Full record
MissgeopoliticsRussia will have 750,000 troops deployed in Ukraine by the end of May 2023.
A scored prediction by Peter Zeihan, made on .
Scored prediction
Missgeopolitics“they're going to have three quarters of a million troops in Ukraine by the end of May”
Russia will have 750,000 troops deployed in Ukraine by the end of May 2023.
- Made on
- 2023-02-09
- Outcome
- Miss
- Importance
- 4 / 5
- Effect on score
- -1.78
What counted as right
- Status
- resolved
- Settled on
- 2023-05-31
Credible open-source/government estimates put Russian troops deployed in/around Ukraine at approximately 750,000 by 2023-05-31.
Criterion (~750,000 Russian troops deployed in/around Ukraine by 2023-05-31) is clearly not met by credible open-source/government estimates: ~320,000 (Ukrainian intel, Feb 2023) to ~360,000-410,000 (RUSI/OOB, start-of-2023 to June 2023). Even Putin's later end-2023 self-report of '600,000+' postdates the deadline and is below 750,000. resolved_on = deadline 2023-05-31. Did NOT assign outcome value.
Sources
Peter Zeihan || The Ukraine War Is Just Getting Started
YouTube ·
Evidence of what happened
Ukrainian military intelligence estimated in February 2023 that ~320,000 Russian soldiers were inside Ukraine — roughly the size of Putin's Sept 2022 partial mobilization (~300,000 mobilized), and far below 750,000.
RUSI / order-of-battle analysis: Russian forces in Ukraine numbered roughly 360,000 at the start of 2023 and rose to about 410,000 by the start of the June 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive — i.e. ~400,000 around end-May 2023, well short of 750,000. (The ~470,000 figure was reached only by the start of 2024.)
Putin's own December 2023 claim was that 'over 600,000' Russian servicemen were in the Ukraine zone — and that was end-2023, materially after the May 2023 deadline; even that higher, later, self-reported number is below 750,000.
Corrections
No public corrections.
Effect on the score
-1.78- How sure they sounded
- 85%
- Outcome
- Miss
- Importance
- 4 / 5
This page shows the scored prediction as published; the site doesn't recompute or adjust the score.
Where this came from
Russia will have 750,000 troops deployed in Ukraine by the…- Methodology version
- v1.0.0
- Last computed
- August 2, 2026
- Made on
- 2023-02-09
How this profile was built
Scored by independent judges
Predictions gathered and sourced
Independently verified against sources