Russia Is Ready Right Now - Larry Johnson

The Insider’s Judgment: Biography and Uncomfortable Truth

Larry Johnson is a former U.S. intelligence officer, CIA analyst, and counter-terrorism specialist with extensive experience inside America’s national security establishment.

During the 1990s, he served with the CIA and later at the U.S. State Department, where he worked on terrorism analysis, asymmetric warfare, and international security operations. His career unfolded during the formative years of America’s post–Cold War interventionist strategy.

After leaving government service, Johnson became a prominent and outspoken critic of U.S. foreign and military policy. He is now known for his uncompromising assessments of Western power, focusing on the structural limits of NATO, the realities of modern industrial warfare, and the strategic consequences of prolonged proxy conflicts—particularly in Ukraine.

Johnson’s analysis is characterized by a data-driven, operational perspective, emphasizing manpower, production capacity, logistics, and sustainability over political messaging. He consistently challenges mainstream narratives about Russia’s weakness and highlights the long-term risks of escalation.

Larry Johnson, former CIA intelligence analyst and State Department counterterrorism official, dismantles the military logic of the Ukraine war and explains why Europe’s escalation strategy is heading toward catastrophe - trapped between manufactured optimism about Ukrainian battlefield performance, a structural misreading of Russian military capacity, and a political class so deep inside its own narrative that it cannot find the exit.

Putin's Escalation Ladder - From Odessa to Sinking NATO-Flagged Ships

Putin has sketched a public escalation ladder ending with sinking NATO-flagged ships - and the evidence points directly to Paris authorizing the Senegal drone strike.

Glenn Diesen opens with the central question of the hour: the attacks on Russian ships - most recently off the coast of Senegal - mark a dangerous new threshold. Are there calculations at work here that reach far beyond what is happening inside Ukraine?

Larry Johnson’s analysis leaves no room for ambiguity: Putin has publicly defined an escalation ladder, step by step, in front of cameras. It starts with the destruction of Ukrainian ports in Odessa and along the Black Sea, continues with a full embargo or naval blockade of those ports, and terminates with sinking ships that enter or exit those waters - regardless of whose flag they are flying.

The attack in Turkey’s exclusive economic zone on two empty oil tankers destined to carry Kazakhstani oil was explosive on multiple levels. Erdogan was furious. The leader of Kazakhstan was outraged. These are not small consequences.

Ukraine - or whoever authorized the strike - managed in a single operation to alienate two nations that had been maintaining at least a posture of neutrality toward the conflict. Instead of preserving that neutrality, the West pushed them closer to the Russian side. Johnson calls this a strategic own goal of spectacular proportions.

The new reality taking shape at sea:

• Putin’s escalation ladder is now publicly stated - no creative reinterpretation is possible
• The Senegal attack points to direct French involvement - a NATO member attacking Russian commercial shipping
• Turkey and Kazakhstan were simultaneously antagonized - two potential neutrals pushed toward Moscow
• The West’s foundational assumption - that Russia depends on energy exports to survive - is structurally false

Johnson presses the question that nobody in Western policy circles seems willing to engage honestly: what did they actually expect? The assumption that Russia’s economy would collapse without oil and gas revenue is not just wrong - it has been demonstrably wrong for years. The share of energy revenues in Russia’s GDP has been declining, not rising.

Russia has diversified. Johnson has been to Russia and walked through its streets. He knows from direct observation that the country is not under economic siege. But this flawed assumption continues to drive the strategy, which is why the strategy keeps failing, and why it will keep failing.

Sinking Ships Does Not Collapse Economies - The Lesson the West Refuses to Learn

Germany thought sinking ships would collapse Britain. It did not. The generals proposing missile strikes on Russian supply depots are making the same category of error.

Johnson reaches back into military history with a case study that ought to be required reading for every retired general currently making the television rounds. In the first two years of the Second World War from the Western perspective - Britain and the United States - an enormous number of merchant ships were being sunk daily.

The German strategic premise was simple and seemingly logical: destroy the supply chain, and Britain cannot continue. It did not work. The Allies absorbed the losses, adapted their convoy systems, expanded production, and ultimately outbuilt the damage faster than Germany could inflict it.

