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.
this post was submitted on 09 May 2026
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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...
The last estimate I saw was something like 340,000 Russian casualties
You missed a million! Circa 1,339,190 Russians killed or injured since the invasion began.
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.
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.
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It’s also possible he’s just running out of troops
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.
I also fear that he could possibly use something worse just to win.
I think/hope he knows that if he uses nukes on Ukraine the entire rest of the world will unite against him faster than you can say 'dasvidanya'. Or at least that someone around him understands that...
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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.”
I'm not reading that as him saying Russia are going to stop, but that he thinks that the West will stop providing aid to Ukraine soon. Considering that his Washington puppet is doing their best to destabilise NATO, and Europe in general, he could easily be hoping for aid to be cut.
So he didn't notice that Europe created an alternative NATO and just didn't invite the US?
Nope, he's smarter than that. The entire thing is just bullshit for the Russian population.
Not to mention the loss of Hungary as a spanner in the works of EU response.
Or the 90 billion loan just approved, that should give Ukraine a lot of breathing room.
he could easily be hoping for aid to be cut.
That's just flat out wrong, European countries have shown they are willing to support Ukraine for as long as it is needed.
And have increased aid to cover the loss from USA not helping. There are also long term aid packages like the Swedish Vigen jet fighters that will ensure Ukraine is continuing to strengthen in their military capabilities.
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Putin: "The war will be over soon"
Trump: "The war will be over soon"
At least the liars lies are easy to spot, because they're so transparent.
He can't end the war. He'd have to admit that 500,000 young Russian men are not fighting at the front lines, but are dead and not coming home. The loved ones are going to hang him when they find out.
I'm not following it closely enough anymore to have good guesses as to his real plan now, but I think that it is and always has been safe to say that it is not what he's saying intentionally to the public.
Surely he is trying to do a Machiavelli as usual, to perform in some way that he believes will cause the people he want to do the things he wants them to of their own volition, not realizing they're really playing into his hands.
He seems to have been having more trouble with that than in the past, though. I suspect its harder to pull off when everyone is wise to it.
Fuck, dude, they might hang him even before that, given how ratfucked their economy has become. It sounds like their bond market is just outright collapsing and he just doesn't care.
https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/articles/russian-debt-defaults-surging-quarter-193321893.html
Yeah with him losing because someone inside is gonna get fed up with him enough and convince gods buddy with the guards to let them just finish him off early before old age to save their own country.
Our Ukraine just straight up wins and takes control of Moscow or something idk, that would end it pretty abruptly too yeah
Never trust putin.
A three ~~hour~~ day ~~tour~~ special military operation.
Seems like a perfect foundation for an SNL skit: Gilligan's Island except with:
- Putin as the Skipper
- Lukashenko as Gilligan
- Steven Seagal as Ginger, the Movie Star
- etc
It's perfect for SNL due to how nobody under 30 will get any of the outdated pop culture references
They don't still show Gilligan's Island reruns after weekday morning cartoons and before The Beverly Hillbillies?
I hope he picked his favorite handgun to do what he must.
and let trump inherit it.
That is up to Zelenskyy; not bunker bitch.
It will end with Putler's head on a pike.
So is he leaving?
Wow, coming from him, that's pretty big.
Let's see if deeds follow words. I highly doubt it.
It could be mere opinion chess. Make Ukraine look war hungry in this farce some people call "peace negotiations"
I mean when this all started he swore it would be a three day special operation and his puppet keeps changing wheatear or not the US is at war with Iran
Putin is a lot like his puppet Trump. He can say this "special operation" is over as many times as he likes, that doesn't make it true.
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Started with the war again
Ready to give up, are you?
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