INTREP360 INTELLIGENCE REPORT
06.25.2026: THE DECLINE AND FALL OF PUTIN'S WOULD-BE RUSSIAN EMPIRE
June 25th, 2026
Greetings!
Once upon a time, in another century, Mark was a history major before deciding he needed to add an economics degree to pay the bills. Like many university students at the time, Mark read Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Four plus decades later, during a thunderstorm today, he was struck by the notion that we are witnessing in real time the decline and fall of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s would-be Russian Empire.
AI image credit: Grok. Russian President Vladimir Putin depicted as a Roman emperor amidst the rubble of his empire.
Gibbon argued that the decline of the Roman empire took roughly thirteen centuries from its height in the 2nd century AD to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Putin, despite being a lover of history, is compressing his collapses to a handful of years by comparison.
It is really remarkable how far Russia has fallen since February 24th, 2022, the start of Putin’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine.
Putin was at the apex of his power. He had won four presidential elections in 2000, 2004, 2012, and 2018.
By 2022, his grip was complete. He effectively banned Russia’s independent media companies, marginalized political opposition, and used a network of business oligarchs to gain tight control of Russia’s economy.
He was also coming off a victory in Crimea, wherein Russia easily seized the Ukrainian oblast and illegally annexed it in 2014. For a time, prior to 2022, it appeared as if Putin was looking north to the Northern Sea Route as his next territorial ambition.
Yet it was only when Putin began looking south at Ukraine that things started going south for him and his would-be Russian empire.
Let’s get started finding out why and just how far Putin and, by extension, Russia, have fallen since he set out on a Gilligan’s Island-like three-day tour in Ukraine.
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EMPEROR OF THE ARCTIC
As early as 2007, Putin was intent on making the Northern Sea Route essentially a Russian lake. In August of that year, a Russian Mir mini-sub planted a “rust-proof titanium flag” on the seabed of the North Pole.
He was marking Moscow’s claim to all of the pole’s oil and gas rights. Essentially, Putin was emulating former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s “Red Arctic” dream of dominating the North Pole and exploiting its riches.
Map credit: The Arctic Institute. Map showing the Northern Sea Route, the Northwest Passage and the Transpolar Sea Route
The Russian president also backed it with money. Putin’s 15-year master development plan for the Northern Sea Route was passed into legislation in the Duma in 2019.
It called for a $300 billion incentive package to build “new incentives for new ports, factories, and oil and gas developments on the shores and in the waters of the Arctic Ocean.” Given global warming in the Arctic, it looked like a safe bet.
That is, until Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022. Foreign investors fled and many of the projects still remain half-built or left incomplete.
Putin did not realize it at the time, nor did the West, but it was his first major loss as a would-be Peter the Great.
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THE ROAD TO MOLDOVA
Early on in the war, we warned at our weekly Thursday national security column at The Hill that Ukraine was merely a stepping-stone for Putin. Georgia, the country, not the state, was one target. Moldova was the other.
As with the Northern Sea Route, Putin was intent on turning the Black Sea into a Russian lake. Crimea was its strategic anchor, but Putin desired a land bridge that extended from Russia to Crimea, connected with the Ukrainian port city of Odesa, and ended in Moldova thereby securing Transnistria as well.
Fortunately for Moldova and NATO, Putin never made it past Kherson in southern Ukraine. Plus, as covered earlier today in our daily column at The Washington Star, Moldova and Romania are exploring reuniting as one country.
If they do, NATO by default will expand eastward. Either way, Putin has already lost. Moldova is now out of reach.
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THE VIKINGS ENTER THE CHAT
One of Putin’s many and ever-changing justifications for invading Ukraine was to stop NATO’s eastward expansion. It was, of course, simply a cover story for domestic and international media consumption.
Tucker Carlson naively bought it and is still buying it. We did not and never will. NATO is a defensive alliance, and its war plans stop at expelling Russia from member-state territory. They do not include any plans to invade Russia.
However, Putin’s war justification proved to be self-defeating as well. Finland and Sweden, historically proud of their neutrality, suddenly realized being inside of NATO was a lot safer than being outside of it in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
NATO, as a result, got significantly bigger and in doing so, it turned the Baltic Sea into a NATO lake.
Plus, and this is where Carlson should take note, the Kremlin in effect proved it was not worried about a NATO-led invasion of Belarus or Russia, because Moscow pulled elite Russian troops from Kaliningrad to reinforce “Force Z” as losses mounted on the battlefields of Ukraine.
Strategically, Finland and Sweden’s accession to NATO was a huge loss to Putin, and especially damaging to his long-term military designs on Russia forcefully reabsorbing the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
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PUTIN IS BLEEDING OUT RUSSIA
To date, Russian dead and wounded on the battlefields of Ukraine are approaching 1.4 million casualties. To put that into perspective, these casualties represent approximately 1 in 29 Russian men aged 18 to 60.
The casualties are disproportionately male and that is a big deal in a country already suffering from low fertility rates.Russia’s existing and future workforce and military are at stake. Putin’s war in Ukraine has already subtracted 3.5% of its male workforce.
This is not sustainable. It also likely accounts for why Russia during 2026 thus far cannot replace soldiers lost in Ukraine with new recruits.