Today the same logic is being applied to Russia, and the same failure is unfolding in slow motion. Johnson names names without ceremony: Ben Hodges, David Petraeus, Admiral Stavridis. He describes them collectively as people who are not good analysts - and he says this as someone who spent years inside the intelligence community doing exactly what they claim to be doing now.

Their argument is essentially: give Ukraine long-range missiles, strike Russian supply depots and logistics hubs deep inside Russian territory, and Russia will be forced to collapse. Johnson will not accept this framing for a moment.

The impossible logic behind Western strike proposals:

• Ukraine cannot match Russia’s missile capacity - NATO stockpiles were emptied attempting to sustain current operations
• The idea of a single decisive target whose destruction triggers Russian collapse has no historical precedent
• Russia has been absorbing Western-supplied strikes for years and accelerating its offensive simultaneously
• The generals making these proposals presided over defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan - their credibility is not self-evident

What the Western commentariat dismisses as Russian slowness or incompetence is neither. It is deliberate operational calculation. Russia is not fighting to seize territory as a metric of success. It is fighting to destroy the Ukrainian military as a coherent fighting force. Territory is a byproduct. The actual measure - Ukrainian casualties, equipment losses, manpower exhaustion, morale collapse - is the one that matters, and on that measure, the trajectory has been clear for a long time to anyone willing to look at it honestly.

November 2025 - Russia Takes More Territory in Thirty Days Than Israel Has in Gaza in Two Years

In one month, Russia took 700 square kilometers - twice the size of Gaza, which Israel with full air superiority has been unable to subdue in two years.

Johnson presents the number without theatrical buildup because it needs no theatrical buildup: in November 2025, Russia captured 700 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory. To make that tangible, he reaches for a comparison that Western audiences can parse. The Gaza Strip is approximately 350 square kilometers.

The Israeli military - fully equipped, with complete air superiority, armored formations, advanced artillery, the most sophisticated intelligence apparatus in the region, and no shortage of ammunition - has been unable to bring that 350 square kilometers under full control in over two years of intensive combat.

The Israeli military’s opponent in Gaza has rifles, pistols, some rudimentary mortars, improvised explosive devices, and tunnel systems. They have no artillery. No tanks. No armored vehicles. No air support. No satellite intelligence. No Western logistics chain feeding them ammunition and spare parts.

And still the Israeli army, one of the most capable conventional forces in the world, has not been able to fully subdue an area half the size of what Russia took in thirty days. Russia’s opponent in Ukraine has had tanks, artillery, armored vehicles, Western air defense systems, NATO intelligence support, satellite targeting data, and the full logistical weight of the collective West behind it.

What the battlefield numbers actually show:

• Ukrainian military equipment has been exhausted - the collective NATO stockpile was depleted trying to keep Ukraine in the fight
• Desertions are rising, morale is deteriorating, and conscripts are being pulled off the street with minimal training
• The well-fortified defensive positions Ukraine built in 2022 and 2023 now sit behind Russian lines
• Russia today is quantitatively and qualitatively stronger than at the start of the operation in February 2022

Johnson extends the comparison with deliberate bluntness. The United States invaded Iraq in 2003 with 120,000 soldiers - the full weight of the world’s most powerful military - and failed. Failed to pacify the country, failed to suppress the insurgency, failed to leave behind a stable state.

In Afghanistan the same military spent twenty-one years before acknowledging that it could not win. Russia is not in that position. Russia is advancing on multiple axes simultaneously, facing a degraded opponent with diminishing manpower and equipment, and doing so without full mobilization. The comparison does not favor the people who keep calling Russia weak.

The Methodical Logic - How Russia Built an Army for Eight Simultaneous Axes

Russia did not move slowly because it was weak - it was building the force structure required to fight on eight axes at once. The Western commentariat never understood the difference.

Diesen confronts Johnson with the argument Western audiences hear most often: at the pace Russia has been moving, it would take decades to reach the Dnieper River. This framing, Johnson responds, is either profoundly stupid or deliberately dishonest, and in the case of experienced military analysts, he suspects dishonesty more than ignorance. The logic it ignores is elementary. This is a war of attrition.

The objective is not to seize a city and declare victory. The objective is to destroy the opposing military’s capacity to resist. In that context, asking why Russia has not stormed every fortified position at maximum speed is like asking why a boxer does not throw every punch at full force in round one.

The structural explanation for Russia’s earlier operational tempo is not complicated once the numbers are understood. At the outset of the Special Military Operation in February 2022, Russia’s total ground forces were roughly 450,000 to 500,000 active-duty troops. Of those, Russia deployed between 125,000 and 180,000 into Ukraine.

The operation was designed to generate enough military pressure to force Kyiv to negotiate - not to conquer the entire country. It achieved its objective. A tentative peace agreement was reached at Istanbul. And then Joe Biden and Boris Johnson intervened. They traveled to Kyiv and compelled Zelensky to walk away from the deal.

The force build-up that the West called weakness:

• September 2022: 320,000 reservists mobilized plus increased conscription and new contract soldiers
• Training timelines are not negotiable - three to six months minimum for new soldiers to reach combat readiness
• Integration into veteran units requires rotations and unit restructuring - not a fast process
• Russia had to ensure it had sufficient manpower to hold territory taken, not just to advance

By 2025, between 750,000 and 800,000 Russian soldiers are deployed on Ukrainian territory, conducting at least eight simultaneous axes of attack. The arithmetic is straightforward: Ukraine does not have enough manpower left to defend against eight separate pressure points at the same time. It has to choose where to concentrate its diminishing forces. Every choice to defend one axis leaves another axis weakened.

This is not a dramatic turning point - it is the predictable outcome of the force-building process that Russia began in late 2022, executed patiently, and is now deploying at scale. The people calling this slow progress have simply been watching the wrong metrics.

Minsk Was Admitted Fraud - Europe Is Attempting the Same Deception for the Third Time

Merkel and Hollande admitted Minsk was a deception. Russia will not fall for the same template a third time - and the 800,000 soldier demand is designed to block any genuine settlement.

Johnson reconstructs the Minsk history with the precision of someone who finds the public amnesia on this topic genuinely astounding. The battle of Debaltseve in early 2015 had encircled a significant Ukrainian force. The situation was militarily desperate. Angela Merkel flew to Moscow specifically to persuade Putin to support the Minsk II framework, allowing the surrounded Ukrainian troops to be extracted or at least to cease being annihilated.

Putin agreed. The agreement was signed in February. Six days later, the battle of Debaltseve ended. The agreement was never meaningfully implemented by Kyiv.

Years later, both Merkel and former French President Francois Hollande - who had co-signed the Minsk II agreement as a guarantor - publicly stated that the agreement was never intended as a genuine peace settlement. It was designed to buy time for Ukraine to rearm, rebuild its military, and prepare for a future confrontation with Russia.

Johnson does not express surprise at this admission. He expresses something closer to grim recognition. But he notes that Putin has expressed what Johnson characterizes as clear acknowledgment that he should not have trusted the West in 2015, and that he trusted them when he should not have.

The Minsk III template and why Russia will not accept it:

• Merkel and Hollande admitted Minsk II was a tactical deception - the record is public and undeniable
• Putin acknowledged he made a mistake trusting the West in 2015 - he has stated this explicitly
• The 800,000 soldier demand exceeds the combined active-duty forces of France, Germany, and the UK
• Any ceasefire without binding security guarantees is structurally identical to Minsk - a pause for Ukrainian rearmament

Johnson returns to the Charlie Brown metaphor with appreciation for its precision. Lucy holds the football. Charlie Brown runs toward it. Lucy pulls it away. He falls on his back. She has done this to him before. She is asking him to try again. Putin is not Charlie Brown. Johnson is categorical on this point.

Russia’s demands have been stated clearly, publicly, and consistently since before the first shot was fired: no NATO membership or equivalent arrangements for Ukraine, reduction of Ukrainian armed forces to a non-threatening level, NATO withdrawal from Ukrainian territory. These are not opening positions in a negotiation. They are the requirements for any settlement Russia would sign.

Russia’s Turn East Is Not a Negotiating Signal - It Is a Closed Door and an Irreversible Contract

The Power of Siberia II pipeline is not a signal to Brussels. It is a thirty-year contract. The reorientation is done.

Diesen introduces a distinction that cuts through one of the most persistent misconceptions in Western analysis of Russian foreign policy: the continued insistence on reading Russia’s engagement with China, India, and other non-Western partners as tactical leverage - a message to the West that Russia has options, designed to improve Moscow’s negotiating position for an eventual return to the Western fold. This reading was plausible before 2014. It is not plausible now, and treating it as though it is distorts every subsequent Western policy calculation.

