Last Gasp

Russia is mounting a strong attack on Adiivka, trying to encircle the city. Reports even from within Russia indicate "limited success" and "significant losses", which is a devastating failure for Russia. Their resources are not infinite, and throwing away thousands of lives on one small objective, and not even achieving that, is a recipe for disaster.

We are now watching the death throes of the allegedly mighty Russian military forces, and Putin is not going to last. It remains to be seen what Russia after Putin will look like. Unless China drops their support, it seems unlikely that the nation will be demilitarized, like Germany and Japan after World War II, but their military forces will remain depleted for quite some time.

Beyond being defeated, Russia must face consequences for their aggression. Humiliation is not something to avoid, it is something to strive for. The rest of the world must stop tip-toeing around Russia. It's time to stop letting them pretend they are a key player in the international arena. They have nuclear weapons, if they are still working after decades of neglect, but nothing else, and we must take those away. Without a nuclear threat to throw at anyone who disagrees with them, Russia is nothing. They control a vast territory, but most of it is barren land with an arctic climate which is largely unpopulated. Their already smallish economy is shrinking, corruption is rampant, their industry is outdated and badly managed, and Russians with an education and some initiative are either looking to flee the country or have already left.

Russia is done, and we are done with Russia. Once this is over, perhaps they can redeem themselves over time, but first they must face reality: they are not important enough to be allowed to hold the world hostage to their criminal agenda.

Boo-fucking-hoo

Sergey Lavrov said to the press after his talk in the UN assembly that "the West is in fact waging a war against Russia, even though they are using Ukrainian hands and bodies".

Well, boo-fucking-hoo. Guess what? When Russia attacked Ukraine, you started an unprovoked war against a friendly, democratic neighbor who had plans to join the EU and take their rightful place among modern, democratic countries. When you try to grab an entire country which simply isn't yours, staging a massacre on defenseless civilians in the process, we take offense.

This is not an internal fight between Russia and a former Soviet state. Russia never moved on from autboritarian rule, but Ukraine did. You decided to make an attack on democracy, on freedom, on progress and on pretty much everything that we believe in. You made it personal. Now suck it up and stop whining. You started this fight, and now you are crying because you didn't understand that Ukraine had friends who would come to their aid? Well, tough luck, but that was your mistake.

No Reserves

Russia is relocating troops from the still active defense of Bachmut to the front around Zaporzhizhia, where their positions are being pummelled by the Ukrainian counter-offensive. This means that Russia has no reserves to fortify at points of attack and replenish their losses. Every soldier they have in active duty is already deployed along the front in the occupied part of Ukraine.

Along with Putin's recent desperate outreach to North Korea, which tells us he is running out of ammunition and has no friends left who can help him in a meaningful way, we are likely watching the last gasp from Russia in the conflict they started. That last gasp might last for a good while and cost far too many more lives, but we are at least getting closer to the end.

Opposite Day

A silly game for children is "opposite day", when you decide that you should say the opposite of what you mean.

This game is useful practice for interpreting anything that Vladimir Putin says these days. His recent comment on the F-16 deals that are being discussed with Ukraine was that

"Supplying F-16 aircraft to Ukraine will only prolong the conflict. The Ukrainian counter-offensive has not made any progress, and Ukrainian military is taking heavy losses. Once Ukraine's resources are depleted, they will want to start peace negotiations."

Translated to its opposite, it makes more sense and connects with reality:

"Supplying F-16 aircraft to Ukraine will end the conflict sooner. The Ukrainian counter-offensive has made significant progress, and the Russian military is taking heavy losses. Once Russia's resources are depleted, we will want to start peace negotiations."

Putin's statements are no longer in touch with reality. One wonders if he knows that, or if his staff and his own megalomania is shielding him from learning what deep shit he is in right now. The fact that he is meeting with Kim Jong-Un about buying weapons from North Korea, a piss poor country with very little real military strength, tells us that at some level he is aware of his dire situation, with ammunition supplies running out and production not being nearly enough to meet demands in his war of aggression.

If his deal goes through, North Korea's ammunition supplies will soon be depleted as well.

Bottom of the Barrel

From the look of it, Putin is now negotiating arms deals with North Korea. North. Korea. Let that sink in. A small, dirt poor country with a stupid megalomaniac anointed "dictator for life" by his father, mismanaging the country and making his people starve to finance a barely functional missile project and to acquire some very limited nuclear weapons capability at an astronomical cost.

If the mighty Russian army is seeking help from North Korea, they are really desperate. The political backlash will be irreparable, and the amount of actual help North Korea can possibly give is so small that it shouldn't even matter to a country many times larger. It is more clear than ever that Putin has almost nothing left: no weapons, no allies, no way out of the mess he put himself into, and no way back into the good graces of the international community. His reign of terror, greed and corruption may well be on its last legs, and he is not invulnerable. His end could come swiftly.

The Dictator is Naked

The fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen about the Emperor's new clothes is doubly relevant for describing Putin's Russia right now. The story, which you have probably read, is about a king surrounded by yes-men who is so detached from reality, and afraid to look weak in front of his court, that he gets fooled into parading the streets with no clothes on.

Vladimir Putin shielded himself from reality, and paid dearly for it when his insane attack on Ukraine failed miserably and showed everyone that his mighty army can't even win a war against a much smaller neighbor. The emperor is naked in his shame for everyone to see.

However, there is a second meaning to Putin being naked in front of the world. He is no longer able to pretend that he is the democratically elected ruler of a country that can be trusted to play with others in the international economy. The signs of a dictatorship is now showing very clearly: oppression, corruption, state-sponsored terrorism, propaganda composed of nothing but transparent lies, and an ever increasing isolation by pretty much every other country in the world.

The dictatorship of Vladimir Putin, previously disguised by a thin veil of respectability, is now just as naked as he is.

Collapse

Russia is in its death throes. They boast as if they were a force to be reckoned with, both as a player in international economy and in terms of their military power, often conflating the two in a thoroughly disturbing manner. The harsh truth is that they never had a particularly large economy in the first place, and what's left of it is rapidly imploding. What's more, their supposedly mighty army is taking a beating in the war they started against Ukraine, and their forces are now struggling to even make a dent along the new front they opened up in the northeast, in a desperate attempt to retake some initiative in their failed invasion of a friendly, democratic neighboring country.

Russians like to think of themselves as an actor in the global arena, but they are failing miserably to act even locally. Russia is rapidly making itself irrelevant, and the country is heading for decades of isolation as an international pariah, trusted by nobody. Good riddance.

"Just a Flesh Wound"

Putin's recent dismissal of Ukraine's success in their counter-offensive sounded like Monty Python's Black Knight claiming that a dismemberment was "just a flesh wound", and refusing to stand down. Saying that the massive supply of equipment from NATO countries "does not make any real difference" and is little more than a nuisance to the allegedly mighty Russian army is preposterous.

The truth is that Putin's war machine is heavily worn down and is rapidly running low on everything: soldiers, weapons, ammunition, leadership and motivation. They have already lost more tanks than they were estimated to have at the start of the war, and their overall losses are catastrophic.

The Russian air force has lost so many planes and helicopters that they no longer engage in the frontline fighting for fear of losing more planes and pilots than they can withstand. In a situation where their claimed air superiority would make a huge difference, Russian troops receive almost no air support.

With each attack wave from Ukraine, Russian artillery is being destroyed and captured, and ammunition depots are being attacked to deplete their supply of artillery grenades.

While Ukraine is undoubtedly taking significant losses, their fighting spirit remains high. Russian soldiers, who were already badly motivated and prone to deserting, are dying for what they see as a lost cause, and it's taking a huge toll on their morale.

Putin has lost the war. The question now is whether he will realise it, and admit it, and face the consequences, or if he has literally chosen to die on this hill.

Sack the Messenger

Ivan Popov, one of the few competent people in the higher ranks of the Russian military command, just lost his job after voicing his criticism of what Putin, Gerasimov and Sjojgu are doing.

When incompetent bosses start sacking underlings who dare call them out on their incompetence, the organisation is destroying itself. The Russian army is most likely not going to last for much longer -- not on the battlefield in Ukraine, and not even as a force to be reckoned with. Putin's stupid war has destroyed his country and made it impossible for Russia to maintain any kind of relevance in the international arena.

Kremlin Bobs

It's becoming more apparent with each passing day that Russia is struggling to defend against the Ukrainian counter-offensive. The intense fighting around Bakhmut, or rather the pile of rubble that used to be Bachmut, now has small patches of territory changing hands several times per day. While this might seem like a repeat of the pointless meat grinder in Verdun during World War I, with countless lives being sacrificed to gain control over a piece of land that has no real strategic value, it's actually more likely a deliberate tactic from Ukraine.

Ukraine's forces are better equipped, better trained, more mobile, and infinitely better motivated. As an engineer, I hesitate to use the word "infinitely", but in this case it's appropriate, because most Russian soldiers have exactly zero motivation, while Ukrainians are fighting to keep their country and their chosen, successful way of life. In fact, many Russian soldiers have less than zero motivation, and are actively looking for ways to get out of the battle without being shot as deserters.

The fighting near Bakhmut is killing people on both sides, and every death in a war is a tragedy, but right now there are far more Russian casualties than Ukrainian. This is also in part due to the rigid and outdated command structure of the Russian army, and incompetent leadership all the way from the top down. Russian lives are being cynically thrown away, with soldiers being treated as expendable cannon fodder. This will only work for a little while before their troops are depleted to the point of being dysfunctional. Reinforcements are no longer available, because Putin has thrown all his remaining resources into the war in Ukraine.

The Russian propaganda machine is working overtime to put a positive spin on current events along the front and on their home turf, but the messaging is becoming more desperate with each day, and the lies are becoming ever more transparent and easily debunked.

Russia's army is obviously taking a heavy beating, but they are standing with a bloody nose trying to claim that everything is fine, and that Russia has nothing to fear. Russia has everything to fear, and their desperation is clear. Medvedev's recent and completely unveiled threat of a nuclear attack is definitely not a sign of Russia doing okay.

Russia is collapsing, under external pressure and from internal strife. Any claims to the contrary are just desperate propaganda from a totalitarian regime that is losing its grip.

Backstabbing time!

Special Counsel Jack Smith's probe into Donald Trump's mishandling of classified documents has reached the indictment stage, and Trump is losing his mind over being held accountable for his traitorous actions.

Now, we are also seeing the end stages of his other probe into the election interference and attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. This is a much more complex case, with many co-conspirators, and the charges are potentially much more serious. Expect lots of cowardly henchmen who were fooled into conspiring with Trump to flip on him and on each other, and expect feces to be flung every which way.

As for myself, I'm stocking up on popcorn.

Inflation

Citing inflated numbers concerning losses in a war is a common way to paint a pretty picture for propaganda purposes. However, if the lies are too obvious, they tend to backfire. A classic and extreme example is "Baghdad Bob", Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, Information Minister for Saddam Hussein during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Even as American tanks were entering the capital around him, he appeared on live TV and claimed that the enemy was being slaughtered and that Iraq was triumphant on the battlefield.

Vladimir Putin is not far from channelling Baghdad Bob. He claimed that Ukraine has already lost 25 to 35 percent of the tanks sent by its Western allies. This is a heavily inflated number, to the point of being outright silly. The counterattack by Ukraine is still in its early stages, and they have not yet even engaged with more than a small fraction of the tanks available to them. Independent experts assess that the actual numbers are between 1 and 2 percent, which would be a perfectly acceptable and calculated loss.

Ukraine might have engaged 5 percent of their tanks in their initial wide and probing attacks along the entire front, and they might possibly have lost 25 percent of those, but Putin's claim is a desperate overreach in an attempt to deceive and keep up appearances for a little while longer. In his most recent public address, he said nothing about his ongoing war against Ukraine, which is a certain sign that it's all going terribly wrong for him.

