainian peace initiative, Fen. Keith Kellogg, for the convening of presidential elections by the end of the year seems the death knell for Zelenskiy, given Gen. Zaluzhniy’s far greater popularity. For Zelenskiy, an election loss or a decision not to run would be a saving grace compared to the other ways he might be removed from power. But just Kellogg’s suggestion, not to mention an actual presidential campaign run as the front and army collapse, will intensify the power struggle, perhaps to the breaking point.

Then there is the very real potential of a popular uprising, as the economy deteriorates and corruption is publicised, especially as it has to do with the army’s difficulties. Ukrainians already view prices to be a greater threat than the Russian army, according to one recent poll conducted by Kiev’s sociological research group ‘Reinting’. The poll showed more Ukrainians cited price increases and the general state of the economy (32 percent and 33 percent, respectively) as more worrisome than the expansion of Ukrainian territory occupied by the Russian army (25 percent) (https://ratinggroup.ua/ru/research/ukraine/gen_opinion122024.html). Social discontent with the regime’s shortcomings, brought into sharp relief by the extravagant lives visible on the Internet of Zelenskiy’s family, his entourage, and the Ukrainian elite in general is a time bomb waiting to explode.

This Maidan regime crisis is likely to spark a state crisis, perhaps state failure and territorial collapse. Domestic infighting and instability could very well lead to military and/or palace coups and even internecine warfare and the division of parts of the country by mutually antagonistic Ukrainian factions of one sort or another.

The Failure and Collapse of the Ukrainian State

The collapse of the regime could lead to the collapse of the state organizationally and administratively, leaving no functioning central government. This would facilitate territorial dissolution through secessions by warlords, ethnic minority-dominated regions, and/or revanchist takeovers by foreign powers: Poland, Rumania, not to mention Russia. All this could be compounded by economic dislocation and social chaos, leaving both Europe and Russia with a major security problem on their borders. One only needs to recall the Ukrainian national separatism that arose in Lvov and other western Ukrainian regions during the Maidan demonstrations. These early separatist steps preceded those taken in Crimea and Donbass but months later after the collapse of Yanukovych regime and the victory of the Maidan uprising. Below, I review various aspects or phases of the potential collapse of Ukraine as a state: state disorganization and functional failure; territorial collapse on a Ukrainian nationalist and/or quasi-criminal basis; minority ethnonational separatism; and foreign national revanchism.

The Ukrainian state is vulnerable to organization incapacitation and administrative failure as a result of an increasingly dysfunctional economy and its economy’s and state budget’ nearly full dependence on foreign assistance, loans, and grants. I and others have noted the destruction of Ukraine’s energy grid and other infrastructure and the additional debilitating effect of military mobilization on businesses. On the background of such grave difficulties and what can only be expected to be greater economic dislocation caused by the strengthening and advancing Russian army, Ukraine’s main donor, the U.S., has put a freeze on all foreign assistance, excluding only Israel and Egypt from the executive order, as announced by the Trump administration. This will soon leave the Ukrainian government without the funding necessary to govern, provide public goods, and the like. Ukrainians already view prices to be a greater threat than the Russian army, as noted above (https://t.me/stranaua/185326). Thus, Ukraine’s loss of sovereignty to the West, mostly to Washington, means total collapse with the withdrawal of funding. This is already apparent in the most transparent of the USAID corruption disclosures, which revealed that 85 percent of Ukrainian media will have to shut down without USAID’s funds (www.facebook.com/ivan.katchanovski/posts/pfbid028wq1pbbbPQBDQmGMhmLdmzWwpqfvM6Bazck8EXfNNubZgoF57V1c9w4myJDPeRMWl). One can imagine the destructive impact in others sectors of Ukrainian on the life support of Western assistance: the economy, medical care, social welfare payments, etc. Regional governments, relying on ambitious oligarchs opposed to the Zelenskiy government or even the entire Maidan regime itself, can then be expected to become separate fiefdoms for said oligarchs, setting the stage for regional hoarding of key goods and eventually even separatism.