When Putin visits India, Western commentators reach reflexively for the frame: he is sending a signal. He is demonstrating that he has partners. He is building leverage for negotiations. Diesen was on Indian television the morning of this conversation and found himself having to correct this frame explicitly.

The Indians, he notes, are also still partially trapped in it - still asking whether Putin’s Eastern visits are ultimately about sending messages to Washington or Brussels. The answer, Diesen argues, is no. Russia has been through that calculation and come out the other side.

Why the Eastern turn is structural rather than tactical:

• Power of Siberia II is a thirty-year contract - not a diplomatic maneuver subject to reversal
• Before 2014, Russia traded its China relationship for European integration prospects. That calculation ended with Maidan
• India’s role is to prevent full Russian dependence on China - diversification, not alignment with a new bloc
• The formula of Russia-India balancing against US-China bipolarity is the foundation of multipolar architecture

Johnson adds the military dimension to this analysis. Russia’s preferred outcome, he emphasizes, remains a negotiated settlement. Putin has said this clearly and consistently. Russia does not want to occupy and administer large additional swaths of Ukrainian territory. But if negotiations fail - if the West keeps escalating, keeps introducing new weapons, keeps blocking any diplomatic pathway.

Russia’s Plan B is to take the key sectors that would prevent Ukraine from reconstituting as a military threat: Odessa, Transnistria, Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Sumy, Poltava. Everything east of the Dnieper River and potentially more. Russia’s future orientation is East. But Russia will deal with Ukraine completely before moving on.

The Corruption Scandal Serves American Policy - Zelensky Is Already a Political Corpse

Of 360 billion dollars in Ukraine aid, between 50 and 100 billion has been siphoned off - and when the investigations conclude, both parties will be implicated.

Johnson’s reading of the corruption leak around the 100 million dollar scandal is not moral outrage. He spent years inside the intelligence community. He understands how these mechanisms work. His reading is strategic: the leak is a policy tool. When the narrative of Ukrainian corruption begins circulating in American media and congressional testimony, it lets the air out of the balloon that has sustained public support for the entire enterprise.

The balloon being deflated is: Ukraine is fighting for freedom and democracy and the American way of life. Once corruption is the dominant frame, that balloon deflates, and the political cost of continued support rises.

The numbers Johnson cites are staggering even by Washington standards. Total aid committed to Ukraine is in the range of 360 billion dollars. Estimates of the amount that has been misappropriated - siphoned through corrupt procurement, inflated contracts, direct transfers to private accounts - run between 50 and 100 billion dollars.

Johnson does not present these figures as firm accounting but as the range that investigators working the case privately believe to be accurate. And when those investigations are finalized, Johnson is categorical: members of the United States Congress - from both the House and the Senate, from both parties - will be identified as recipients.

The succession problem and why it matters for any settlement:

• Russia has stated it will not negotiate with an illegitimate president - Zelensky’s term expired and no elections have been held
• Even Zaluzhny would be illegitimate unless installed through the constitutional succession process
• The Ukrainian constitution specifies a clear line of succession - only that pathway would be recognized by Moscow
• Russia’s core demands are unchanged regardless of who leads Ukraine: no NATO, reduced forces, NATO withdrawal

Johnson reads the Trump administration signals with the trained eye of a former insider. Witkoff and Kushner met with Putin - not to explore options, but to have Russia’s position explained to them clearly so they could relay it to Trump. Rubio was absent from the foreign ministers’ conference - the first time in the history of that gathering that a sitting US Secretary of State has not attended.

Reports from former Bush administration defense official Steve Bryan indicate that all aid already in the pipeline for Ukraine has been cut off. Trump is distancing himself. The political infrastructure sustaining the war is being dismantled piece by piece.

Five Million Reservists on Standby - Russia Has Not Even Begun to Mobilize

In Russia, restaurants are full and shops are open. No rationing, no war economy. Five to ten million reservists are available. Russia has called none of them.

Johnson introduces a perspective that is not just underreported in Western coverage - it is actively suppressed, because its implications are too uncomfortable to integrate into the prevailing narrative. Stanislav Karpivnik, known by the call sign Stas, was a former US military officer who had risen to the point of being on the verge of promotion to major when he resigned his commission and returned to Russia.