Reports of Russian troops holding their ground and putting up a fierce fight are probably true, but other reports of untrained and unmotivated troops abandoning their positions and fleeing in panic are probably also true. The Russian front in Ukraine is not well defended everywhere, and the initial attack from Ukraine is very obviously designed to probe the Russian fortifications all along the front and find the soft spots where the full force of their attack brigades will be most effective. Ukraine has around 60,000 well trained and highly motivated soldiers with a large supply of weaponry, lying in wait and ready to strike. When that strike happens, Putin will no longer be able to pretend that his "special operation" is anything but a huge mistake that has cost Russia dearly and will continue to haunt them for decades.

Vladimir Putin is probably not going to remain in power for much longer. He might not even be able to escape with his life. The damage to Ukraine is horrific, and will require a lot of effort to repair, but the self-inflicted damage to Russia will probably last longer. Putin will go down in history as yet another insane dictator who destroyed his country.

Non-incentives

Russian soldiers are now being promised a bounty for destroying Ukrainian weapons and materiel. Taking out a tank earns you a bonus of around $1,000. It sounds like a joke, but it's true. Disabling a hostile and deadly combat vehicle worth millions of dollars, and getting out of the situation alive, will earn you less than one thousandth of what your feat was "worth" to your employer.

Seriously?

Worst. Incentive. Ever.

Three to One

Vladimir Putin tried to spin his terrain losses in Ukraine as if it involved "devastating losses" of Ukrainian forces and materiel. The problem with his messaging is that he doesn't even try to support his own lies. He bragged about Russia having lost only 54 tanks, while Ukraine lost 160. These numbers are probably heavily inflated, but even if they are true, they do not represent anything abnormal in an attack against fortified positions. It is common to assume that you need an advantage in numbers of three to one to pull off an attack of the kind that Ukraine is now making, and the reason is simple: you must be prepared for significantly higher losses than the people who have had months to dig trenches and fortify their positions. Losing 160 tanks to take out 54 tanks, if the numbers are true, is simply par for the course and a sign of success. The actual numbers are likely a lot less depressing for Ukraine and a lot more dire for Russia, but it's quite telling that by now, not even Putin's lies are bad news for his enemy.

What's more relevant than counting losses is to look at the advances that Ukraine is actually making on the battlefield. They have pierced several long stretches of the front, and sent unprepared and untrained Russian troops fleeing in disarray. In some places the Russian troops retreated through their own mine fields, with lethal result.

Russia is losing. The impact on the position of the front will be slow at first, but the reality on the ground is that after just a couple of days of fighting, Russia is abandoning fortified positions where they have spent months lying in wait, preparing for this attack. The losses are indeed devastating, but not for Ukraine.

Shattered

 "DOJ, FBI, NEW YORK D.A., ATLANTA D.A. FASCISTS ALL."

This is the level of insanity currently seen in the public social media posts from Donald Trump. His mind is shattering from being held accountable for his crimes, and his lawyers are jumping ship. The orange blob once referred to as POTUS (he still insists that his employees call him that) will spend the remainder of his life in disgrace, in court and in prison, and die a broken and forgotten man.

However, we must never forget the damage he did, and how much more damage he could have done if he hadn't been a complete moron. If there is ever another fascist uprising in the US, we might not be so lucky to have it managed by idiots. The system must be better hardened against anti-democratic attacks from within.

Indictments

We are finally at the point where the former pretend president of the United States is going to be indicted for at least some of the many egregious crimes he committed during and immediately after his presidency. One lawsuit concerns his attempts at election interference and the related insurrection on January 6, and another is about his theft and gross mishandling of classified documents.

Both lawsuits are very likely to land him a long prison sentence, and once that starts to sink in with the general public, we will probably be relieved of the media hype about Donald Trump being a candidate for the 2024 election. He is not only senile and in bad health - by election day 2024 he is going to be behind bars for the rest of his pitiful life.

Because these lawsuits against Trump have been kept out of the news cycle for the networks to get more clicks and better ratings (yes, they are that cynical and dishonest), we haven't heard much about the many people who were once Trump's willing henchmen. Such people include most of his cabinet, his legal advisors, his political advisors, his family, and various shady characters with ties to Russia, China and Saudi Arabia. Many of these people have likely cut deals with the prosecution in exchange for leniency, but they are not all going to walk away from this without consequences. Many people besides the trembling orange blob that calls itself Donald Trump (in third person, nonetheless) will go to prison over their role in the failed experiment in racism, bigotry, fascism, evangelical extremism and greed that was the single, horrible presidential term of Donald Trump. And they all deserve it.

For all of you who wondered how some of the horrible people we saw in politics a few years ago could get away with what they did, expect to learn quite soon that they did not, in fact, get away after all. Justice is slow, but it will be served to a lot of human garbage who deserve it. And it will be glorious to watch.

Friendly Fire

The term "friendly fire" is weird, because it's not friendly. People being attacked by weapons wielded by their own side still die. Self-inflicted harm is pretty much the worst thing possible in combat, because it points to incompetence, disarray, or internal conflict. The question is what reasons there are for the mine field which was placed by the Russian army *behind* the Wagner troops, discovered as they were about to leave Bachmut.

It's hard to imagine that these mines were meant to kill Wagner troops. There is no scenario where that would not blow up in Putin's face, figuratively speaking. The explanation that remains is incompetence and panic to the point where one group of Russian combatants has no idea what another group is doing, and where nobody thinks enough to communicate. The fact that Prigosjin accuses Kremlin of malice is telling, however, and it's surprising that he is still allowed to roam free and criticize Putin openly. The internal conflict between Prigosjin and Putin is obvious, and right now it reflects very badly on Putin.

Lost

Russia has lost the initiative in their own attack on Ukraine, and are now relegated to responding to Ukraine's actions. The Russian military command appears lost on what to do, and lots of Russian soldiers have been lost in the most literal sense possible: tens of thousands of troops have lost their lives in Putin's utterly failed war. The remaining Russian soldiers appear lost to despair.

Putin has lost the war, and a fitting phrase to describe both him and his "military special operation" would be "dead man walking". He might not literally die from this, but he has lost his grip on the situation and on reality, and his life in politics will soon be over.

Another fitting quote is "Sic semper tyrannis". Sadly, John Wilkes Booth made that phrase infamous by uttering it in reference to Abraham Lincoln, who was by no means a dictator, but it remains true. Dictators inevitably lose touch with reality, become blinded by their own ego and fall hard. Putin is no exception.

"What was all that back there?"

The Russian front in Bachmut is collapsing, and Russia is rapidly losing the small amount of territory they managed to gain very slowly over the past few months by accepting an insane amount of losses. Now that their brittle line defense is broken and troops are fleeing in panic, Ukraine has retaken a lot of ground. Furthermore, with one flank deeply pierced, the Russian positions are vulnerable.

I don't know if this was a deliberate strategy from Ukraine, but it is brilliant nonetheless. They allowed Russia to make small and slow advances in one strategically unimportant area, at a huge cost in Russian lives and ammunition, and then more or less undid it all in one day with a swift, piercing counter-attack that caught the Wagner Group completely by surprise.

This is demoralizing and humiliating both to the Russian troops, to their commanders, and to the state-level Russian leadership. I am not comfortable with asking for more of this, because it has caused thousands of deaths, but at least it looks like the fierce and bloody battle over Bachmut is finally starting to go the right way.

Sue the Messenger!

In the past year, a record number of US teenagers have died from lethal drugs purchased online. A disproportionate amount of cases are pills bought through contacts on Snapchat. In the kind of knee-jerk legal action that is typical of the US legal system, families of the deceased teenagers are now suing Snapchat for failing to stop the trade of illegal drugs on their platform.

I understand that these people are hurting, and that they take every opportunity to find someone to direct their rage at, and someone to blame. However, what's happening here is yet another step on our dangerous path towards dumbing down humanity.

