On 11 January 2026, something quiet happened.

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine had run for 1,418 days. Exactly the same length as the Soviet Union’s war against Nazi Germany, from 22 June 1941 to Victory Day on 9 May 1945. In those days, the Red Army fought from inside its own borders to the gates of Berlin. The Russian army today has captured roughly 20% of Ukraine, and still can’t take the whole Donbas.

Now the war in Ukraine became Russia’s longest war since the Great Patriotic War. By the time Tom Tugendhat and James Glancy sat down to record this week’s Warzones, the count was past 1,540 days and still rising.

This week on Warzones, we walk through what that means:

- Russia has now lost more soldiers in Ukraine (~325,000 KIA) than in every post-WW2 conflict combined, by an order of magnitude.

- Q1 2026 was Russia’s first officially recorded economic contraction of the war.

- Ukrainian deep-strike drones have knocked ~43% of Russian fuel production offline.

- April 2026 was the first month Russia recorded a net territorial loss since Ukraine’s Kursk incursion of August 2024.

- Ukraine has gone from a tired post-Soviet economy in 2021 to the most high-tech state in Europe in 2026.

- After the denial of Starlink to Russian force, Ukraine has retaken hundreds of kilometres of territory.

“He would be the first Russian leader who has tried to take Kyiv and failed. The big changes in Russian history always come after defeats — 1905, 1917, 1989. This may be the next one.” TOM TUGENDHAT

James Glancy & Tom Tugendhat

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