The Limits of Russian Influence

On June 23rd, 2025, Iran’s Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. For Araghchi, the stakes were high. Just a week before, Israel launched a devastating air attack against Iran’s nuclear program and its military command. Dozens of Iranian military commanders and nuclear scientists were killed, as Israeli air and intelligence assets could strike at the very heart of the regime––seemingly with impunity. Topping that off, just a day before Araghchi’s trip to Moscow, the U.S. military launched a decisive attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, all without any American casualties.

Strong statements of support notwithstanding, Araghchi left Moscow with few tangible means of Russian aid. The Kremlin was standing aside. This episode was the latest in a series of events that demonstrate the limited extent of Russian influence. During the hour of need of one of its most important partners, the Kremlin’s support was notable for its practical absence. As such, this dynamic should serve as a sobering reminder of the broader limits of Russian power.

In 2015, Russia’s geopolitical position appeared strong.

The result was a perception of strategic momentum. The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)––Russia’s closest equivalent to NATO––looked more cohesive, Russian influence in Central Asia deepened, and ties with China and Iran steadily advanced. Though the economy remained sluggish, it had recovered from the malaise of the 1990s. By the mid-2010s, then, Moscow’s geopolitical star seemed on the rise.

Ten years later, the Kremlin’s star has burst.

With his 2022 Invasion of Ukraine, President Putin expected a swift victory. Instead he got a quagmire. Supported by U.S. and European military hardware, Ukraine’s military reversed the Russian advance against Kyiv and, in the fall of 2022, scored stunning victories in Kherson and Kharkiv. Putin’s hope for a blitz thereby devolved into a costly war of attrition, one where his troops have advanced at a snail’s pace.

That the mighty Russian bear has so far been unable to defeat its smaller neighbor is a testament to Russia’s declining fortunes, but the Kremlin’s travails do not end in Ukraine. A mere months after Russia’s full-scale invasion, fighting broke out within the CSTO. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan engaged in intense border clashes, and though these clashes ended with ostensible Russian mediation, Kyrgyzstan abruptly canceled its participation in CSTO exercises later that year in response to its belief that Moscow was siding with Tajikistan. Such instability was but a harbinger of deeper fractures across Moscow’s so-called near abroad.

Nowhere was this clearer than in the South Caucasus.

In 2020, Azerbaijan successfully invaded Nagorno Karabakh, capturing most of the breakaway republic during a two-month long conflict. Russia successfully ended that round of fighting through mediation and deployed 2,000 Russian peacekeepers to enforce the ceasefire agreement. As a CSTO member entitled to Russian protection, Armenia naturally expected Moscow’s future backing. But in late 2023, with Russia’s military bogged down in Ukraine, Azerbaijan sensed the time was right to escalate and seized additional territory. Overstretched, Moscow could only call for calm and advised ethnic Armenians in the disputed corridor to evacuate. The Kremlin’s security guarantee for Armenia was shown to be a sham, pushing Yerevan to seek closer ties with the West.

Though Russia has recently tried to burnish its mediator credentials again, the utter inability to protect Armenia in response to the clear Azerbaijani aggression has called Russia’s entire security organ in its near abroad into question. Central Asian states, ergo, are aspiring to closer ties with China, resulting in declining Russian authority in its traditional sphere of control.

Then came Syria.

Israel’s devastation of Hezbollah in late 2024, coupled with the gradual impact of worsening sanctions, meant that when Syrian rebels captured Aleppo, Damascus was dangerously exposed. Hundreds of billions of dollars in Russian material sacrifice then quickly evaporated as Syrian rebels overthrew Bashar al-Assad’s regime in a matter of days. When Assad pleaded for Russia’s help, all he got was a ride out. In less than two weeks, Russia’s only direct Middle East bulwark was lost.

Following this chain of events, it should come as no surprise that when Tehran called for aid while Israeli and the U.S. aircraft struck its nuclear sites, Moscow was likewise nowhere to be found. It condemned the strikes to be sure, but in practical terms, Russia was unable––or given its diplomatic position, unwilling––to assist. Khamenei, like Armenia and Assad before him, has been the latest to see the true value of Russian partnership.

What explains the Kremlin’s recent failures?

Putin’s disastrous war in Ukraine is the culprit. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), as of June 2025, Russian forces have seized just 5,000 square kilometers of Ukraine since January 2024––less than 1% of Ukrainian territory. CSIS further estimates that Russia’s average advance in the Kharkiv region is one of 50 meters per day, less than the daily average of the Entente during the infamous Somme Offensive. All this has been at the cost of 250,000 Russian soldiers killed, and when added to the number of captured and wounded, Russia’s casualties have tragically surpassed the one million mark.