While Snapchat are part to the equation, they are ultimately not to blame for what people choose to communicate on their platform, and they are definitely not responsible for their users taking lethal doses of drugs. They might have some culpability in not being diligent enough in who gets to use their communication channel, and for what, but this is first and foremost a matter of personal responsibility for the seller and the buyer.

The people who took the drugs are personally responsible for their own death by gulping down unknown pills from an unknown source in their search for a rush. The seller is personally responsible for selling lethal drugs, which is a serious offense covered by law. Snapchat is the messenger, and trying to make them the culprit sets a dangerous precedent.

I will now engage in what might seem like a "reductio ad absurdum", but I would argue that what I present below are some perfectly valid equivalences.

Imagine for a moment that the transaction had taken place without involving the Internet. A drug pusher writes his phone number on a toilet wall, some teenager sees it and calls him up, they meet in a back alley, the teenager buys a bag of pills, ingests a lethal dose and dies.

Who is to blame? Shall we take legal action against the phone company? The maker of the telephone that the buyer used to call the dealer? The possibly different maker of the phone that the dealer used to answer the call? Maybe the owner of the toilet where the seller scribbled his phone number is to blame for not immediately erasing the message before anyone could read it? Or the company who made the pen that was used to write the message? Perhaps the manufacturer of the bathroom tiles should be sued for making a surface so obviously suitable to write upon for the purpose of soliciting drugs? Or the builder who put up the tiles? And that back alley where they met, can't we sue whoever owns that spot of land and allowed such an obviously illegal transaction to take place on their property?

What if the drug dealer had instead posted a photocopied note on a telephone pole? Should the telephone company then be blamed for providing a wooden pole so obviously suitable for fastening a drug pushing note to it? Is the maker of the photocopier somehow responsible for allowing notes with illegal content to be copied on their machines? What about the papermaker? The city who allowed that telephone pole to be placed on a public street? The people who taught the dealer and the teenager how to read and write?

I'm not saying that Snapchat should allow illegal activity to continue unhindered on their platform. If they can stop it, fine. However, they can not by any reasonable standards be held responsible for what their users choose to say to each other. The responsibility, and the accountability, for the communication and interaction between two people rests on those two people, not on the manufacturer of their chosen means for communication. In this respect, the Internet is no more special than the telephone system, an old school message board or, indeed, a bathroom wall.

We need to face the fact that online service providers can not protect us from our own stupidity. We need to be less stupid, not demand that Snapchat do the thinking for us.

Back To The USSR

The oppressive silencing laws in Russia are now being used to send ordinary people to prison for expressing discontent with a totalitarian regime, and for exposing the government's war propaganda for being obvious lies.

This is what the Soviet Union used to do to its citizens. It didn't even work back then, in a world where information could actually be restricted, and it certainly won't work now.

Vladimir Putin needs to wake up to reality.

A Hill To Die On

The battle over Bachmut has taken on the same symbolic value as Verdun during WWI, and at a similarly devastating cost in human lives for virtually no strategic gain for either side.

However, it appears as if the Wagner Group has finally exhausted itself by figuratively throwing people into a meat grinder. Their initiative appears to be lost, and they no longer have the resources to keep advancing. They took a few insignificant suburbs to Bachmut, but the Bachmut city proper (or, rather, the piles of rubble in the location where Bachmut used to be) remains under Ukrainian control.

The messaging from Jevgenij Prigosjin over the past week was a total failure. On the one hand, he complained over having been cut off from getting new troops and ammunition, as well as being disowned by the Kremlin. On the other hand, he tried to convince Ukraine that they had better give up and retreat from Bachmut, because his forces were obviously winning. That kind of double messaging might have worked in Soviet Russia, but in today's media landscape it only goes to show how desperate Russia is, and how little they know about how the world actually works. 

Russia appears to be the victim of its own delusions. Bachmut is the hill they chose for the futile Russian dream of a new empire to die, and die it will.

Outside of the now depleted and exhausted forces of the Wagner Group, Russia has no soldiers left with the ability or even the will to fight, and they are running short on equipment and ammunition. Recent sightings of ancient T-56 tanks on the battlefield, with makeshift night sights tucked on as an afterthought, speak volumes of the lack of modern weaponry on the Russian side. Their situation is a lot more desperate than they are letting on.