He now provides military analysis from inside the Russian system. His estimate of available Russian reservists is at least five million. Possibly ten million. Russia has mobilized none of them.

This is not an abstract point. Johnson asks his audience to think back to what wartime looks like in a country that is genuinely under existential pressure. The United States in World War II: you could not buy a new car. Food was rationed. Rubber was rationed. Steel was rationed. Every industrial resource was subordinated to military production through mandatory controls.

The society was visibly organized around the war effort. Johnson has observed Russia during this conflict. He has spoken with people who have been there recently. The experience of ordinary life in Russia does not resemble that picture in any meaningful way.

What Russia’s non-mobilization status reveals:

• Five to ten million trained reservists available - none called up beyond the initial 2022 mobilization
• Russian industrial production of key military systems has met and exceeded its wartime targets
• Consumer life continues normally - no ration cards, no civilian production controls, no emergency economic measures
• Russia’s 1.5 million active deployed troops represent roughly three times the size of the entire US Army

The technological dimension compounds this. Johnson states flatly that Russia has now surpassed the United States in several critical areas of military technology - and has done so while fighting a major land war simultaneously. The Avangard hypersonic missile is not a prototype or a demonstration system. It is in serial production. The quantities are sufficient to matter in a major conflict.

The reason it has not been used in Ukraine is not that Russia is holding back its best systems out of caution. It is that Ukraine does not require Avangard. Avangard is the reserve for a scenario involving direct conflict with NATO. Russia wants the West to understand that this capability exists and is operational.

The Doctrine of Managed Ukrainian Defeat - How Washington Is Offloading the War onto Europe

The United States is not losing the war - it is offloading it. The costs, the responsibility, and eventually the blame are being transferred to European capitals.

Diesen raises a point that sits at the uncomfortable intersection of strategy and cynicism: if you set aside moral considerations entirely and evaluate what the United States is actually doing versus what it says it is doing, the picture is coherent and even rational. The war in Ukraine has not achieved its stated objectives - Russia was not weakened, NATO was not strengthened in the way its architects envisioned, and the Ukrainian military has been ground down rather than serving as the instrument of Russian defeat. Washington recognizes this. But recognizing failure and absorbing the political consequences of failure are two different things.

The managed exit strategy, as Diesen articulates it, involves several simultaneous moves. First, transfer the financial burden of sustaining the war to European governments, which are already under economic strain and politically vulnerable. Second, transfer the military responsibility by pushing European countries to commit their own forces rather than relying on American equipment and logistics.

Third, use the leverage created by European desperation for continued American security commitments to extract economic concessions - energy contracts, investment commitments, trade arrangements - that benefit the American economy. Fourth, when the proxy eventually collapses, ensure that European governments bear the political liability.

The mechanics of transferring the Ukraine burden to Europe:

• European countries are being pressed to commit troops - transferring military responsibility for what is now clearly a failing effort
• Energy contracts and investment commitments extracted from European capitals represent direct economic transfer to the US
• When the proxy collapses, European political leaders - not Washington - will face their publics
• Trump’s management of the exit is cruder than his predecessors would have been - but the direction is the same

The von der Leyen episode at Trump’s golf course is Johnson’s exhibit A for the current state of the relationship. European leaders understand that the deal being struck is economically bad for Europe. They understand that committing hundreds of billions to American energy purchases and American investment at the cost of domestic employment and economic development is not in their populations’ interests.

They are doing it anyway because they believe the alternative - losing the American security guarantee entirely - is worse. Johnson and Diesen question whether this calculus is actually correct. But they observe that European leaders are not in a position to question it publicly without triggering the panic they are trying to prevent.

The Historical Record of American Military Defeats - Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine

Vietnam. Afghanistan. Iraq. Ukraine. Four wars, four losses, each against adversaries with a fraction of American power. Russia and China got richer through every one of them.

Johnson does not spare his own country. He spent years inside the CIA doing exactly the kind of analysis that was supposed to prevent the failures he is now cataloging. He watched from inside the system as institutional pressures, political incentives, and career considerations shaped analytical conclusions in ways that served current policy rather than honest assessment.

