Out of everything

The Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine appears to be losing momentum. Their massive losses require reorganization, and decimated units are now merged on the fly to remain capable of combat. This situation is a commander's nightmare, and it is a desperate tactic.

The Russian invaders of Ukraine are out of reserves and out of supplies. They are mostly out of modern weapons and are now reduced to fighting with out of date Soviet era equipment, while Ukraine is getting significant help with more recent weapons systems being sent from abroad. The Russian troops are out of their depth, out of their wits, out of breath, out of options, and out of hope to turn this in their favor. They are running out of gas, both figuratively and literally.

Putin, meanwhile, appears to be not only out of ideas, but literally out of his mind. He is refusing to face reality, and it might not be a facade any longer. If he keeps sending his troops to slaughter against the unrelenting and highly motivated Ukrainian defence, he might soon be out of an army.

It is a horrible thing to say, but if Russia depletes its army on the battlefield to the point where it no longer is a force to be reckoned with, it might be for the best. Russia must be forced to stop its expansive aggression, and if they don't have an army to send, they can't invade their neighbors and meddle in conflicts abroad.

There will come a day when Russia is finally out of Ukraine, and it just might come sooner than we expect.

 

Culture Cancel

It's clear that Putin is determined not only to wipe out Ukraine from the map as a nation, but also to destroy Ukrainian traditions and culture. Ukraine is being painted as a country of Nazis and traitors to their heritage. Russian invaders leave the conquered territory in ruins. The Ukraine civilian population is being murdered and displaced, and occupied territories are being forcibly "russified". However, these actions are more likely to wipe out Russian culture.

Russia is now shunned by most of the world, and their reputation will not recover for a generation. Their lies will soon crumble, and their crimes will be exposed and punished. No other countries will want to take an interest in Russian culture, and there will be a stigma inside Russia for many years to come for taking pride in anything that is uniquely Russian. A generation of people growing up will want to distance themselves from the atrocities that are being committed by the current leadership, and as people shed off the bad things, a lot of the good things will be lost as well.

In his attempt to cancel Ukraine, Putin is actually cancelling Russia.

Scorched Earth

A famous Russian tactic in war is "scorched earth", where the battleground is razed as they move past. This prevents the opponent from using the territory for shelter and resupply, and it is a tactic that proved successful for the Russian army both against Napoleon and Hitler.

Unfortunately for the Russian troops, Putin seems to have it all ass-backwards. The tactic is supposed to be employed during retreat, not when you advance. In the attack in eastern Ukraine, Russian forces are shelling the ground with artillery before their advance, which leaves them nothing but rubble to plant their flag on. This is devastating for them. Even though they are slowly gaining ground, it comes at a great cost, and it is a burden for them to move forward through crumbling ruins on destroyed roads. The Ukrainians, on their side, can retreat while staying in shelter in friendly territory. Of course, bombardment and constant fire causes heavy losses on the Ukrainian side, but the Russian losses are massive, reportedly several times larger, and their progress is slow.

Russia has entered a nightmare of their own making: a war of attrition where they are sending their troops to die by the hundreds or thousands for taking a worthless patch of dirt that used to have a village on it. Their resources were dwindling already, and now they are rapidly running out of cannon fodder. Ukraine has millions of brave people who are prepared to fight to defend their sovereignty, while Russia has less than 50,000 soldiers left, most of whom are exhausted, badly trained and unmotivated. This war might come to an end because Russia runs out of soldiers, and from the look of it, that moment might not be very far off.

Tipping the Scales

"Your governor is stupid."
"Meh."
"He is evil."
"Don't care."
"He is taking bribes, and his donors are shady."
"All politicians are crooked."
"His party is a bunch of racist scum, with no other goal than to stay in power and dismantle American democracy."
"So?"
"His utter ineptness at governing makes his petty fight with Disney cost the state a billion dollars, and the tax payers will foot the bill."
"Wait, he's costing me money? Maybe I should vote for the other guy."

THAT is what is tipping the scales? Seriously?

Insecurity council

Russia's permanent membership of the UN security council, being one of the members with veto power over all decisions, is an affront to everything that the UN is supposed to be. Russia was given the seat that was previously held by the Soviet Union. This was a decision made on unclear grounds, and it needs to be reconsidered.

After Russia has repeatedly used their veto power to block any resolution condemning their invasion of Ukraine, they went completely over the top yesterday, when they sent several cruise missiles to hit Kyiv while the UN Secretary General, Antonio Gutierres, was visiting the city to meet with president Zelenskyy.

