I don’t have a narrative, it feels like a stalemate...
Perhaps but the financial costs of the war in Russia is mounting and Ukraine is hitting military sites, tankers, radar, even high value aircraft, oil refineries, oil distribution channels with ever decreasing resistance as Russian air defences are failing (or perhaps, were never that strong in the first place).
There's something wrong in Rome when you pull out tanks from museums and you send your troops to war on motorbikes (and bicycles) and agricultural vehicles for tending livestock with plastic roofs (called Golf carts by the Ukrainian troops) and call yourself a superpower. I actually think Putin is deluded. There's something wrong when you seize the assets of Oligarch's and send them to prison and you fire over a hundred officials since the war began.
Napoleon succumbed to distance, then winter. Hitler succumbed to resistance, geography and winter. Russia will succumb to it's own geography - it's impossible to guard because it's so big.
There is an estimated 500 ships in the shadow fleet, all ageing vessels which are getting more and more expensive to insure, to maintain, to run, to man and whose owners are less and less eager to transport Russian oil. Oil is Russia's life line and it's being severed at source and in transit.
Even in the Russian media, banks are increasingly concerned about the sinking value of the Rubel, inflation, higher rates of income tax and debt. Couple that with the lowest, knock down prices of oil which is not yielding nearly what the Russians need to fund the conflict, never mind the increasing debts. Russian industrial complexes tied (often coercively) to Russian military contracts are going bankrupt. The owners of these industries have syphoned off monies to an extent that has been wholly detrimental in delivering these contracts. The govt. is also no longer paying competitively. Russia is finding recruitment harder and harder as they don't have the incentives, the coffers are drying up and there isn't an endless supply anymore as the black stuff is getting harder to deliver.
Eminent economists are talking about Russia's financial situation. globally. This is not just propaganda.
Modi will get cheap oil for a while, China will keep funding and supplying but even they will have a limit. North Korea sent troops in only to be killed and tactically, things got lost in translation.
Europe and the 40 countries that support Ukraine make up a formidable body.
Ukraine is getting money directly from the coalition of the willing and those monies are funding home grown defence hardware and drones. There is a regiment almost entirely made up of American veterans. There are an estimated 3000 of them fighting in Ukraine.
(oh, and 3000 Brits).
34,000 Russian deserters
7400 AWOL
No age limit for voluntary sign ups
Average age of a Russian soldier is estimated at 38 to 40. At the start of the conflict, it was 25.
