Although Vladimir Putin still insists on calling his war a "special military operation," as the aggression against Ukraine enters its fourth year, the symptoms of a war of attrition are increasingly obvious. The twin hobgoblins of long wars -- a beggared treasury and rising prices-are rearing their heads.

Military campaigns tend to turn on a single decisive battle -- Marathon, Zama, Actium, Hastings, Poltava, Waterloo -- and victory stems from the commanders' competence and daring, soldiers' morale -- and lots of luck. Not so with wars of attrition. The longer they last, the greater the importance of the economic and financial resilience of the combatants. It is a hard test. World War I, to take a classic example, unleashed high inflation and bankrupted (or nearly so) Germany, Russia, France and Great Britain.

In the case of Putin's Russia, inflation gathered steam after Putin loosed a tsunami of rubles on the military-industrial complex and soldiers' pay and benefits. Larded with customarily huge overheads and kickbacks, state orders boosted salaries of millions. Between their regular pay and sign-up bonuses, a Russian private in Ukraine could earn 3.25 million rubles a year -- or over three times the average national salary.Entire impoverished villages have revived and thrived on death and injury benefits. Yet as the civilian industry lost tens of thousands of workers to much higher salaries in the military production sectors, to the draft and to the emigration of tens of thousands younger better educated men fleeing the draft, the overheated demand was unmet by supply and the prices began to rise.

Consumer goods are up 22 percent year-on-year, while the staples of Russia's poor -- who are almost half of Russia's population -- continue to surge: eggs are up by 33 percent since 2022and potatoes are almost twice as expensive compared to 2023. The Central Bank hiking the interest rate to 21 percent may have slowed down the pace of the inflation but failed to stem the prices. The ruble is down from 30 to the dollar in 2013, a year before the first invasion of Ukraine, to 92 today.

The Kremlin's daily war expenditures are estimated to be between $319 million and $384 million. The war already eats up over 40 percent of the budget and eight percent of GDP, and the main sources of the funding look less robust than before.

Russia's treasury is filled mostly by the profits of the export of five commodities: energy (oil and gas), minerals (coal, aluminum, ores), metals, and agricultural products (mostly grain). Although, with the exception of grain, their trade volumes were reduced by the West's sanctions, the Kremlin was lucky in that the prices of virtually all these goods shot up in 2020. To put it another way, until recently, Russia sold less for more. But the free lunch is about over. The prices came down sharply in the past two years and Russian economists predict "the reduction of profits on several key export categories" as early as this year.

With less money in, war expenditures rising, as they always do, and with no one lending the Kremlin money or buying its debt, least of all its "friends without limits" in Beijing, Putin was forced to resort to something he had always tried to avoid: raising taxes and raiding the national savings. The liquid portion of the piggy bank of the National Welfare Fund, where since 2008 the government has stored profits from oil sold above the planned prices, is already three quarters empty, from $117 billion in 2021 to $31 billion this past November.

Of course, the Kremlin will always find the money to finance the war. But barring a price spike in its principle export commodities, especially oil, burning through the national treasury while keeping social peace and militarized patriotism at home is bound to be increasingly difficult. Although vehemently denied by officials, the freezing of bank savings is suddenly bruited about. And, of course, there is always the temptation of printing money.

None of these and other desperate measures are in the cards today. Yet denying or ignoring the deepening shadow of the war of attrition over the Russian economy and society is becoming increasingly hard. As one of AEI's Greats, the economist Herb Stein, used to say, "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop."