Legacy

Vladimir Putin will go down in international history as a madman, a cruel despot responsible for the death of tens of thousands of Ukrainians and most likely just as many of his own troops, in a criminal war of terror fought with gross incompetence for no reason.

However, Putin is no longer aiming for international respect. He lost that the minute he marched on Ukraine, and he knows that. He is now desperately trying to cling to power and remain relevant within Russia. The question is whether he can keep his own population from seeing through his ever more transparent and desperate lies. For decades, the Russian army has been dismantled by neglect, incompetence and rampant corruption, to the point where it has serious trouble with performing its intended function. It was utterly foolish of Putin to order such an ineffective and broken army to invade a neighboring country which has strong connections to the democratic world and a significant capacity to defend itself.

Even in Russian history books, Putin may well be remembered as a lunatic, the person who set Russia's international relations back to the Cold War era, one who wasted the sorry remains of the Russian army on a war doomed to failure, and all for his own selfish purposes.

It's beyond me to make a guess whether Putin's efforts to save face within Russia  will pay off, but I'm hoping they fail miserably for everyone to see.

No Proof

There is no proof that Iran has supplied Russia with attack drones of the model Shaheed-136. This is the official word from the Iranian government, and we should definitely trust a regime that has a history of lying through their teeth, killing their own people and sponsoring international terrorism.

Russia has trouble producing enough conventional weapons, as indicated by Putin's recent order that the Russian war industry must strengthen their efforts and increase production, but they obviously made thousands of drones themselves. The drones are identical in design to the Iranian Shaheed-136, down to the last nut and bolt, but Russia has obviously made a huge effort to copy them rather than simply buy them from a country that has voiced its support for Russia's illegal aggression towards a friendly neighbour.

I mean, the drones have Cyrillic letters on them, right? It's not as if they could have been repainted or anything. A paint job is far beyond the capabilities of the Iranians or Russians. No, these are Russian made, through and through, produced by magical means by a Russian industry that struggles to produce weapons even of their own 1970's design, and the Iranians had absolutely nothing to do with these drones. Because they said so.

Own goal

A Russian fighter jet crashed into a residential building in the Russian city of Jejsk, killing more than a dozen civilians, some of which were children.

With this single accident, Russia killed about as many of their own as the number of Ukrainians they killed with their entire drone attack on Ukraine yesterday.

It's disrespectful to use a sports metaphor to describe what is happening in a war, but it's hard not to call this an "own goal" for Russia. Putin's supposedly mighty army is not in any shape to fight, and their mistakes are getting ever more serious, and more obvious for everyone to see. Let's hope people in Russia are watching as well.

Stand-off

In that corner, we have Russia, with support from Iran, Belarus, Syria and... sorry, what? Nicaragua and North Korea, hmmm, okay, whatever. And in this other corner we have... pretty much the rest of the world. China and India seem to be a little uneasy about choosing sides, but they're definitely not eager to chum up in Russia's corner, that's for sure. Now, this is going to be a... no, who am I kidding, it's not going to be an interesting fight. This is just stupid.

Putin is using a badly trained, outdated, mismanaged, corrupt and looted army to take on the rest of the world. It can only end in ruin for him. The question is how many people have to die for his impossible dream of restoring the Soviet Union before he is stopped.

London V2

The morning news brought reports of drone attacks on Kyiv, the day after Putin said that there is "currenly no reason" for any further attacks on the city. I suppose "currently" meant "this very second".

The drones have been reliably identified as Iranian Shaheed-137 "kamikaze drones", even though the Iranian government, another oppressive regime on its last legs, categorically denies supplying Russia with weapons, all the while continuing to do so.

These drone attacks are frightening, but ineffective. They can be compared to the V-1 and V-2 strikes at London during WW2: a last ditch attempt by a failing war machine to make any kind of impact at all by random attacks on civilians far behind the frontlines. Any human lives lost are a tragedy, but just as the Brits were only strengthened in their resolve by Hitler's terror bombings, the Ukrainians will be as well.

Flailing, and failing

Russia's attack in the past couple of days, targeting civilians in Ukraine, is reported to have used more than 80 missiles. Long range missiles are a scarce resource for Russia, and using them to attack civilians in terror bombings is extremely wasteful for an army that is already running low on pretty much everything.

Add to this the meager outcome: reports say that about half of the missiles were shot down by air defense, and the official count from the Ukrainian government is that 19 people were killed in the attacks. That number could increase in the aftermath, and of course even the death of "only" 19 people is absolutely awful, but the fact remains that attacks like this are absolute failures. If we do some horrible math involving human lives, it took an average of four missiles to kill one random civilian.

Putin is throwing away his last resources to try to scare people by random acts of terror. It is not working.

Bottom of the Barrel

Yesterday, Russian forces aimed anti-aircraft missiles into a residential area in Mykolaiv. Now, these terror attacks on civilians are of course horrible and indefensible, but air defense charges are expensive weapons that have very little effect on buildings, and the attack is basically nothing more than a desperate last ditch attempt to make any use at all of whatever ammunition they have left.

Wasting air defense missiles on an attack like this is a clear sign of combat units being close to just imploding from a lack of supplies and a dysfunctional command structure. Russia's army is basically being run over by the Ukrainian counterattack, and because of their commanders' refusal to fall back, their troops end up fleeing in panic while taking heavy losses. The only response they have is to kill more civilians in random, ineffective terror bombings.

What little is left of Putin's neglected, depleted, exhausted and unmotivated fighting force appears to be precariously close to the point where it just stops working altogether, and they may in fact be in for a total breakdown and a humiliating defeat before any reinforcements arrive.

Unhappy Birthday

Today, Vladimir Putin turns 70. He was congratulated only by two world leaders from outside of his small and shrinking circle of direct influence: Kim Jong-Un of North Korea and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega. That is not exactly the best and largest circle of international friends someone could wish for.

While Putin sits in his gilded Kremlin without friends, his stupid war on Ukraine is going wrong on all fronts. His depleted and exhausted army is failing to hold the line pretty much everywhere in the illegally annexed regions, and Ukrainian forces are cutting through them and sending them fleeing while retaking their territory at an encouraging speed.

On the home front, Putin's panic move to start a "partial" mobilisation of hundreds of thousands of people has been met with heavy criticism and sent Russian men fleeing the country in droves. Russian Forbes makes a credible estimate that as many as 700,000 people may have left Russia since the mobilisation was announced, and the exodus continues.

Here's wishing you a truly unhappy birthday, Putin. You deserve every bad thing coming your way.