A ceasefire in Ukraine would not demobilise the Russian army. It would release ex-convicts
Mike Martin
8 June 2026
The Telegraph
Whisper it quietly, but the tide may be turning in the war in Ukraine. Yet what comes next should worry us all. Though the Kremlin attempts to project strength with its assaults on Ukrainian cities, the evidence tells a different story. Moscow’s forces are slowly ceding territory to the Ukrainians as their logistics lines are cut. Russian conscripts are dying in their thousands as Ukrainian drones relentlessly hammer them.
On the domestic front, discontent is growing with high prices and punitive taxes. At a recent gathering of economic officials inside the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin himself acknowledged that Russian GDP had shrunk by nearly 2 per cent in 2026, and Russia’s finance ministry and central bank privately warned of critical risks to economic stability. Anton Siluanov, the Russian finance minister, has even warned Putin that the financial situation is spiralling out of control, as Russia veers towards recession.
This has not happened by accident. Ukraine has quietly been pursuing a brilliantly ruthless twin-track strategy that has slowly turned the war around.
Firstly, Ukraine out-innovated its vastly larger enemy. While the Ukrainians have become world leaders in drone technology, Russia has relied on a century-old tactic: a war of attrition by brute force. Yet throwing artillery and men at the problem only works if they reach the enemy. Ukraine, by contrast, has developed extraordinary AI-enabled drones called Hornets that cost only $6,000 (£4,400).
This has allowed them to suffocate Russian logistics by attacking supplies travelling to the front lines, and the Hornets now have sufficient range that they can attack the main supply route to Russian forces in Crimea and Kherson. So successful have the Ukrainians been that Mykhailo Fedorov, the Ukrainian defence minister, has described it as a “logistics lockdown”.
The second part of Ukraine’s strategy is to strike deep into Russian territory, using a mix of missiles and drones. These attacks cleverly use Western targeting intelligence to degrade the key revenue streams which keep Putin’s war machine alive – oil refineries, factories, ports, railways, and bridges. Quite simply, Ukraine has been strangling the Russian economy: oil revenues are down, and the cost of doing everything else is up.
As a result, Russia is on the back foot. For the first time, the country looks seriously imperilled, economically and politically. According to a report by the Institute for the Study of War, Ukraine is now gaining more than 45 square miles of territory a day. At the same time, new estimates show that Russia has lost more than 500,000 soldiers since the war began in February 2022. Though Putin is desperately scrambling to recruit soldiers from North Korea and Sub-Saharan Africa to replenish his forces, the logic of his war of attrition is collapsing.
For the people of Ukraine who have suffered incalculably, this is cause for cautious hope. But for those of us in the West who are delighted that the Ukrainians may be turning the tide, we need to think extremely hard about what comes next. Victory, in this war, carries deep risks for the UK and the wider Western alliance.
For Putin, this war is existential – not just for Russia, but for himself. Russia tends to dispose of leaders who lose wars, politically and literally. Putin knows this and is operating in a heightened state of paranoia, fearing assassination or a potential coup. This year’s furtive Victory Day parade in Moscow, normally a pageant of imperial pomp with tanks rolling through Red Square, was a sign of mounting unease.
For a man whose authority rests on a mythology of strength – the deified strongman, the embodied will of the nation – a weakened, humiliated version is not a stable one. Even if the regime were toppled, and with it Putin, the lack of an obvious successor generates a huge risk. It would be an extremely messy process, and a messy process in the world’s most heavily armed nuclear state is not something we would want to see. But there is another consequence, one which has received little attention in the West.
A ceasefire in Ukraine would not demobilise the Russian army. It would release it. According to recent estimates, the active army has 1.32 million soldiers, and 700,000 stationed in Ukraine. Many of these are ex-convicts released from prison as cannon fodder to prop up Putin’s war of attrition.
Instances of violence from these returning soldiers are well documented. In October 2024, Azamat Iskaliyev, a convicted murderer released to fight in Putin’s war, stabbed his ex-girlfriend more than 60 times after she rejected his advances. Other men like this – brutalised, radicalised and now armed – will be looking for somewhere to vent their frustrations.
Margus Tsahkna, Estonia’s foreign minister, has already issued warnings that Putin is preparing to unleash these men on Russia’s enemies in the case of a ceasefire. The Estonians don’t mess around, and they have been constructing a defensive wall across 434 miles of border with Russia and Belarus, alongside spending more than 5 per cent of their GDP on defence.
This stands in stark contrast to the UK Government, which has been stalling on defence. We have 900 British troops stationed on Estonia’s eastern border. Yet if Putin, attempting to deal with domestic unrest, were to threaten Estonia, the Ministry of Defence told the defence select committee that they couldn’t even send 1,000 troops in support.
The Strategic Defence Review was published a year ago, but without the much-awaited Defence Investment Plan, it cannot be enacted. A Defence Readiness Bill was promised in the King’s Speech, but didn’t materialise. The list goes on – the Government is complacent about our defence.
Every day that Ukraine holds the line in the defence against Russia, they buy the UK and its European allies time to rearm. Our inertia on defence is a disservice to the Ukrainians who have paid with their lives.
Ultimately, Ukraine has been fighting this war on our behalf, allowing Britain space to rearm. What happens if it ends before we do?
Mike Martin is the Lib Dem MP for Tunbridge Wells and Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Rearmament