What's Putin Thinking!? Is the War with Ukraine in it's Endgame?
There are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when nothing happens.
-Chud Motto
This summer I’ve already commented on the Situation in Iran and how basically the only way the US could get the strait of Hormuz open by force is a full Ground Invasion, and deep dived Modern unconventional warfare in the Works of Hideo Kojima, and why Effective Political Organizing is Really Just Organized Crime…
but I want to focus on the other war, and what no one’s talking about:
What’s wrong with Putin?
One could be forgiven for thinking that there is something deeply wrong with the Russian State and Vladimir Putin in particular.
Every 1 to 3 months some new unprecedented Ukrainian asymmetric attack hits Russia’s homeland in ways almost tailor designed to provoke an escalation, outrage the populace, and leave the Russian Government humiliated at the loss of face.
The “Crocus City Hall” (it’s a civilian music venue not an actual city hall) attack in Moscow was killed 151 and injured 600+ Civilian music fans in an “ISIS” terrorist attack… That everyone knows was funded, coordinated, and enabled by Ukraine (and the CIA). Right down to the assailants passing through Ukraine, and being on camera collecting their discarded firearm magazines (presumably because the manufacturer stamps would tie them to their backers)…
This was huge Russian News, and the specific band whose audience was targeted is also significant.
Piknik is a massive hit Russian 80s band. Now, Students of history will note that Russia was still communist in the 80s. They’ve been around forever, and are generally inoffensive and middle of the road (they were mainstream under the USSR)… They’re kind of a weird gothic slavic prog-rock blend of Phil Collins and the Tragically Hip. And they’re huge… Individual videos with 10s of millions of views on Youtube… As big as any hit western 80s band and lots of cultural fondness in the Russian imagination.
(Presumably it hits harder if you can appreciate Russian)
This matters because their core demographic are Russian boomers who are Nostalgic for their Soviet Childhoods, but are also established and content in Modern Russia… Ie. Putin’s Core demographic.
This would be like if you attacked a Hamilton performance or a Bono concert in the west. That’s the regime’s core supporters right there. That’s a knowledgeable and incisive cut that actual Muslim foreigners wouldn’t know or care to hit… But that Slavic Ukrainians and calculating CIA planners trying to apply pressure or destabilize Russia into escalation would know and salivate at.
Likewise Ukraine explicitly attacked Russia’s Nuclear Strategic Bomber fleet in Operation Spider Web, assets that were not used in the Ukraine war, and indeed were basically irrelevant to the conflict… But are core to Russia’s nuclear triad and the stability of the global nuclear balance of power… Again basically begging for a massive escalation and almost certainly making Russian Generals and Strategic planners break out in a cold sweat until they assessed the damage.
Beyond this there have been prominent assassinations of Russian Generals… In Moscow. And assassination attempts on Putin himself…
In addition to the destabilizing Ukrainian counter-invasion of Russia, and escalating strikes on Moscow itself.
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The thing to understand is that none of these have been conventionally advantageous for Ukraine. The Invasion of Russia stretched their forces, the Assassinations if anything probably cycled in younger, more competent, hungrier generals, attacking Moscow Boomer civilians probably gave a massive morale spike to the outraged Russian populace… These strikes on Russia have infuriated Russians and made them call for blood.
This is in many respects THE OPPOSITE of what you’d normally want to do as a smaller country fighting a larger that hasn’t fully mobilized. Usually you want to exhaust a larger force that’s half committed or politically divided, without getting them to up their commitment or causing them to unify. Think of Vietnam… The Vietnamese wanted Americans to get tired of fighting them and get demoralized at the idea of ever “winning”, fight amongst themselves, then wind down and withdraw. If in 1972 Vietnamese terrorists had attacked the Superbowl and killed hundreds of American civilians on US soil… that’s actually one of the few things that could have united American in 1972 or gotten America to commit to another 5 years in Vietnam at that point.
It would have greatly damaged American prestige… Moscow or China might have liked that… But from Vietnam’s perspective where they want America to wander elsewhere, it’d lock in years of misery.
