Russians are fleeing the country after Putin promised to begin conscripting his countrymen, beginning with an initial 300,000 allotment and then going on from there. Protests broke out in over 20 Russian cities.
Russia’s Invasion Goes Into Reverse
Russia is losing ground in Ukraine on a daily basis. If that isn’t bad enough news for Putin, Russia is also losing weapons and ammunition in large quantities — and it is losing its logistical hubs as well. Without logistical hubs, Putin may as well pack up his surviving troops and go home.
Peter Zeihan explains why the recapture of the important logistical hub Mariupol may be next up for Ukraine, and why Russia does not have many more young men that it can lose — and continue to exist as a “country.”
Vladimir Putin’s latest escalation over Ukraine not only demonstrates that even he doesn’t think he’s winning the war but what happens when a leader knows he has to do ‘something’ but doesn’t quite know what.
Momentum was, after all, no longer on his side. He seems to have hoped that over a hard winter, either Ukraine would lose the will to fight or the West would succumb to ‘Ukraine fatigue’. However, Ukraine’s impressive counter-offensive in the north-east not only confirmed Kyiv’s continued and even growing will and ability to fight but also galvanised Western support.
Putin Pees His Pants
Putin is isolated — even among his so-called allies China, India, and Turkey. All of them told him that he had better put an end to his stupid war, the sooner the better!
Poland, Finland, and Sweden are all ramping up their military capabilities, at the same time that Russia’s army is disintegrating before the world’s eyes. Besides Poland, other former Warsaw Pact nations are building and training up their militaries to a level that would bring rapid obliteration to anything that the dying Russian empire could bring to bear.
Putin has nothing in store except continued abject humiliation, and an eventual ignominious death. Russia’s dwindling supply of young men are either being squandered in a pointless war of genocide and ethnic cleansing, or are being driven out of Russia by Putin’s own tyrannical antics. The very future of Russia is being bled out by Putin’s demented narcissism.
The “small scale” of the Russian redeployment is a signal of its inability to mount any serious operations, the senior defense official told CNN.
So far, Russia has responded to Ukraine’s advances by launching attacks against critical infrastructure like dams and power plants – attacks that the US sees as largely “revenge” attacks rather than operationally significant salvos, this person said.
Absent more manpower that, right now, it simply doesn’t have, sources said Russia has few other options to penalize or push back Ukrainian forces. Putin is “struggling,” National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby said in an appearance on CNN on Wednesday. Russia’s military has “poor unit cohesion, desertions in the ranks, soldiers not wanting to fight,” Kirby said.
CNN
After Putin’s recent saber rattling, flights out of Russia quickly filled up, the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg echoed with protest, and the beleaguered Russian military went looking for reserves it didn’t have, to send for training for which it is no longer equipped. Putin destroyed Russia’s military, but now somehow he expects it to bail him out!
A few thoughts on Putin’s national whine which is helping to trigger the beginnings of the end for Russia
Young Russian men are becoming an endangered species. But there are not many old Russian men left, either. Putin is threatening to conscript men as old as 65 years old, but in Russia few men live that long — at least few men in any condition to get anywhere near a battlefield or a weapons system.
Any surviving Putin admirers will no doubt cling to the idea that Putin will use nuclear weapons to annihilate NATO assistance to Ukraine. But that would be the end of Russia, so to whose benefit would that be done? No one sane, certainly.
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