Plus, given labor shortages caused by the war, if Putin opts to draft more Russian men, he will only undermine his war economy.
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UKRAINE IS BLEEDING OUT RUSSIA’S ECONOMY
The Armed Forces of Ukraine’s sustained drone attacks on Russia’s oil and gas infrastructure and logistics are beginning to bring segments of the Russian economy to a halt. There are daily reports of fuel shortages. Plus civilian gas rationing is underway in 56 regions in Russia and throughout Russian-occupied Crimea.
As we observed in our column at The Hill today, even Vladimir Solovyov, who is considered one of Putin’s top propagandists, is worried. During a recent episode of his top-rated Russia-1 prime time show, he lashed out at Russia’s central bank and held it responsible for the country running out of money.
Putin’s economy, like his war machine, is running on empty.
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CSTO BITES THE DUST
Funny thing about losing wars. They tend to cause your allies to lose faith in you. Some hedge their bets, like Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is doing when it comes to Putin as we pointed out in The Washington Star.
Others, like Armenia, simply say enough is enough. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan did just that in December 2024 when he said his country was past the “point of no return” in terms of leaving the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).
The CSTO was envisioned as a post-Soviet Union counter to NATO. It worked until it did not anymore.
It still exists, but like everything else in Putin’s would-be empire, it too is running on fumes and is incapable of confronting NATO.
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PUTIN’S MIDEAST LOSSES
Russia began its war in Ukraine with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a pro-Russian ally, still in charge despite a raging bloody civil war. Assad was key to securing the safety of Russia’s military and naval bases in Syria.
These facilities were key to the Kremlin’s ability to project military force into the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean Sea. They also helped supply Moscow’s paramilitary forces operating in the Sahel in Sub-Saharan Africa.
By December 8th, 2024, Russia’s military posture in Syria was dealt a severe blow when Assad was forced to flee and seek asylum in Moscow.
Elsewhere, during the 12-Day War in June 2025, as well as now during the ongoing conflict between the U.S. and Iran, Putin has been largely incapable of decisively coming to Tehran’s military aid.
The Axis of Evil was once a thing.
Now?
Two of its members — Russia and Iran — are down for the count.
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THE DRAGON’S BEAR
Prior to February 24th, 2022, Russia and China essentially were equals in what is known as the Dragon Bear alliance. However, like Roman emperors before him, a funny thing happened to Putin on his way to Kyiv’s forum.
Russia has become China’s bear. The Chinese Dragon, headed by Chinese President Xi Jinping, is now the senior partner in the alliance. Putin, in the process, has become Xi’s modern-day version of Benito Mussolini.
Interestingly, Chinese companies in 2023 started printing maps showing disputed territories in eastern Russia as belonging to China. Putin, wittingly or not, has set himself up for the Chinese dragon to begin eating the Russian bear.
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CRIMEA OR BUST
We have long held that Crimea is the decisive terrain of this war. It also will likely prove decisive in determining Putin’s fate.
Lose it and he is finished. Yet, if he tries to keep it, he may lose the Donbas or his economy in the process.
There is one silver lining in all of this, at least for future historians. They will likely only have to write five years or so of Putin’s history to record his decline and fall as opposed to Gibbon covering nearly 14 centuries.
Meanwhile, Putin shows no outward signs that he gets it that his would-be Russian empire is collapsing all around him.
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ICYMI #1
Earlier today, in our regular weekly Thursday 7 AM ET national security column at The Hill in Washington, D.C., we chronicled Ukraine’s 4-plus year effort to increasingly isolate the Crimean peninsula and make it untenable for Russian occupation forces.
Thanks to our readers, it hit #1 at The Hill and ended the day that way. We are truly grateful for your readership and the help you gave us today to amplify our messaging: Ukraine is winning and Putin’s regime is likely to meet its end in Crimea. We cannot do this without you and be assured that we humbly never lose sight of that.
Photo credit: AP. An undated photograph of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
You can read it here.
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ICYMI #2
Earlier today, in our regular weekday foreign affairs column at The Washington Star, we examined the effort of Romania and Moldova to reunite as one country. If it eventually succeeds, it would be yet another blow to Putin.
Not only would Moldova become a member of NATO by default, but it would also further imperil Transnistria, the pro-Russian breakaway province.
Photo credit: Belarus’ Presidential Office. The map behind Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in March 2022 showed a possible Russian invasion of Moldova.
You can read it here. It is not paywalled at our request.
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ICYMI #3
Earlier today, Mark appeared on Q News In-Depth newsmagazine show in Cairo, Egypt. Q News is the English-speaking outlet of Al Qahera News TV.
The segment revolved around NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte’s comments to Trump yesterday in the Oval Office wherein he said NATO member states, including Italy, had supported U.S. operations in Iran.
After their meeting, Iran accused NATO of being complicit. Mark objected to the word complicit. He pushed back saying NATO is a defensive organization and that as such they were partners.
You can watch it here.
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Thank you for reading. We will see you tomorrow. Please subscribe, comment & share. We truly appreciate it!
Jon & Mark
Follow Jon on X at @JESweet2022 or on Bluesky at @JonSweet.bsky.social. Follow Mark on X at @MCTothSTL or on Bluesky at @MarkToth.bsky.social.