So that’s weird… but weirder has been Putin’s Reaction: Nothing. Basically no counter-escalation. Certainly nothing that’s made Zelensky sweat and hesitate at sending more drones at Moscow.
Indeed many sympathetic commentators both in Russia and the West have been screaming their frustration at Putin that he hasn’t suitably punished these insults to Russian Honor or restored Russian deterrence… Or merely enforced baseline international norms around targeting heads of state, civilians, and Strategic nuclear assets in a non-nuclear conventional war.
It’s not as if Russia lacks conventional options. Kiev is RIGHT THERE. Hell, If the Russians really wanted the Tornado MLRS (Multiple Launcher Rocket System) has a range of 200km, fires thermobaric warheads or White Phosphorus rounds, and could hit Kiev from Russian Ally Belarus…
Without even debating the extent of air-cover, and to what extent Ukrainian Air Defense is intact (or to what extent the US can supply them with interceptors)… Putin has the capacity to firebomb Kiev on the scale of Dresden if he wanted to, from the ground. He’s not lacking in conventional, nuclear, and every other kind of escalatory option.
And yet he’s not escalated… And his retaliations have been as close as possible to the bare minimum he could get away with to not be overthrown for treason.
So what the hell is wrong with Putin?
Has he gone yellow in his old age? Is he weak? Is Russia’s position crumbling? Is Russia on the verge of collapse? Is he secretly blackmailed by the US, Israel, or Brussels?
Not exactly.
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There’s a saying in geopolitics: The Russians play Chess. The Americans play Poker.
And the first thing to understand is that this is quite literally true. DC poker games are incredibly common, and the spell poker has on the American imagination outstrips anything Chess really holds… Many highly educated Americans can’t even play it! by contrast Russians are taught chess in school and it’s always held a spell for them.
But of course this is also a profound statement as to how both approach politics:
The American Presidency has term limits, and the US has 2-year election cycles.
American presidents are constantly looking for fast wins. They’re constantly looking for big things they can go at and grab some political capital and energy… Because the US has 2 year election cycles. If you screw up or don’t take wins where you can get them, then you’ll lose the midterms and have no power to do anything else with your rump lame-duck presidency.
This is where almost every president follows the same formula: Big executive orders to make their base shut up in the first hundred days, and then almost an immediate pivot to DC insiders after 6 months, at which they start rushing a massive spending bill in the first year of their presidency to try and get maximum political capital and checks out before the midterms…
This is also why every president, the second things start falling apart, reaches for some foreign intervention of one type or another… Whilst libertarians might whine that only Congress can declare war, this is a dead letter. And as long a president doesn’t actually try to sign an official Declaration of War, toppling a foreign government is the one thing he actually can do without it getting gridlocked in congress.
Thus American presidents almost inevitably fall into fast paced brinkmanship and high-stakes negotiations both domestic and foreign… around years 2-3… Because they need to either get a clear unambiguous win, escalate to a fight, or pull out and pivot elsewhere as fast as possible. Because you have 2 years, which really is like 2-3 months… Because you need multiples of these wins. And if you lose the midterms, then you’re completely shut-out of your domestic policies so can only try to win a second term or a successor from your party via a foreign war. And because the American empire is so vast and the news cycle and the American people so easily distracted… All these interventions DO play out like poker hands.
DOGE, The 12 Day War, ICE Deportations, Epstein, Venezuela, and the current Iran war… All played out almost completely unrelated to each other as far as mainstream public perceptions were concerned, as if it was a new set of cards every time. And Trump just had to decide how aggressively he wanted to play each hand and how much he wanted to bet on each of them being a hit… He folded on DOGE and ICE in Minneapolis… Called Epstein a “Hoax” (it wasn’t and everyone knows it). Doubled down on Venezuela and Iran.
In the words of esteemed presidential advisor and great American statesman Kenny Rodgers:
You gotta know when to hold ‘em.
Know when to fold ‘em.
Know when to walk away.
Know when to run.