In addition, Ukraine suffers from an ethnonationally based ‘stateness problem’ driven by ethnic minority-populated regions and foreign legacies encompassing most of western Ukraine. These areas are part of Ukraine as a result of the Soviet defeat of the Nazism in the Great Patriotic War and the Red Army’s resulting occupation of these areas, which were then incorporated into the Soviet Union’s Ukrainian SSR. As I wrote in my book Ukraine Over the Edge: Russia, the West, and the ‘New Cold War’ (McFarland, 2016), today’s Ukrainian state was constructed by Lenin, Stalin, and later Khrushchev (Crimea). Thus, in western Ukraine’s Transcarpathian region there are sub-regions with large Rumanian and Hungarian populations the lands of which previously belonged to then Nazi-allied Rumania and Hungary, respectively. The populations have been subjected to language and other forms of discrimination by the state and its allied Ukrainian ultranationalists and neofascists before Russia’s 2022 invasion. Now they are being brutalized by Zelenskiy’s military mobilization press gangs perhaps disproportionally so compared with ethnic Ukrainian areas. This can feed into a desire for a return to their national homelands either on foot or by appealing for their rescue by incorporation into Rumania and Hungary, respectively. Territorially speaking, this is a far lesser danger than the potential of Polish revanchism, which would mean the dissolution of the Ukrainian state. Fortunately for Kiev, such developments are for now a remote possibility. But should the Ukrainian state begin to disintegrate, no less experience internecine warfare or nascent civil war, the potential of external revanchism becomes more kinetic.

Conclusion

There is nothing inevitable about the cascade of collapses running it full course. Regime and star collapse can still be avoided, but collapse of the regime will come closely behind the front and army collapses. The only ways to forestall or preempt this cascade of collapses in full are a ceasefire, a full-fledged peace agreement, a full-scale NATO military intervention, or Russia’s conquest of all Ukraine. Among these, only a ceasefire agreement is theoretically possible this year, and as early as April a ceasefire could too late or prove ineffective in halting several of these collapses, holding the frontline but unable to forestall the collapse of the army, regime, and state. Roaming bands of unoccupied soldiers with minimal or no salaries will remain a combustible force, and a ceasefire may force the equally combustible crucible of presidential and parliamentary election. In this, one must concur with HUR chief Budanov, who reportedly stated that if Ukraine does not begin peace talks by summer, then processes will begin that could destroy the country. And Budanov’s assertion may be an understatement of the urgency at hand. Trump must put Ukraine at the top of his agenda and pursue a settlement with maximal effort, using all the levers of persuasion Washington still possesses. Otherwise, Ukraine could still blow up in his and all are faces. That Kellogg’s call for elections produced the very next day a statement by Zelenskiy finally supporting negotiations with Moscow and thereby seeking to cut off direct U.S.-Russian talks ‘about Ukraine without Ukraine’ and still mostly clueless Europe is a demonstration of how pressure on the increasingly politically weak and emotionally damaged Zelenskiy could produce quick results. But time is short, and Ukraine’s four collapses await.

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NEW BOOK

EUROPE BOOKS, 2022

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RECENT BOOKS

MCFARLAND BOOKS, 2021

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MCFARLAND BOOKS, 2018

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About the Author – 

Gordon M. Hahn, Ph.D., is an Expert Analyst at Corr Analytics, www.canalyt.com. Websites: Russian and Eurasian Politics, gordonhahn.com and gordonhahn.academia.edu

Dr. Hahn is the author of the new book: Russian Tselostnost’: Wholeness in Russian Thought, Culture, History, and Politics (Europe Books, 2022). He has authored five previous, well-received books: The Russian Dilemma: Security, Vigilance, and Relations with the West from Ivan III to Putin (McFarland, 2021); Ukraine Over the Edge: Russia, the West, and the “New Cold War” (McFarland, 2018); The Caucasus Emirate Mujahedin: Global Jihadism in Russia’s North Caucasus and Beyond (McFarland, 2014), Russia’s Islamic Threat (Yale University Press, 2007), and Russia’s Revolution From Above: Reform, Transition and Revolution in the Fall of the Soviet Communist Regime, 1985-2000 (Transaction, 2002). He also has published numerous think tank reports, academic articles, analyses, and commentaries in both English and Russian language media. 

Dr. Hahn taught at Boston, American, Stanford, San Jose State, and San Francisco State Universities and as a Fulbright Scholar at Saint Petersburg State University, Russia and was a senior associate and visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Kennan Institute in Washington DC, the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), Akribis Group.