XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, talk.politics.misc, alt.politics   
   From: nowomr@protonmail.com   
      
   OpinionLeonid Bershidsky   
   Putin's Victory Day Brings Evidence of Defeat   
   One year after launching a criminal, fratricidal, ill-conceived and   
   poorly-run military campaign, he has single-handedly set Russia back in   
   every respect.   
      
   By   
   Leonid Bershidsky   
   May 9, 2023, 5:00 AM UTC   
      
   Victory Day on May 9, commemorating the Soviet Union’s triumph over Nazi   
   Germany in 1945, is still the biggest official holiday in Putin’s Russia   
   and the cornerstone of its ideology. This year, Moscow will again   
   celebrate it with a full-scale military parade in Red Square and a Putin   
   speech in front of the troops — still on, despite what the Russian   
   authorities called a narrowly thwarted Ukrainian drone attack on Putin’s   
   Kremlin residence last week (Ukraine denies involvement).   
   Yet Russia has rarely been as far removed from any kind of victory as it   
   is today. Putin’s biggest problem is that hardly anyone, apart from his   
   suppressed, docile population, is scared of him anymore.   
      
   A year and two months into its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian   
   military is squarely on the defensive. After setbacks last fall that saw   
   it lose swathes of captured territory in the Kharkiv region in the north   
   and the Kherson region in the south of Ukraine, it spent the winter   
   digging in along the 1,000-kilometer front line, with offensive action   
   limited to an unsuccessful missile strike campaign to ruin Ukraine’s   
   energy infrastructure and head-on attacks on Ukrainian fortifications in   
   the eastern Donbas region. There, the only more or less significant town   
   the invaders managed to take was tiny Soledar. Although pressed severely,   
   Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut, Marinka, Avdiivka and Vuhledar are still, to   
   varying degrees, holding on.   
   Now, pro-war Russians await a Ukrainian counteroffensive with some   
   trepidation. On Telegram, rumors circulate of a plan to launch swarms of   
   first-person view racing drones, bought up by Ukrainians in China, at   
   Russian trenches. Ukrainian troops are massing at multiple points of the   
   overextended front — a credible threat that suggests they will attempt to   
   cross the broad Dnieper to cut through Russia’s main conquest in this   
   campaign, the land bridge to the Crimea. Igor Girkin, aka Strelkov, a   
   veteran of the 2014 Russian campaign against Ukraine and now a nationalist   
   critic of the Kremlin, has just predicted for the first time in so many   
   words that Russia will lose the war.   
      
   “Even for a ‘dignified, non-fatal defeat’ (in which the enemies drop their   
   plans to completely break up Russia and liquidate its sovereignty) we’ll   
   have to fight long and hard,” Strelkov wrote on his Telegram channel, read   
   by almost 800,000 subscribers.   
   It’s not just the “angry patriots” of Strelkov’s ilk who feel things are   
   not going right. Leaked recordings, allegedly of private conversations   
   involving prominent Russian businessmen, reveal a helpless anger if not at   
   the invasion itself, then at its inept handling by the Kremlin and at the   
   long-term damage inflicted on the Russian business community’s   
   international ties.   
   Ordinary Russians dutifully tell pollsters that they support the so-called   
   “special military operation” in Ukraine. After all, voicing the opposite   
   opinion could be costly, as thousands of court rulings against war   
   opponents show. But when asked more specific questions, a majority   
   displays unwillingness to donate even small amounts of money to the   
   military and anticipates a new wave of mobilization soon — a sign of   
   pessimism about the war’s progress. The combined efforts of the propaganda   
   machine and repressive apparatus have failed to convince most Russians   
   that they have a real stake in the invasion: The concept of Russia’s   
   existential war against the West may be attractive on some level, but not   
   on a personal one.   
      
   Officials in Russian regions, especially those close to Ukraine, are also   
   increasingly worried as drone, artillery and guerilla attacks from Ukraine   
   gain frequency: Last week, two trains were derailed by bombs in Bryansk   
   region, and border town and villages are now almost routinely shelled. In   
   a few such regions, security concerns have forced the cancellation of   
   Victory Day parades.   
   Even the most active participants in the invasion, the commanders of   
   Russian regular, semiregular and irregular forces, are hardly united in   
   the face of the consistently formidable Ukrainian resistance. Last week,   
   Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner mercenary army, appeared in a   
   video against the backdrop of his men’s corpses, threatening to withdraw   
   his forces from Bakhmut unless ammunition supplies from the military   
   increased. Top commanders who Prigozhin said were intentionally starving   
   Wagner of artillery rounds would “eat our fighters’ entrails in hell,” he   
   snarled.   
      
   Though Prigozhin walked back his threats — but not his rhetoric — after   
   apparently receiving some promises from the regular military command, his   
   harsh attacks on the generals don’t reek of confidence in a Russian   
   victory.   
   On the global political stage, Russia has come up short in its effort to   
   build support for an anti-Western coalition of emerging nations in Asia   
   and Africa to counterbalance the resolute Western support of Ukraine.   
   Earlier this month, India and China, Russia’s supposed strategic partner,   
   both voted for a United Nations resolution that, among other things,   
   described Russia as an aggressor and expressed concern about further   
   expansionist actions on its part. Even though China later denied   
   supporting the specific language, the vote, following Chinese leader Xi   
   Jinping’s phone conversation with Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr   
   Zelensky, won’t be interpreted in the Kremlin as a friendly gesture —   
   especially since military aid from China isn’t forthcoming and large   
   Chinese companies are reluctant to supply Russia with the electronics it   
   can no longer buy in the West because of sanctions.   
      
   Another potential ally, South Africa, has warned the Kremlin it would have   
   to honor an International Criminal Court order for Putin’s arrest if he   
   attended a summit there in August; it has quietly suggested that Putin   
   participate via a video link.   
      
   Even the formerly pro-Russian leaders of post-Soviet countries have been   
   acting more independently. The leaders of Armenia and Kazakhstan appear to   
   have forgotten they they’ve recently needed Russian military support in   
   threatening situations; they are openly looking for allies elsewhere. They   
   reportedly accepted Putin’s invitations to the May 9 festivities in Moscow   
   — a few post-Soviet leaders will be the only foreign dignitaries in   
   attendance — but they are mostly hedging their bets rather than   
   demonstrating solidarity with the Russian dictator.   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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