Let this sink in for a moment. A member of the UN security council is now not only involved in an aggression against a friendly neighboring country, but they literally dropped bombs that could have killed the Secretary General of the UN. The security council would be well advised to dissolve and have the UN form a new council for the same purpose, but this time without Russia. They have no place among civilised nations, and they have no business deciding anything concerning international security.

"The first item on our agenda is to strongly condemn Russia for its unprovoked aggression against Ukraine. What say you?"

"Russia says no."

"Duly noted. No action. Next item: investigate numerous credible allegations of systematic war crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine. What say you?"

"Russia says no."

"Check. Item three, condemn Russia for sending special forces to attempt an overthrow of the democratically elected leadership of Ukraine by assassination of president Zelenskyy in the initial hours of the attack. What..."

"Russia says no."

"Got it. And finally, a joint motion from all but one of our permanent members to expel Russia from their privileged seat on this council, the reason being blatant abuse of their veto power to get away with murder. Wh..."

"Russia says no."

"All right, that concludes today's agenda. Good meeting, everyone."

Absurd. But, sadly, completely true.

(Illegible signature)

The text in the headline refers to a piece of "evidence" collected and flaunted by the FSB in a video today, where they claim to have arrested a group of assassins plotting to murder a Russian news anchor.

The video is very poorly made and contains lots of indications that it's a staged propaganda piece rather than actual footage from the arrest, but to some extent that can be explained by this being a reenactment. I can certainly understand it if they want to provide live action for the news channels even though no camera was present during the actual raid. However, there are things that point to this entire story being fake. In a short video clip, we get to see a hand-written dedication in a book, purportedly a copy of "Mein Kampf", although the title of the book is never shown in the video. 

Phonetically, the Cyrillic text at the bottom, "подпись неразборчива" reads "podpis' nerazborchiva", and it means -- this is hilarious -- "illegible signature" (literally "signature is illegible"). Yes. This actually happened. And it was published by Russian state television, not by some hoax parody site trying to discredit FSB. They did that all by themselves. From the look of it, someone was instructed to fabricate evidence by writing a dedication in a book and sign it with an illegible signature, supposedly by being handed a script that said "(illegible signature)" at the end, but they ended up copying the script exactly as it was written.

Now, this might be "malicious compliance" from some rogue FSB agent to sabotage the story by feigning incompetence, but the level of ineptitude in the Russian government has been running rampant lately, with Putin firing tons of people seemingly at random and purely out of paranoia. In any case, this book dedication is a piece of exquisite unintended comedy in the midst of a horrendous tragedy.

Because Cyrillic handwriting has notably and awkwardly different character shapes from printed Cyrillic text, and Google Translate is useless if you can't even transcribe the letters, the full text of the dedication reads:

Timokha,
Thank you for your unrelenting support in the most difficult times.
Fight (lit. "beat", "hit") to live. Live to fight.
Signature illegible
NS/WP crew Moscow (last part written in English, for some reason)

Below is the original Russian, but transcribed from the cursive Cyrillic writing. I show it in both regular and italic, because the italic lower case characters look more like the cursive writing:

(Edit: I can't get the italic text to safely render in a serif typeface with actual italics using the "mobile" style. Sometimes you get the fake slanted letters of Arial and its ilks, and they don't look any different from the upright versions.)

Тимохе
Спасидо за неоженимуро поддержку в самые тяжелые зоды.
Чбивай, итобы жить.
Жити, итобы чбивать.
Подпись Неразборчива 

Тимохе
Спасидо за неоженимуро поддержку в самые тяжелые зоды.
Чбивай, итобы жить.
Жити, итобы чбивать.
Подпись Неразборчива

Prediction

Here's a guess based on the latest reports: Putin will huff and puff and threaten with a nuclear attack to "stop Ukraine's genocide on Russians", the few countries that are still undecided will turn against him, he will fold and withdraw from Ukraine, spin it as him "taking responsibility to avoid a third world war despite all the Western provocations", hold a bleak celebrational parade on May 9, and then forever disappear from the political scene.

Vladimir Putin is clearly ill. Even the official footage from his latest staged appearances, despite heavy editing, clearly shows him suffering from tics, tremor and tardive dyskinesia. These are not merely signs of stress, but definitely signs of physical neurological disorder, be it due to an advancing case of something like Parkinson's, or a secondary effect of medication against something else.

More than one hundred thousand people died, and Russia lost all hope of becoming a trusted international partner for trade and treaties for a long time ahead, just to prop up the last remnants of a sick and fading man's inflated ego.