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.