Life Expectancy

Today, Jevgenij Prigosjin, the founder of the Wagner Group band of mercenaries, went all in with his confrontation of the Russian government. In a frenzied speech, he said that "those who are denying us ammunition are nothing but traitors, helping the enemy break Russia's back".

Considering that the one who made the decision to stop supplying the Wagner Group with ammunition is probably Putin himself, we should not be surprised if Prigosjin has a fatal accident in the near future. People who oppose Putin seem to run a high risk of falling out of a window or have a sudden heart attack, but with Prigosjin it's more likely that he will be the target of an attack from "one of his own", a government plant in his own ranks who simply shoots him.

Prigosjin was once a very close friend and confidant to Putin, but at this point there is no way back into his grace.

Out of it

Before Russia's war on Ukraine, their propaganda was at least somewhat subtle. Putin's speech today was nothing of the sort. Right from the start there was nothing but obvious and unsubstantiated lies coming from his mouth. It's as if he suddenly decided that his own version of reality is somehow going to be the norm from now on. Nobody in their right mind could possibly believe one word of what he said. It's not just that he was bending the truth and presenting a biased view -- he literally told the opposite of the truth.

What's more, today's speech was a blatant throwback to Soviet showmanship. A staged audience, applause on cue without reason.

Accusing the rest of the world for being Nazis and terrorists intent on destroying Russia is not going to fly. Nevertheless, this is what Putin is attempting right now. He is either out of ideas, or out of his mind. Possibly both.

Götterdämmerung

The infamous Wagner Group, founded by Russian oligarch Jevgenij Prigosjin, seems to have fallen out of grace with Vladimir Putin. Their recruitment of convicts to be used indiscriminately as cannon fodder has been halted, and convicts are now instread recruited into the ranks of the regular Russian army. This might not make much of a difference to the convicts, as they are most likely still going to be sacrificed by the thousands on the battlefield, in a cynical attempt to deplete the Ukrainian ammunition supplies in exchange for Russian lives. However, this will make a difference on the battlefield, to the disadvantage of Russia. For all their evil, the Wagner group has a significantly better track record in the war, because they have a functioning command structure and at least some soldiers who are well trained and reasonably motivated. The regular Russian army is in complete disarray, with incompetent leadership, badly trained, badly equipped and unmotivated personnel, and a long history of rampant corruption.

Russia is losing its grip on Ukraine, and Putin is losing his grip on Russia. It's happening slowly, and far too many more lives will be lost before this war is over, but it's happening, and the reckoning will be harsh. Putin might go down in history not as the leader who made Russia great again, but the leader who acted on his own delusional fantasies and fractured what was still left of the former Soviet federation. He is on a path to basically erase Russia from the map.

Last Gasp

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been a failure since the outset. Russian forces were badly prepared, badly equipped, insufficiently trained, undisciplined and unmotivated. They are being forced and tricked into fighting a war they don't want, don't need and can't win, and the command structure of the army is a joke, with corrupt and incompetent commanders showing a total disregard for human life, not only when it comes to Ukrainians, but for their own troops as well. Only the private-run Wagner Group shows any sign of being able to put up a fight, but even they are failing and resorting to sending thousands of convicts to die in a fight over a small piece of land outside a heavily fortified city they have no hope of ever capturing.

In the crumbling remains of the Russian army, I imagine all hope is long lost. In barracks as well as on the battlefield, guards are deployed around the clock to keep people from deserting. This is not the way to win a war, and they must know it.

For the Russians, ammunition is now running low. Equipment is breaking down with no means for repairing it. Medical evacuation is nonexistent, and wounded soldiers are simply left to die. What we are seeing is the last gasp from a dictator so detached from reality that he sacrificed his country for his own vanity. Putin is finished, and Russia will pay the price for his atrocities for decades to come.

