QOTD: Putin's Top Priority

 

The Bulwark's Cathy Young has a must-read Substack article on Russia's failing war against Ukraine, and Putin's growing unpopularity.  Despite what Kremlin asset Malignant Fascist and his slavish VP JD "Junior Demagogue" Vance want you to believe, Ukraine's hardly out of "cards" to play, while the Russian war machine grinds to a virtual halt over the many thousands of its troops' dead bodies.  Excerpts:

"In April, the latest reports say, Russia lost more territory in Ukraine than it captured for the first time since mid-2023. As Brynn Tannehill and others have noted, this spring has seen a subtle but significant shift in the strategic balance of the war. Ukrainian drone production now matches or exceeds Russia’s, and its quality is generally better. Ukrainian unmanned ground combat vehicles are changing the character of combat on the front lines and correcting for the smaller country’s manpower deficit—all while achieving the highest numbers of Russian casualties in any month of the war so far. Ukrainian long-range strikes knocked out some 40 percent of Russia’s oil export capacity just as prices were rising because of the Hormuz crisis, and further strikes have diminished Russia’s already limited domestic refining capacity. Russia’s spring offensive appears to have been blunted even before it began. [snip]

With the war going badly and greater numbers of Russians able to see the truth and feel its effects, Putin is focusing on his top priority: A leaked intelligence report from a European country says that Putin is tightening his personal security not only because he fears Ukrainian drones, but because he fears an internal coup." (our emphasis)

When the Russian people, especially those outside the elitist enclaves of Moscow and St. Petersburg, continue seeing their sons conscripted into that war, and returning in body bags year after year they know they are being lied to.  As Young notes, even the pro-war propagandists are starting to question the war's lack of progress, which reflects badly on war criminal Putin and his enablers, including his man in the Oval Office.