Another interesting bit of analysis by Perun
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A shift in Ukraine?May 18th, 2026 |
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By his own description, Perun is providing mostly battlefield analysis in this video. But what is really shifting is the strategic end of the strike equation. Ukraine is now having demonstrable visible-from-orbit success repeatedly striking Russian POL & industrial targets: that is where things are shifting.
Which is what Scott Adams was saying a year ago, before his death.
Once Ukraine starts destroying more power and oil infrastructure at a faster rate than the Russians, then it’s a matter of time before Russia is forced to seek a settlement.
Will they honour any settlement? Probably not, but that’s not the point.
Successful dictators don’t lose wars.
For Putin this is a fatal problem.
The summer will be interesting – Russian forces are going to have a hard job winning this war (due to the defenses the film describes), a war that should never have been started. Mr Putin started the war – yes there have been armed clashes between pro Russian and pro European Union people in Ukraine since 2014 – but they were on a relatively small scale, it was Mr Putin who turned it all into a full scale war – he did NOT need to do that, Liz Truss went to Russia in 2022 pleading with the Russian government not to attack – but was met with mockery. And therefore, all the dead, Russian and Ukrainian, are on the head of Mr Putin.
I remember people mocking then Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, and claiming that the war would be an easy win for the Kremlin – those people were wrong, as the vast number of Russian dead testify. Rather than asking Liz Truss the geographical location of various towns – they should have listened to her basic message, do-not-attack, do-not-go-to-war.
Demographically the war may have doomed both Russia and Ukraine – whose fertility rate was already below replacement level. Vast numbers of young men (Russian and Ukrainian) who should have been husbands and fathers, are now rotting corpses – that is your legacy Mr Putin.
I finally watched (most of) it. The message seems to be: there are reasons for very cautious optimism. I hope so. Of course.
OTOH a Ukrainian victory might well boost testosterone in the victors. I think that it would boost mine.
A Russian victory would, i expect, boost Putin’s testosterone, and that of few other Russian men.
Snorri – there are no reasons for optimism on the war. Whether Mr Putin “wins” or whether the slaughter of Russians and Ukrainians continues.
As for the demography of Russia and Ukraine – both were in very serious trouble even before the war, now the position is vastly worse.
From the late 1500s onwards the Christian Slavs managed to drive back the Islamic forces – now looking at modern comparative fertility rates, disaster (eventual destruction) looks inevitable.
Mr Putin (as the late Mr Navalny pointed out) has betrayed the Russian people and betrayed Europeans (and the wider West) as well – and him “winning” the war this summer will NOT change that.
The demographic disaster has already been set in stone.
Eventually there will not be, in any true sense, a Russia or a Ukraine – but then the whole West is dying, including the United States.
In Japan the ancient temples of their civilization are being burned – and they do not mention who is burning them, no more than the French establishment admits who is burning the churches of France.