This is where all the “5D Chess” claims about Trump by various “Plan Trusters” is a complete misunderstanding of the situation.
Trump exactly embodies the “Americans play poker” school of thought. He’s maybe the most “Poker Player” president America has ever had.
Trump IS a poker player. He explicitly describes himself this way. He’s made Poker Promos and given “poker lessons”:
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“I guess my life has been a big poker game. And it’s come out very nicely”
-Donald Trump
Trump explicitly describes his career as a series of Poker hands and big bets, and his “Art of the Deal” as an exercise in Texas Hold’em style brinkmanship.
Trump’s rise to power in the 2016 election indeed resembles nothing so much as a poker tournament, knocking out players from the 16 person Republican field with various massive gambles, bluffs, blusters, and statements that changed the entire field, forcing his opponents to lose face, double down, and burn out on the wrong hand… “Low energy” Jeb, jabs at Ted Cruz’s wife, calling the Iraq War a lie/disaster… It resembled nothing so much as an aggressive poker player bullying a host of defensive players more afraid of losing than keen to win.
And he’s been impressively willing to come back swinging and aggressive, even after seemingly devastating defeats that would chasten a lesser player or put them on tilt and at risk of losing everything.
Russians by contrast play chess
And unlike poker where the hands are unrelated… Chess just builds on itself, there are individual chess puzzles, not games, puzzles that are 50 moves deep with every individual decision building on each other and relating and having subsequent consequences.
This directly compliments Putin’s position.
Vladimir Putin has ruled 26 years (since 2000) if you don’t count the cheeky swap out with Mevedev. And he will probably rule another decade. You’ll see western commentators still talking about how he answers to oligarchs or Gangsters… Which really doesn’t appreciate the fact that if you were a senior partner to Putin in 2000 and somehow avoided falling out or getting purged… Ugh, you’d be dead of old age by now anyway. It’s been 26 years. Putin has been slowly consolidating power the entire time… For anyone under about 60, he is the Great Tsar from whom all power flows down and has always flown down… And Russian Male life expectancy is still only 67.
He’s been playing the long-game, classic chess starting with the endgame, for 30ish years… that isn’t to say he’s been playing Conspiracy-tastic Giga-Brained 5d Chess Qanon shadow wars “PQTRIQTS IN CQNTRQL”… He’s playing chess. Not BBC’s Sherlock.
But it does mean he’s on a long time horizon, no 2 year election cycle, decades of runway, and an entire bureaucratic and political cultural built around this chess mindset.
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Indeed The Defining feature of chess is the fact there is no move limit… If you win in 10 moves or 200 moves that’s equivalent. Pros might have a chess timer limiting how long they can think… but if they win after 1000 moves hitting that timer fast enough and not burning through their thinking time… that’s just as good as the guy who got a fool’s mate on the second turn.
And unlike poker or US politics where you have to gamble big or engage in brinkmanship… And the inherent repeatability of poker or the inherent security of the US Geopolitical position, economy, etc. Will rescue you if you lose once or twice…
Russians are keenly aware of their vulnerable position between the bloodlands of Europe and the chaos of Central Asia. Washington DC has burnt once… And that’s just a cute story in a war Americans don’t really remember. The Russian homeland has been massacred dozens of times.
Whereas Americans think of a “Forever War” or “quagmire” as the worst possible thing that can come about from a presidency and American presidents are willing to humiliate themselves or burn entire nations to avoid having an unending unpopular inconclusive Vietnam or Iraq laid at their feet and dragging into the midterms and general election… Russians are willing to accept them as the norm… or at least a not terrible option.
Russia has seen countless rolling decades long frontier wars in their history, and as long as it’s kept to a non-disastrous, or slow and steady simmer… It actually can sort of benefit the Russian state. You get a helpful reformatory/disposal option for criminals and ne’er-do-wells… And the tension of a low level war lets you reform and restructure Russian institutions that are perpetually yo-yoing between being very good, having just had a war, vs. Being corrupt as can be, having gone through a decade or so of peace.
