It’s all going rather well really.
In the course of one year and 21 days, Russia, the global nuclear superpower with the second-largest army in the world, has managed to lose a large chunk of the conquered Ukrainian territory, shifting its focus to the battle of the century in Bakhmut, a city in Donetsk Oblast that is home to 73,212 inhabitants.
But that’s ok, no need to be judgmental here because right after Bakhmut comes the great conquest of La Manche and the capitulation of Portugal’s capital in order to fulfill the ultimate vatnik’s dream: the Russian world from Lisbon to Vladivostok.
This sounds all very silly now — but only because Ukraine has shown immense heroism during this war from day one, stopping the Russian army which seized major cities like Kherson in the early days — only to lose some of them in mid- and late 2022.
A lot has changed in the nature of the Russia-Ukraine war since last year. NATO dropped the bizarre argument of defensive vs. offensive weapons, people stopped taking seriously Russia’s nuclear saber-rattling, — not least thanks to Dmitry Medvev’s alleged alcohol addiction — and Ukraine launched successful counteroffensives.
Most importantly, Russia finally demonstrated what it really is: A rogue mafia state with a poorly-equipped army and the ever-elastic red lines. I’ve lost count of the Kremlin’s red lines — and I won’t even bother to look them all up for one simple reason: they don’t matter.
The Kremlin is no suicide squad. It may take inspiration from Joker and Harley Quinn — but the way it executes its masterplans resembles far more Austin Power’s Dr. Evil endeavor to make billions instead of trillions than the ambitions of Batman’s archrivals.
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov’s reaction to Poland and Slovakia’s decision to donate their MiG-24 jet fighters to Ukraine only serves to underscore how elastic — read non-existent — these red lines are. He simply reiterated that nothing will affect Russian “special military operation’s” goals and promised to destroy them.
Possibly barehanded if Putin asks him to.
Unless the masterstrategist has joined his morally corrupt friends by then the late Slobodan Milošević and Ratko Mladić, the duo responsible for genocide in Bosnia. One in hell and the other one in the International Criminal Court’s prison cell. For the time being, that is. Later, all three will meet up in the same boiling-hot environment.
So yes, all going is well. To plan and what’s important — seamlessly.
Well said-once again⚡️