What best descibes Russians defeat in the in the russo-japanese war?

Answer 1

The Russian army was gaining strength during the land war phase, and had the war continued much longer, the Russians may very well had won the war.

However:

The Russian navy was losing strength (2 out of 3 battleship fleets destroyed), and if they had chosen (or been able) to deploy it's last remaining battleship force (the Black Sea Fleet), there was an excellent chance that that naval force would be destroyed also.

This being the case:

The Russians would have definitely been a land-locked force depending solely upon their newly built "Trans-Siberian Railway" to ship men & material to the far eastern front. But, the whole purpose of the war was for Russia to have a navy with warm water seaports (ice free). Which in turn would allow them to "project" it's military where ever it wanted to (like Britain, France, and the US). Consequently, "winning the war" while "not having any navy left", would not be much of a victory.

Russia's defeat in the war can probably be best described as a "Gentlemen's negotiated settlement." Neither Russia nor Japan suffered devastating destruction (losses of cities and mass populations), nor did they lose their abilities to continue on (continue building for their futures...their factories were not destroyed). Neither nation totally lost their armed forces (Russia still had one battleship fleet remaining). Japan stayed...Russia left.

On the beneficial side for both parties: the Russian & Japanese armies learned some serious 20th century warfare (especially in the arena of machineguns); and the world got a new type of battleship out of it: HMS Dreadnaught.