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But to really get a feel for this mindset… You have to look at maybe Russia’s Greatest hero:
Field Marshall Mikhail Kutuzov is maybe one of the most unique national heroes of any country.
He lost or drew almost all his battles. Famously losing several engagements early in the Napoleonic wars and being removed from direct command, only to be brought back in as a chubby old man on death’s door during Napoleon’s invasion of Russia.
He appears in War and Peace as an important character.
His biggest battle was Borodino during Napoleon’s 1812 invasion of Russia… a brutal slugging match outside Moscow against Napoleon that killed almost 100,000 men and decided basically nothing. Then the Russians withdrew before the French advance.
The Epic history Summary of the Battle is incredible:
It was after Borodino that Kutuzov appealed on his Emperor, his subordinates, and the Russian army and state… To do the unthinkable.
They extended their “scorched earth” defense, to Moscow itself. Instead of Reengaging and defending the city, they withdrew, evacuated the civilian population in the setting Russian winter, and emptied Russian prisons.
Napoleon would enter Moscow, only for the city itself to be sacked and burned around him… by the Russians. (Epic History also did Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow)
The Russians would not negotiate. They would not offer terms. And Napoleon, having lost a good percentage of the army getting to Moscow… suddenly realized he had no source of food or provisions for a winter occupation. The French had to retreat with the Russian Winter setting in…. Harassed by Cossacks and beset by ambushes, harassing battles, and brutal choke-points at rivers and elsewhere.
By the end of the retreat, Kutuzov had destroyed the largest invasion force in human history without winning a single decisive battle. Rather he starved, bled, froze, and harassed the Grande Armee to death.
Kutuzov would not live to enjoy his victory. He fell ill and died that April 1813 having seen the Grande Armee’s final retreat but not Napoleon’s downfall.
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I cannot Emphasize enough this IS the Russian Conception of Military heroism, and of themselves.
Kutuzov never went out of style in Russia, despite being a Tsarist Field Marshal the Soviets lionized him during WW2 as a model to look up to and emulate… an example of Russian endurance under invasion as the great ideal of the Russian people.
This is how Russian leaders conceive great military leadership… Not chasing victories. Not landing decisive invasions. Not having knock-out “Blitzkriegs” but rather these long brutal chess games, these challenges of endurance, and ultimately judgement, will, ruthlessness, and misery.
Americans lionize Washington crossing the Delaware, or the decisive landing at Normandy, or Desert Storm… Huge dramatic high intensity shock attacks that break the enemy with surprise, decisiveness, logistics, and overwhelming combined arms fire.
Gettysburg is still the great American battle/tragedy… Because Lee’s Campaign and surprise flanking maneuver across the Potomac north into Pennsylvania is exactly the type of daring decisive massive glorious surprise maneuver that usually works out for Americans… but just barely didn’t for Lee. This is why he’s still lionized as the great American General even over men who won the war.
By contrast American military historians, even of a unionist bent, always flinch at Lincoln and Grant’s embrace of the logic of attrition. That because they had the numbers they should just embrace brutal inconclusive fighting where ever they could… since even with a draw or slight loss, they could replace the men whereas the Confederacy couldn’t.
Americans find that rather unsporting, but more importantly inglorious… You want to win via dominance. You want to show your enemy that you’re better. Thus the American insistence, even where they lose… That the Vietnamese or the Taliban “never won a battle”. That Americans must be the best players on the field, and their politicians and leaders just frittered away the victory that was rightfully theirs.
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The entirety of Russian culture by contrast sees these big glorious dramatic heroic moments as traps. As follies in waiting, as the energy and pique of immature youth…
Russian culture, from pacifists like Tolstoy, to killer like Stalin, lionize Kutuzov… Because he was willing to say NO to decisive battles, and glory, and the demands of honor… And let Moscow burn to maintain his army and deny Napoleon a decisive battle so that he could RUN OUT THE CLOCK.
Very much like Chess… Resisting the temptation of taking a queen or some seemingly favorable violent exchange but which risks leaving you in a fatally weak position.
