Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday hinted that the Ukraine war could soon end. Speaking to reporters after marking Russia’s Victory Day parade, Putin said: “I think that the matter is coming to an end.” The comment was made in response to a question about whether Western help to Ukraine went too far. The Russian leader said: “They started ratcheting up the confrontation with Russia, which continues to this day. I think it is heading to an end, but it’s still a serious matter.”
Putin’s remarks come as Kyiv and Moscow observe a three-day ceasefire in Russia’s war in Ukraine this weekend. The truce was announced on Friday by US President Donald Trump after negotiations brokered by Washington. European Council President Antonio Costa on Thursday said the European Union was prepared to hold separate talks with Russia and Ukraine “when the right moment comes."
His little operation convinced Europe to rearm and made Ukraine a security exporter. Now he’s down in a bunker desperately looking for ways to save face before the tide turns furher against him.
If by “security exporter” you mean “providing training and weapons to Israel and to terrorists in the Sahel”
No.
Yes.
No matter how you look at this Russia has lost and this is exactly why, even if you ignore ethics, dictatorships don’t work long term. It just takes one failure like this to set back decades of work. It happens to every dictatorship eventually.
At least Putin took years to finally fail. Trump is managing into do it within his first couple of years.
Exactly this. Ukraine has started open cooperation with foreign weapons companies, inviting them to come test their autonomous systems in real battlefield conditions. Given that the rest of Europe is arming up against potential Russian hostility, the opportunity to test your new weapons against their most likely opponent is a golden ticket. My guess is a lot of these new designs are proving effective, and Putin is realizing that any more ‘special military operations’ will be taken as proof positive that Russia has turned conquistador and met with overwhelming force by most of the rest of Europe.
It’s also possible he’s just running out of troops. The last estimate I saw was something like 340,000 Russian casualties…
Disturbingly some of his female fanatics – including those in the Sakhalin islands – are still convinced he’s doing a swell job.
I also fear that he could possibly use something worse just to win.
You missed a million! Circa 1,339,190 Russians killed or injured since the invasion began.
Just for context, America lost about 58,000 soldiers in 10-12 years in Vietnam, and about 4000 on 20 years in Afghanistan.
Putin has lost 1.3 MILLION+ soldiers in a only 2-3 years. He’s gone from a voluntary military, to a draft, to commuting prison sentences, to literally snatching military age males off the streets, to hiring mercenaries. He’s quickly running out options for his war machine.
Their sources likely count differently. Dead only, vs. dead + wounded.
You wanna sink a war machine? It’s quite easy. Just drown them in wounded troops, not corpses. Corpses don’t move, corpses don’t eat, corpses don’t need to be cleaned or bathed, corpses don’t need expensive surgery and therapy to get back to living normally, corpses don’t need teams of people to look after them. Wounded troops do. Wounded troops are expensive, corpses are cheap.
Flood the machine with wounded. Make every advance so miserable and destructive to the budget and supply line that any sensible general will eventually say “fuck it!” and pull out. That’s what Ukraine has been doing, unfortunately Putin isn’t sensible and has surrounded himself with sycophants.
this is exactly it.
It’s far better for Ukraine to blow off arms and legs than kill soldiers. The more wounded sent back to RU, especially those who can’t be rehabbed back into combat readiness, the better. And the more of such people who get into RU society the better- SHOW the RU people the cost of the war. Don’t let it be some abstract concept like war is to Americans.
Woohoo!