In addition to the human cost, the material cost has been staggering. Since February, 2022, the Russian military has lost at least 10,000 tanks and armored vehicles as well as over 1,200 artillery systems. Despite not having a navy, Ukraine has arguably won the naval war in the Black Sea, forcing the Russian Black Sea fleet into port and sinking the pride of the Russian navy, the Moskova. Recently, Ukraine’s Operation Spider Web also destroyed at least 10 Russian strategic bombers and logistics aircraft––including irreplaceable TU-95 strategic bombers––thus weakening an important leg of the Russian nuclear triad.

Beyond harming Russian prestige, these air and naval losses have substantially weakened Russia’s ability to project power. And when added to the war’s profound human losses, this explains Russia’s inability to come to its allies’ aid.

Furthermore, despite its ramped up military production, the Kremlin’s defense industrial base, at current rates, will be unable to replace its material losses and uphold its arms contracts abroad. This helps explain why Russian infantry advances have come at such high human costs, and why Russia has been unable to service its clients abroad with the military equipment they seek.

The ongoing war in Ukraine has also put a huge strain on the Russian economy. Publicly available figures suggest the Russian economy is doing well despite the sanctions but look deeper and profound structural issues emerge: Putin’s wartime economy has helped produce the twin evils of inflation and low growth––stagflation.

When the war started going poorly and Western sanctions kicked in, Russia’s government spending rose. Under the belief that greater spending on the military would stimulate economic growth, the Kremlin poured money on the military industrial complex.

This strategy produced GDP growth, but at a cost.

High spending and generous pay packages to soldiers produced inflation. Last year, prices rose around 10% annually, and they continue to be dangerously high. To address inflation, Russia’s central bank raised the benchmark interest rate to above 20%, but because inflation is caused by the government’s fiscal policy, quantitative tightening has had little effect.

The result has been a dual-economy: while military expenditures create a wartime boom, the civilian economy has been battered; high interest rates have lowered business confidence and investment, creating a glut of credit available for non-military enterprises and lowering civilian productivity. Meanwhile, high pay in the military has led to high wage growth, creating intense competition in the labor market. Both forces have hurt businesses as they are unable to compete with high prices and the army’s generous bonuses. And when factoring the impact of sanctions and a weakening ruble, imports have also been made more expensive, further harming the civilian economy.

Accordingly, the Russian wartime economy has succeeded at the expense of the civilian economy. Current and future Russian GDP growth, therefore, is largely artificial and depends on continued military expenditures.

What do these facts mean for Russia?

Long term, Russia was already facing an acute demographic problem before Putin’s war. The high number of Russian casualties will mean this crisis will become more profound, affecting the future tax base. Historically, pension reform has been the source of internal dissent within Russia, so this demographic situation could well amplify future internal instability.

In the immediate future, high interest rates will be a source of concern in the Russian banking system. As reported by Bloomberg, many corporate and private clients have been unable to pay their debts to Russian banks. If these trends continue, a debt crisis in the Russian banking sector will be in the offing, and if a credit crunch occurs in the next 12 months, it will exacerbate the negative outlook. An intensification of western financial sanctions would make this already bad situation worse, explaining why Russia’s Economy Minister, Maxim Reshetnikov, recently said that Russia is “on the verge of slipping into a recession.”

High oil prices could cushion the blow, especially as Russian government spending on social services grows to allay rising prices. Paradoxically, however, the Iran-Israel War led to a decline in oil prices, and as global economic confidence has declined, the price of oil has also gone down. This means the Kremlin has no sure way of alleviating the situation absent dramatic changes in the oil market.

This reality should give the Kremlin pause. Though Russia may not face imminent military or economic collapse, the best case scenario are mounting costs to service the war and a hit to Russian livelihoods across the board, with no sure sign of victory on the Ukrainian battlefield; the worst case scenario is a banking crisis that quickly spills over into the rest of the economy, potentially causing a broader economic and political crisis. And even if Beijing tries to bail Russia out economically––assuming it can and wants to––it will only further Russia’s dependent status towards China.

None of these outcomes bode well for Russia’s power projection capabilities or its influence.

To be sure, Russia retains some power given its military size and energy resource base. But as Armenia, Syria, and now Iran learned, Moscow’s ability to tangibly affect events abroad is limited, especially as Russia’s long term troubles deepen.

For any current or prospective Russian partner, then, the question now is clear: when the moment of crisis comes, will Putin show up? The answer, more often than not, will be no.

Lucas de Gamboa is a recent graduate from Columbia University, with a degree in Political Science. He was a Saltzman Student Scholar at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace and was co-president of Columbia's Alexander Hamilton Society chapter. He is also a research assistant at Columbia Law School and was a Hamilton National Defense Fellow.