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That the hardest and most important thing a leader or general can do… Is nothing.
Not take the fight to the enemy. Not counter-attack. Not lead the charge. Not hit back as hard as you can.
But instead to be ruthlessly logical and almost cruel or inhuman in the prioritization of political or military objectives… that you serve your soldiers best by making the right decisions, even if they hate you for it.
That like Kutuzov, in that most Russian of manners, the real job a leader is not ask his men and people to fight and win… but ask them to suffer, endure, and accept the indignities of the correct military decisions not what honor, emotion, or sentimental attachment would have them do.
That if they are howling in rage that they should be fighting… That is a good thing, since they are intact and able to fight and haven’t been wasted on a temptation or bait.
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Now… Who does this sound like?
5D Chess? Or Bad Pattern Matching?
Putin knows Kutuzov’s story. All Russians do.
This is again the pattern of Russian military heroism and leadership that predominates in that country.
Embrace the attrition. Embrace the misery. Endure.
I can basically guarantee you this is what Putin is thinking, and the pattern his mind is going through when he decides not to escalate to some bait or atrocity or provocation by the Ukrainians.
This is the logic of his strategy.
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But is it a good strategy?
Or is he a senile boomer?
Is he pattern matching what he read about a clever old man doing when he was young… Not realizing that he’s not that clever and that this strategy is entirely inappropriate to his current situation?
Young Russian military posters often complain about the “Boomerism” of Putin and their ruling class… Does this strategy make sense? Or are there young officers in the Kremlin seizing in a near Aneurysm, head in hands, whenever some “inspirational” email or speech mentions “endurance” or Russia’s “proud history of resistance” or “holding the line” or “cautious sturdy hands”… or whatever buzzwords are used to justify not letting competent young men just go out there and win.
Is he inflicting death and misery on his young men for no reason?
Which is it?
Would a Russian officer reading this piece nod along? Or did he roll his eyes so hard he snapped his neck at the mention of Kutuzov?
Is “endure” the Russian boomer equivalent of “Pull yourself up by your bootstrap”?
Do young Russians still want their own kids to read Tolstoy? Or has this poisoned him for them? Does he hold the same cultural position as American boomer-lit like Great Gatsby or Tom Sawyer or To Kill a Mockingbird or Handmaid’s Tale or Forrest Gump or The Green Mile… That the young have been left with such disgust they’ll revel at the idea of it falling out of reading such that their own kids and grandkids might forget they exist?
Why the hell would Putin pursue a slow and steady, low intensity, don’t take the bait, run out the clock, attritional campaign… Against a country smaller than Russia?
Is this “endurance” and appeal to history a cope for weakness? Senile madness? Low-T aged cowardice? And institutional decay?
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I don’t think so. There is a logic. There’s actually a very good logic.
Whether it worked out or is working out… I leave as an exercise to the reader. But the strategy, on the face of it… Is very sound.
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Ukraine as a Geopolitical Chess Puzzle
Ukraine is entirely dependent, both militarily and economically, on the Aid of the US and Europe. Ukraine is eternally at risk of exhausting itself in this war in terms of manpower, materiel, money, and just political coherence in a way that Russia isn’t, due to just the size of it’s population and economy. Ukraine on it’s own without American and European money and arms would have lost years ago.
Remember this isn’t an insurgency or Guerrilla war. The battle line is actually almost entirely symmetrical and conventional. Much like World War 1. Where the casualty ratio is ENTIRELY a function of the ability of two symmetrical forces to keep their resources and logistics coming forward. With horrifying attrition should either lose out.
This is partly why I lean towards the Russian casualty numbers… Because Artillery remains the greatest killer in conventional static warfare, and Russia has had a 3 to 1 advantage, rising to even a 10 to 1 advantage for the entirety of the war (and somehow the US and the west still haven’t meaningfully ramped up production)… With even Ukrainian propaganda sites admitting this and celebrating the advantage falling to a mere 2 to 1. (if it did)
Now if you’ve played any video games you know intuitively what a massive thing an artillery advantage is for even short battles lasting a few hours. Across YEARS with static lines, it adds up immensely… And makes simply sitting and forcing the enemy to come to you… to counter attack to try to force you out of their lands, immensely tempting. You force your enemies to trade lives for shells. To die to maintain a position.
