These are tricky times for Russian President Vladimir Putin. The “special military operation” he launched against Ukraine in 2022, intended to last a few days until a puppet regime in Kyiv could be installed, has now gone on longer than both the Soviet fight against Nazi Germany and all of World War I. His forces have long ceased making significant gains on the battlefield; some data even suggest that Russian forces lost territory in April and May. What gains the Russians have made have come at enormous cost: Last month, Anna Keast-Butler, the director of British intelligence agency GCHQ, cited new intelligence indicating that Russian war deaths had likely reached almost half a million; various Western sources put total Russian casualties at significantly more than 1 million.
Goddammit it’s been over 4 years hasn’t it.
But the sentiment expressed in the first 2 paragraphs is nothing new. Collapse has been imminent for a while, but it’s happening too slowly. The Kremlin has employed all sorts of life-extending tricks in the past years and probably they can still keep it up for a while.
Media has been giving a lot of credit to the head of the Russian central bank holding everything together. When she disappeared, I was wondering if it all was finally falling apart.
But she’s back
Arson cases?