His willingness to say plainly what the record shows - that the United States has lost four major conflicts since 1965 against adversaries vastly outmatched in nominal military and economic terms - comes from the experience of watching that record accumulate in real time.

Vietnam. A guerrilla insurgency supported by a neighboring communist state. The United States had complete air superiority, overwhelming firepower superiority, a massive logistical advantage, and a South Vietnamese government that it was supporting with everything it had. It lost. The withdrawal happened on the adversary’s terms. Afghanistan.

A rural insurgency with no air force, limited heavy weapons, and a medieval-era governance framework. The United States and NATO spent twenty years, trillions of dollars, and thousands of lives before withdrawing on the adversary’s terms. Iraq. A country that had been hollowed out by sanctions for a decade before the invasion. The United States overthrew the government in weeks - and then spent two decades unable to impose a stable order.

The catalog of American military failures since 1965:

• Vietnam: full military and logistical superiority, lost on the adversary’s terms after 20 years
• Afghanistan: 21 years, the largest military alliance in history, withdrew on Taliban terms
• Iraq: overthrew the government in weeks, spent 20 years unable to stabilize the result
• Ukraine: Russia stronger, China stronger, American credibility reduced, European allies economically weakened

Johnson’s point is not to celebrate American defeats. It is to establish that the pattern of overconfidence about American military leverage - the assumption that superior firepower and economic weight will eventually produce the desired political outcome - has been consistently wrong for sixty years. The people making policy on Ukraine in 2021 and 2022 had access to this record.

They chose to believe this time would be different. It was not different. And the price of the failure, as in the previous cases, is being distributed unequally - with the populations of the client states and the allied nations bearing the largest portion of the cost.

Tripled the US Army, No Full Mobilization - And the Technology Gap Has Reversed

Russia has deployed roughly 1.5 million soldiers - three times the US Army’s active strength - through one mobilization wave and normal recruitment, without converting its economy to a war footing.

Johnson returns to the structural military comparison that the Western commentary refuses to engage honestly. At the outset of the Special Military Operation, Russia’s ground forces were in the range of 450,000 to 500,000 active-duty troops - a figure roughly comparable to, or somewhat smaller than, the US Army’s active-duty strength.

The scale of what has happened since is not adequately captured in most Western coverage. Through one formal mobilization wave in autumn 2022 plus ongoing conscription and contract recruitment, Russia has expanded its deployed forces to somewhere between 1.4 and 1.5 million soldiers currently operating inside Ukrainian territory or in direct support of that operation.

The United States Army has approximately 450,000 active-duty soldiers. The comparison is not between the US Army and the entirety of Russian military capacity - it is between the US Army and what Russia has deployed for a single regional conflict without full national mobilization. Johnson lets this number speak. Then he adds the technology dimension.

Russia entered the 2022 conflict with military technology that Western analysts correctly identified as inferior to NATO standards in several critical areas - particularly in precision munitions, drone warfare integration, and battlefield digital communication. Those gaps have closed. Some have reversed.

The military balance that Western coverage avoids stating clearly:

• Russia has 1.5 million soldiers deployed without full national mobilization - three times the US Army’s active-duty strength
• Avangard hypersonic missiles are in serial production - not prototype demonstrations but operational weapons
• Four years of high-intensity combat experience has driven adaptation across drone warfare, electronic warfare, and combined arms
• The technology gap that existed in 2022 has narrowed significantly and reversed in some domains

Johnson closes this section with a point about the Avangard that deserves to sit clearly in the record. The weapon is in serial production. This means there are sufficient quantities to matter in a major conflict scenario. The reason Russia has not used Avangard in Ukraine is not restraint born of technical limitation. Ukraine does not require it.

A conventional artillery and drone campaign is sufficient for the conflict as it currently exists. Avangard is in the category of capabilities reserved for a scenario in which Russia is in direct conflict with NATO member states - and Russia wants the people who would make decisions in such a scenario to know clearly that this capability is operational, available, and would be used.

Thank You, Larry Johnson.

Sources & Geopolitical References

Substack – US-Edition

This article is also available as a English-language edition on Substack:

    Russia Is Ready Right Now - Larry Johnson

Original conversation (video)

YouTube-Interview:

    Russia is “Ready Right Now” for War if Europe Attacks

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