And much like world war one… Where the actual battlelines are located really doesn’t matter.
If the Russian Invasion in 2022 had gone better or worse, that would have been a permanent difference of tens or hundreds of miles… but unless Kiev fell, very little would have changed.
The Oil fields of Baku aren’t over the next set of hills. There’s very little either side could capture that would change the actual attritional logic of the war, unless Ukraine had an insane victory on one of their counter-attacks and actually managed to take Mariupol and cut off Crimea (which they almost certain won’t).
Much like ww1 battles where a few hundred yards change hands but thousands of men died… the battles really aren’t over territory, but to exhaust and break the enemy’s numbers, institutional coherence, and willingness to fight.
And in the case of Ukraine, that institutional coherence isn’t even their own… It’s NATO’s.
Putin and Russians say this over and over again, that they aren’t fighting a war with Ukraine… but with the West and NATO, and Ukraine’s just the front… And as far as finances, technology, supply chains, and the rewards being offered to fight… That’s very true.
Hundreds of billions more than the Ukrainian Economy could ever produce for war have been funneled through Ukraine to fight this… And that’s why they’re fighting. Their entire ruling class are getting richer than God off graft and other cashflows from the west. And Ukraine is utterly dependent on the arms flows from the US and Europe.
The beast that Russia is fighting is the American and European economy and international political alliance system.
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So imagine Putin did what a lot of his people seemingly want, he mass mobilized, declared the “Special Military Operation” was over, Declared WAR… And really smacked down the Ukrainians.
Imagine he took everything to the Denipro, or pushed beyond it to Odessa, or took Kiev?
It’s doable…In terms of manpower, no matter your theory of how well or poorly Russian and Ukraine are doing… Russia could flood Ukraine with troops and escalate massively.
But, Weird as it is to say, that wouldn’t really change anything.
So now the battlelines are in Odessa? or the streets of Kiev? Or on the border of Poland?
So?
None of the money or weapons that sustain this war are coming from Odessa or Kiev.
The West Ukrainians will still want to fight no matter how much “territory” (worthless shelled-out dirt with landmines in it that won’t be productive for years) Russia takes… And if Russia takes it up to some dramatic threshold… All that will mean is now Romanians or Poles will be forced into the breach by the EU or NATO in addition to all the mercenaries, little green men, press ganged Ukrainians, and other tricks they’ve used to get men to the front.
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The Russo-Ukraine war… Even in theory… can’t really be solved on the field because the forces that enable it and demand it aren’t anything to do with relatively worthless territory in the Donbass, or obscure sub-ethnicities of Russian-speaking Ukrainians… The West hasn’t spent 300 Billion dollars on the forests and fields of Andriivka, because there’s anything there that warrants a 300 billion dollar expense.
This war is a tectonic grinding of the American/European Globohomo Empire against a resurgent Russia and it’s allies in central Eurasia.
The war was dreamt up in Washington, Brussels, and Moscow, and there it’ll be decided.
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So what’s the optimal Russian strategy given that? What can they do?
On the field? Not much. There’s nothing that can be done on the ground in Sloviansk that’ll stop the Americans and Europeans from sending another 100 billion dollars or the Ukrainians from dragging another 100,000 conscripts of the street.
The optimal strategy…
Is to wait.
Kutuzov.
Solidify the lines… Minimize the cost to the Russian homeland… rest on the artillery advantage… And Wait.
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Americans can’t comprehend this, because America is a country uniquely incapable of waiting. Presidents need wins. They need to win fast Poker Hands, or breakoff and get onto something else.
But Putin’s ruled 26 years, and at age 73, could theoretically rule 26 more.
He has all the time in the world.
And the American empire NEVER has time on it’s side.
Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan… Americans dread forever wars, because they’re inevitably going to lose them on a long enough timeline just because the complexity and instability of domestic politics and foreign politics basically guarantees a humiliating retreat and total loss, at some point, 5-25 years from now.. not because America gets defeated in the field (or not that they’ll admit to) but because they lose their footing elsewhere.
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Putin’s insane Russian strategy… Is to realize that he doesn’t need to win on the fields of Ukraine… Indeed such “victories” would probably doom Russia to getting sucked into a wider war with NATO or various countries in the EU, if not a Nuclear exchange or American deployment.
Instead, he just needed to drag out the war long enough for some other shoe to drop in the American/Euro Globohomo empire… Then as soon as the next 100 billion isn’t coming to Ukraine he wins by default.
Like a Chess-player realizing his position isn’t necessarily good or winnable… But he has 9 minutes left of his timer, and his opponent only has 30 seconds. He doesn’t need to make good moves, he just needs to make moves that prevent a conclusion and forces his opponent to use up time.
In 2023, this was largely hypothetical, and looked like a stretch. in July 2026, this looks like Genius.
America Out of Time
In late 2022-2023, about the time various negotiations collapses, and the long war became apparent… This would have seemed like a long gamble.
Sure Europe wasn’t exactly stable with rising tensions and cracks in the EU between Native Europeans and the Muslim migrants and the Elites who imported them.
America wasn’t exactly stable with the Jan 6th Insurection/“Fed-surection” being very recent.
COVID Lockdowns had recently caused mass protests in Canada and elsewhere, with follow-on tensions.
The eternal threat of a Taiwan War with China, was of course prophesied for the 2020s that would rescue Russia from any resource non-parity…
And American/European sanctions on Russia had already been shown to relatively toothless relatives to Russia’s hard petroleum and natural resources… Whereas all the Covid-era money printing had yet to show it’s damage on the US economy…
But all of this was hypothetical.
The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent… And the American Government can stay bizarre even longer…
Then Oct 7th (Operation al aqsa flood) hit, cascading wars erupted in the middle east… Things you really couldn’t have predicted in early 2023, but of the same scale.
And now the US and Europe in particular are facing a global recession or depression level event with the closing of the Strait of Hormuz.
Already global food production is doomed to shortages and a multiyear crisis because artificial fertilizer (a petroleum/natural gas byproduct) out of the middle-east has collapsed. (Global nitrogen fertilizer production is divided between the middle-east, Canada, and Russia)
Global oil flows are wrecked, and look like they’re getting worse, with an Oil shock probably already locked for later 2026, and probably no price-relief even if the strait opens (various industries and countries have been heavily suppressing demand, which will restart if flows restart)…
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And basically no matter what, Russia has a locked in windfall of Petroleum and natural resource sales whilst America and especially Europe have been locked into a multiyear crisis that will deny them the free cash flow to subsidize Ukraine.
Putin Has Defeated the EU
Since the start of the war the most aggressive pushers of war in Ukraine have not even really been Americans. US war hawks like John McCain, Lindsay Graham, and the Biden Admin liked it… but there was lots of dissent, notably from the Trump wing and the “Realists”… (commentators of the “Realpolitik” school, not the factuality of their beliefs)… Rather the biggest war pushers have been core European leaders of the EU and British crypto-EU leaders like Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer.
The Unspoken force behind the War… the 2014 Euromaiden movement, and open statements that the goal of the war was to collapse Russia… Is that Russia is actually a real Democracy in all the ways EU countries aren’t.
Putin may be Defacto ruler for life… But he’s still standing for elections that are largely MORE fair than the EU’s.
Meanwhile Romanian electoral results have been overturned, Britain with half the population arrests multiples more people for social media posts than Russia, France just imprisoned it’s main opposition leader and banned her from elections, and Germany is eternally threatening to Ban the AFD.
The core values of the EU being that the leftist leadership conspires to prevent any meaningful change to core “Human Rights” policies of infinite migration, infinite pedophilia, infinite pride parades, infinite bureaucracies and NGOs, and infinite taxation of their white population.
