It is easy to criticize the Russian military. It's so clearly incompetent, corrupt, and wasteful that the idea of Russia as a near-peer force makes sense only if we consider Rwanda, Chad, or perhaps Haiti as peers. But... while it's easy to see how inept Russian forces are, we have to accept that they still occupy 99.5% of the territory they captured in the invasion of 2022 and did ultimately capture Bakhmut despite the horrific cost. Regarding Avdiivka, Russia has succeeded in driving Ukrainian forces off the all-important mound and are likely to assume full control over the coming weeks. This will make defense of Avdiivka infeasible, resulting in another Ukrainian loss.

We in the West forget that Russians regard people and equipment as disposable. Sankt-Piterburg was built on the bodies of more than 300,000 serfs and in WWII 27,000,000 Russians died. More than half that number died needlessly, but from a leadership perspective, who cares? The objective was ultimately achieved.

When we understand this fundamental attitude at the top of the leadership, we can see that the West's continual failure to grasp the obvious means Ukraine is likely doomed. Allowing Russia to fight on its own terms - a grinding war of attrition the West has no capacity to counter - was so painfully stupid that although the Russians can win many prizes for incompetence and grotesque stupidity, First Prize surely goes to us in the West because we've ensured that even a nation fighting for its very existence will ultimately be extinguished. We've always sent far too little, far too late, and never had any kind of meaningful plan.

And so, for all the losses Russia has suffered and surely will continue to suffer until Ukraine runs out of ammunition sometime next year, Russia will ultimately prevail. While we in the West will gawp at some other spectacle and pretend it was all inevitable, instead of realizing how useless our "leaders" are and how pathetically inadequate our societies have become.