As a Ukrainian, good! This war should have a long cost to Russia. They are certainly causing long term damage to Ukraine by destroying Ukrainian culture where they can, using rape as a widespread war tactic, and relocating Ukrainian children to Russia “for their own good” (see any recent ISW report for details).

Having said that, the real thing that appears to have happened in this war is that Putin is a KGB stooge, not a military commander. He spent most of 2020 and 2021 in isolation due to concerns for COVID and I believe as a result further lost touch. He is fighting this war and setting up information space in Russia as if this was the USSR fighting Germany’s invasion in WWII, which is the war lore most citizens are familiar with. But obviously that isn’t the case as this is clearly a war of conquest, not defense of one’s own home land. Russian citizens and Putin have more or less struck a bargain that as long as his bullshit doesn’t affect them, he gets to remain in power. But clearly this isn’t the case anymore as military call ups and hard hit economy are having a very real effect on the citizens day to day lives. So the real question is whether this is what will eventually break Putin’a hold on Russia.

Another surprising aspect of this war has been the large community of military bloggers that has developed on Telegram. This nationalist group has an outsized influence on both the Russian overall view of the war and even on the Russian military command. They are often quite critical of the Russian MoD and sometimes of Putin, yet Putin has protected them from consequences of this rhetoric. It appears the Russian information space w.r.t. the war is split into thirds between the MoD communications, the federal news outlets, and the milbloggers and of the three the milbloggers have the most freedom to point out the many problems facing the Russian armed forces in Ukraine. Yet Putin protects them because of the three they are the only ones who genuinely are pushing for annexing what they call “so called ‘ukraine’” due to their strong nationalist beliefs. Basically they are the most ideologically aligned with Putin but also the most critical of his failures. The milbloggers often find cover by criticizing MoD officials and generals in the field instead of Putin himself, and it appears that Purim’s frequent staff shake ups have taken at least some cues from this group. I wonder if a Western information campaign could disrupt this critical component of the war effort.

Lastly, Putin’s main ace in the hole is that NATO is trying to invade Russia and Ukraine was the last stop on their way in. The boogieman of the West is so far enough to get at least some older Russians to believe in the war effort. I have relatives there that are convinced that the war atrocities being committed by Russian AF in Ukraine aren’t real and that it is all crisis actors in the TV and internet footage. But at the same time Putin is definitely showing that NATO could clearly crush the Russian armed forces, nukes aside. Russia apparently still relies on trains to conduct its warfare for example, a practice that went away at the end of the last century for most modernized militaries. Essentially the only thing left in Russia is nukes, oil, hunger, and an out of touch dictator who keeps making military mistakes.