All secured through what amounts to a series of suicide pacts, protection rackets, and gay and pedophilic blackmail rings to prevent any internal challenge or individual nation from defecting and offering their population anything resembling responsible government in their own interests…Remember what they did to Romania when they elected someone who wanted peace with Russia. All under the military umbrella and vassalage of the US security state.
And Russia is the Great threat to that. The great exception. The natural ally of all their internal dissidents and a potential security Guarantor if Britain or Germany or Italy or any country in Europe decided they were done with Pride parades, migrant rapists, the Epstein Class, and national suicide… And wanted to stop destroying their country in the name of peace, love, decolonialism, antiracism and pedophilia.
If the eternal panic threat of a FAR RIGHT extremist movement actually showed up and started car bombing and throat slitting pedophile politicians and their migrant allies and pimps… Russia’s the natural faction to arm and fund them, and provide them a third country to train in or flee to.
Russia’s the example of a European country that’s still an independent country. And, given the EU is Russia’s enemy… It’s a natural ally to any country or faction that wanted to become independent again.
It’s the last country in Europe that’s run by white heterosexual men instead of gays, women, pedophiles, and brown foreigners.
And if old school classical liberals and conservatives insist they don’t “see race” or “see sexuality” or “see gender”… You can bet the closeted homosexuals, foreign invaders, and unqualified menopausal women who run the EU certainly do. They see it every day.
And they remember it!
They remember Russia funding communist and leftist terror movements across Europe in the 70s and 80s… Hell half the current EU leadership were those extreme leftist getting funded by the Russians in the 70s and 80s. They know more than anyone what Russia can do to the US-Backed European Vichy regimes.
So the EU and it’s allies NEED this war in Ukraine to continue, or there’s a good chance Starmer and his successors will go the way of Ghadafi and get sodomized to death with bayonets in revenge for what’s been done to white European women and children by the American backed Post-war occupation, the Epstein Class, and The Migrant Rapists the EU foisted on them.
Because the second the Ukraine war ends, the fault line between America/EU Tyrrany and the flawed, but real, countries beyond the EU and American Influence either shift’s East, if Russia collapses, or West, if Ukraine and the EU collapses.
THe Ukraine war will not be the end… as soon as it’s over It’ll be the start of a dozen+ civil wars, dirty wars, ethic conflicts, and national crises.
And now the EU is out of oil.
Russia is net oil exporter. The EU is almost entirely an Oil importer.
Russia has foreign currency reserves… The Euro-states are the most indebted countries in the world.
Russia has been building a coherent national identity people will fight for (though still multicultural in the old Russian-Imperial sense), every poll out of Europe shows there’s basically no country in western Europe where young white men are more likely to answer a wartime draft than shoot or stab the draft officials.
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This is why the Ukraine war has heated up in the past 2 month. This is why Ukraine is (since the time I started writing this piece) started targeting Russian merchant tankers and oil refineries…
Because the Strait of Hormuz closing is the “Something happening” that Putin was gambling on winning the war for him.
That’s the thing that breaks European/American finances and cuts off Ukraine.
That is his Kutuzov moment where he defeats a vastly larger financial and military alliance… by doing nothing.
This is the moment the Europeans and Americans looked down at the chess clock and realized they’re nowhere close to a checkmate with 15 seconds left for their moves.
“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
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Russia, unlike Iran, is vulnerable to a decapitation strike. And this is a card the US (EU, Ukraine, name it) can play at any moment: simply assassinate Putin. The war would end there. In chess terms, the Russians, for some reason unknown, call this a "Chinese draw": the side that gets tired of playing simply turns the board over. Russians don't know how to play team games, and if a grandmaster drops out, there's no one to replace him. The next player will set up the pieces again and begin their own game.
Very insightful.
As I’ve already written in various comments, I found it very troubling, not to say downright stupid, to see our European leaders using what little taxpayer money they have left to fund the destruction of Russian refineries right when the Strait of Hormuz had just been closed.
Now I understand. They’re desperate. The quiet, patient Kutuzov-style Russian strategy might well bear its fruits...