Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

World

Op-Ed: Rout, ridicule, and all the rot in Russia are biting holes in the future too

Windbags don’t win wars.

Artillery usage in the Ukraine war is depleting Western stockpiles of ammunition
Artillery usage in the Ukraine war is depleting Western stockpiles of ammunition - Copyright WanNaiks Gallery/AFP Handout
Artillery usage in the Ukraine war is depleting Western stockpiles of ammunition - Copyright WanNaiks Gallery/AFP Handout

Windbags don’t win wars. All the belligerent bombastic babble of the last few months is now an apt epitaph to a lost war. The sheer scale of reversals equates to the level of ridicule.  The ridicule equates to the rot in modern Russia.

The Ukrainians are now on the rampage against a Russian military which has few options but to dodge their attacks. Combat-level information is being dictated by Ukraine. The tactical situation is whatever the Ukrainians are doing at any given minute. The war is wherever the Ukrainians say it is. That’s how out of control the Russian army is anywhere in Ukraine.

The Kherson front is cracking steadily in multiple places. The Russians are plugging holes, losing ground, losing even the appearance of tactical coherence, and they also look like they’re getting cut off yet again in some places.

Mobilization isn’t looking good. Russian conscripts are expected to buy and bring their own gear including boots, helmets and body armor. These untrained troops, if they can ever get anywhere near Ukraine with Russian logistics, are expected to do what regular troops can’t do.

Russia’s Wagner Group  is reportedly hiring criminals direct from jail, another idiocy. These troops will be way too hard to manage, dangerous to anyone near them, and quite likely to just wander off with guns and nobody dumb enough to try and stop them.

On the ground, it’s now a sprint back to safety for the Russian forces. The Russians are constantly getting out of threatened encirclements. That’s pretty funny, because the Ukrainians simply have to show up on the Russian flanks to start a stampede.

The Ukrainian capture of Lyman, well behind Russian lines a couple of weeks ago, is a case in point. This was the supply hub and fulcrum for a now-ancient attack on the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, which they were never going to take anyway. Now, Lyman is back in Ukraine, and the Ukrainians could actually threaten Luhansk from the east, across the supply routes to Russia.

“Who, us?”

The noises from the Kremlin’s drunks, Krokodil advertisements and sycophants are becoming whiny and plaintive. Now, the same people who supported the war are critics. They’re now military and geopolitical geniuses in the opposite direction, according to them. Everything should have been done differently. Things should be done better. The army is to blame for everything.

(This is why autocracies don’t work. Sycophants are by far the most untrustworthy people in history, and autocrats are always surrounded by them. They’re also self-inflicted liabilities, invariably corrupt, and totally unreliable.)

These people didn’t comment on the unpaid troops, tanks falling apart, massive casualties or anything else. Now they’re heroes, again according to them. They are fearlessly telling the truth to people who’ve known all about these problems for months.

Some of the people who know the problems are still alive on the front line. It’s not news to them, either. Russian troops are supported by delusions rather than facts, let alone any sort of substance. These troops know there’s nothing behind them but hot air. Is it any wonder they’re running?

Sounds nice, sure, but there’s another problem. The hot air and lack of substance lead all the way back to Moscow. The domes of the Kremlin might as well be root vegetables. The oligarchs have spent decades vegetating and making money. They have no idea how to fight a war, let alone win one.

What they do well is to infuriate the Russian military at all levels. The troops aren’t being paid. That may be because they can pay border security in Russia to let them desert their way back home. (About 100,000 roubles, according to gossip)

The equipment catastrophes obviously aren’t being solved and are clearly endemic. There’s a strange lack of action or even basic information from the rear and support forces. The Russian air force has basically vanished. The Russian navy is silent.

These forces may not have much left to fight with, even if they felt like fighting. Logistics, if they exist, may or may not know where their own troops are as the Ukrainians advance. This is dustpan and brush level, and it’s getting a lot worse.

Behind the lines is nothing. The future may be nothing as well.

The blame game has very rapidly replaced any pretense of conducting a war. The situation is irrecoverable, and the various rich Russian rodents know it. There’s no talent. There’s no military Tchaikovsky, no political Dostoevsky, no logistics Peter the Great.  Just idiots, and too many of them.

The future of Russia is looking like a massive great hole, dragging everything and everyone in to it. The Russian people are used to hardship and misery, but now they can’t even be credibly on their own side. That’s new, and dangerous.

Who’s going to put this mess back together? Who can? Putin can’t. He’s seen as the cause of the problem, and definitely not its solution. He put his personal credibility on the line on February 24, 2022, and it’s gone. The FSB is definitely not the KGB. It can’t produce a new Putin, and there’s no demand for one.

There was a lot of talk about “existential threats” to Russia when the war started. This existential crisis was entirely self-inflicted. The existential problems are very real, and look like they’re coming to the boil. The crisis of credibility is now unavoidable, and it’s getting worse by the hour.

Russia started the war with an obsolete mindset. The obsolescence extended to its military, tactics, and doctrines. These fossilized ideas could never have worked any more than the rotting equipment and fossilized tactics. Even the imagery was faded and fatuous. A vague image of 1945 was the best Russia could do.

This isn’t 1945. It won’t be 1945 any time soon, either. That world no longer exists. When it’s a contest of babble vs bullets and bombast vs body counts, guess who wins? The raging Red Army has been replaced by the ridiculous Rotten Army. The Soviet Union, Stalin, and Stavka have been replaced by Vlad and the Venal Vacuous Vermin.

Wars tend to linger after they end. When the shooting stops, the real problems start. The world’s psyche was scarred badly by World War Two. This war is bad enough to leave long-standing scars, social and human. It is regional, not global, but it won’t stop when Ukraine wins.

The next tragedy will be inside Russia itself. What the hell are they supposed to do when it ends? The military is effectively destroyed. The government has lost credibility even with itself. The economy is a graveyard.

The human scars are obvious. Nobody knows what the actual death toll is, but there are a lot of maimed people going back to Russia. You don’t see too many fountains of optimism about the future of Russia, do you? Nor do the Russians. That’s what’s coming, and it’s coming in a hurry.

____________________________________________________

Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.

Avatar photo
Written By

Editor-at-Large based in Sydney, Australia.

You may also like:

Social Media

Wanna buy some ignorance? You’re in luck.

Tech & Science

Under new legislation that passed the House of Representatives last week, TikTok could be banned in the United States.

Life

Platforms like Instagram and Pinterest often suggest travel destinations based on your likes and viewing habits.

Social Media

From vampires and wendigos to killer asteroids, TikTok users are pumping out outlandish end-of-the-world conspiracy theories.