At Any Cost

It remains uncertain whether Russia's claim is true and that they really did gain control over Soledar, a small town just north of Bakhmut, but even if they did, it is a small victory for Russia amidst a huge amount of defeats on every other front, and it came at a huge cost of lives for the Russian side. The Wagner Group, formally an illegal combatant in the war even according to Russian law, sent wave after wave of foot soldiers into the battlefield as cannon fodder. Most of these were probably convicts who were taken directly from prison and conscripted into their ranks after a decree by Putin. Such blatant disregard for human lives is definitely not a winning strategy in the long run, but the Wagner Group, led by the "private entrepreneur" Jevgenij Prigosjin, seems to have thrown absolutely everything into this meaningless fight over a piece of abandoned wasteland. Horrific photos from the area look like throwbacks to World War I, with shallow trenches littered with bodies and Russian troops literally walking over their fallen comrades in a desperate struggle to gain ground.

This looks like a last ditch attempt at getting Putin a victory, any victory, at any cost, to feed the propaganda network inside Russia. Even if it ends up being a victory, it is small, temporary, meaningless, and by far outweighed by losses in other areas.

This is an act of desperation.

Desperation

Putin is now not only losing the war in Ukraine, but also losing his grip on the misinformation. The claim that 600 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in a retaliation attack in Kramatorsk was easily proven false. A few artillery shots were fired against two empty university dormitories, one of which was not even hit. No casualties. No bodies, no blood, no rescue crews, no debris, no sign of damage.

Another claim that a "region" called Bakhmutske was "liberated" by Russian forces may be true, but even so, it would be a tiny victory in the midst of massive losses. Bakhmutske is a small residential area some 10 km outside Bakhmut. It's only a few blocks, barely a village, with a few blocks of abandoned houses and a school that has been closed for months. The name is similar to the city of Bakhmut, which Ukraine is successfully defending against Russian attacks. It's quite clear that this was a cherry-picked piece of "good news" in an attempt to fool some extremely gullible Russians into thinking that Putin is actually winning on any front.

This is what losing looks like. I can't help comparing this to "Baghdad Bob", the loyal servant of Saddam Hussein who was giving a televised speech from the rooftops in the final moments of the invasion of Iraq, claiming with fervor and conviction that his forces were winning and that the invaders were sent fleeing for their lives, even while the Western allied troops could be seen in the background, advancing into the city with nothing to oppose them.

The war is not over yet, but Putin has very obviously lost it.

Impotent

There is one word that describes Russia and Vladimir Putin quite accurately, and that word is "impotent". Putin himself would likely take that as a personal attack on his sexual performance, but what I mean is the general meaning of the word: an inability to perform as expected, a lack of power.

Russia is now dependent on Iranian drones for most of their long range attacks against Ukraine - drones that are entirely dependent on Western-made components that need to be smuggled into Iran by seemingly civilian contractors. There is reason to believe that the supply of those components is scarce, and dwindling as Iran sells more and more of their drones to Russia.

Russia is quickly running through its stockpile of artillery ammunition, and despite Putin's insistence that his "operation" is proceeding with undiminished force, the intense artillery bombardment has been reduced to one third of what it was a couple of months ago. It is likely that the ammunition is being rationed to last longer. How much longer is anyone's guess, but we would not see this reduction of artillery fire if Russia had comfortable amounts of ammunition in stock, or was able to produce it rapidly.

By the look of it, after being more or less cut off from their supply of essential Western-made components, Russia can no longer manufacture advanced weapons like missiles, aircraft, war ships and tanks, at least not fast enough, and not in the numbers that would be required to replenish their huge losses in Ukraine.

The soldiers that are now being deployed on the battlefield in Ukraine are badly trained and unmotivated, and the leadership in the Russian army is largely defunct after decades of corruption.

Vladimir Putin is dependent on lies to maintain his grip on power, and the lies are getting more transparent with each public announcement he makes. A significant number of well educated Russians has already fled the country.

Putin is out of options. He can keep up the appearance of power for a while longer, but his actions have no chance of causing the desired effect. He is, in a word, impotent.