Fool's Errand

The invasion of Ukraine is a massive failure for Russia. Ukrainian forces are pushing back in the north and near Odessa, and they are facing weak opposition from Russian forces that choose to retreat from badly fortified positions. In the Donbass region where Russia is trying to mount an offense, their advances are slow at best, nonexistent for the most part, and sometimes counterproductive, forcing them to retreat and surrender territory due to losses and insufficient defence capabilities rather than make further advances.

Ukraine is on their home turf, defending their freedom and pushing back against a hostile invasion. Russia is forcing battle-weary and unmotivated troops to die for various small pieces of land that they don't even have enough resources to hold. Even their scaled-down goal of taking the city of Severodonetsk now seems out of reach for the depleted Russian army, and Ukraine is now seriously considering taking back not only the Donbass region, but Crimea as well. Whether that will happen is more of a political decision than a military one.

Ukraine now has the initiative in the conflict, and they will keep it.

Wunderwaffen

In the final desperate phase of WWII, the Nazis kept boasting about their secret weapons that were being developed. These weapons allegedly had mythical power and were going to turn the tide in the war they were clearly losing.

Of course, the "wonder weapons" were nothing but myths. The rumors were lies, intended to keep the German troops from losing hope in the face of overwhelming opposition.

Now, we hear that Russia is about to employ laser-based superweapons in the war in Ukraine. One is supposed to be able to blind surveillance satellites, and another is supposed to be able to take out drones by burning them. Both are most likely fabrications sprung from wishful thinking, and the choice of lies shows where Russia has most problems: they can't make any move without being spotted by satellites, and their operations are being severely hampered by low cost Ukrainian drones that are a bigger problem that what Russia will admit.

Russia has thrown pretty much everything they had into this conflict, and it wasn't enough. They are desperate.

The Truth Will Out

Last night, former Russian Colonel Mikhail Khodaryonok was seen telling some inconvenient truths on Russian state television. The host looked absolutely horrified, but did not interrupt him, which leads to the conclusion that this was a statement which was sanctioned by the government, rather than a surprise coup from a supposed propagandist gone rogue.

The message was clear, and twofold: Russia is steadily doing worse on the battlefield as time passes, and the rest of the world stands united against a geopolitically isolated Russia. For a statement like this to reach the general public through Russian state television is nothing short of sensational, and it is a marked departure from the hitherto blatant lies of Putin's propaganda machine.

There is undoubtedly more to come on this. The question is whether Putin is still in control and trying to change the narrative for some reason, or if this is the beginning of a move by others to sidestep Putin and try to save at least some of Russia's ass while they still have a chance.

However, it may be too late for that. Even a complete withdrawal and an unconditional surrender at this point will leave Russia responsible for countless war crimes and insane amounts of destruction in Ukraine, and it is going to cost them dearly for a long time ahead.

Largely Ineffective

Recent Russian attempts at advancing further into Eastern Ukraine are reported as being "largely ineffective". The phrase is deceptively undramatic, but it means that Russia has all but lost the war.

An ineffective attack causes losses. Lots of ineffective attacks cause plenty of losses. We should also keep in mind that the forces Russia are using in Ukraine at the moment are their best equipped, best trained, and most experienced troops. Any reinforcements they could send at this point would be nothing but cannon fodder when pitted against the experienced Ukrainian defenders.

Russia is running on empty. They still have people to throw at the front, but those people are badly motivated, exhausted, unskilled, put under incompetent command and suffering greatly from damaged equipment and dwindling supplies. What's left is a slow war of attrition that Russia is going to lose.

When, or if, Putin is going to realise this is anybody's guess, and it's impossible to know how he will react.

Epic Fail

Imagine if Adolf Hitler, after he decided to invade Poland, had lined up most of his standing army on the Polish border and marched in, only to be met with fierce resistance - so fierce that he ended up losing one third of his forces to achieve only a fraction of his strategic goals with the campaign.

This is what Vladimir Putin has done in Ukraine. He has a delusional wet dream of restoring the Soviet empire, but he is going to be remembered as the leader who single-handedly brought Russia shame, ruin and humiliation.

The world stands with Ukraine, and practically nobody stands with Russia. North Korea has voiced its sympathy, which amounts to nothing but words, but China and even Belarus see where this is going and try to avoid aligning with Russia.

Putin's self-defeating "special operation" with invading Ukraine is going down in military history as one of the most stupid campaigns ever.

DDT and US politics

DDT is an insecticide, now outlawed in most parts of the world, that has had an unforeseen and sometimes catastrophic effect on the ecosystem. While DDT is toxic to all animals, its expected concentration in water and plants was deemed never to become high enough to cause concern. However, DDT is both quite metabolically stable and fat-soluble, which means it accumulates in the fatty tissue of animals over their lifetime. As we move up the food chain to higher predators, the concentration of DDT increases to levels where it causes direct harm, like making seals sterile or preventing eagles from laying viable eggs.

This is a devious poisoning indeed, for its causes are hidden below several levels of seemingly healthy animals in the food chain. Only at the top of the pyramid is it a real problem, but there it is fatal.

In US politics, there appears to be a similar effect responsible for a similar disaster. Some people are entering into lower levels of politics for the wrong reasons: fame, fortune, power, compensation, sometimes outright malice. At lower levels, the proportion of these bad apples to the good ones might seem tolerable. Most low level politicians are reasonable people with sound motivations for seeking office.

However, there is an accumulation and amplification effect as we move up the food chain. The bad apples are rewarded and encouraged to seek ever higher offices, while the hard working, honest people tend to stay at the lower ranks and often regard politics as a temporary service rather than a lifetime career.

This means that as we move up the food chain, to state-wide or national politics, the rotten fruit becomes a lot more concentrated. The Republican party seems to attract the most human scum, and promote it more willingly, which leaves us in the current situation: top level Republican politicians are scumbags - with very few exceptions.

To set this straight, we cannot tolerate even a small amount of the bad kind of people at the bottom. They must be rooted out, purged from the system before they can rise in rank and do more damage. The Democratic party seems to have this under control. They are not completely unaffected by the problem, but they seem to function in the same system as the Republicans without suffering from the same strong accumulation of garbage at the top.

The proverbial Republican asshole is a toxic ingredient in the US political system, and it is a threat to its very foundation, on the verge of making it cease to function as intended.

I have no idea how to solve this. The Democrats seem to have it more or less right, but perhaps the Republicans are beyond help and can't learn from the example of others. It is, however, a very real problem that needs to be recognized for what it is: a threat to democracy.

Small Peepee, Big Dreams

Pardon the somewhat juvenile headline, but Putin's goal, his dream of a Russia "restored" to Soviet era glory, is way too big for his military resources. His army organization is thoroughly corrupt and barely works at all, and his huge spending on advanced weapons has resulted only in a small number of tanks, missiles and fighter jets with modern capabilites. He is fighting with equipment that is outdated, badly maintained, built significantly below specification and plagued with teething problems, or even nonexistent.

As an extra bonus, Ukraine released a video today that shows a Russian T-90M, the most modern tank in their arsenal, being blown to pieces in the signature "hats off" fashion (explosive separation of the turret from the body) by an armor piercing projectile from a Swedish "Carl Gustaf" grenade launcher. This is a low cost, hand-held weapon that costs a few thousand Euros. A T-90M is orders of magnitude more expensive, and having it taken out by such a low cost weapon is a huge failure for Russia, much like the sinking of the missile cruiser Moskva.

Russia is clearly not playing with a full deck in this war.