November 21, 2024:
NATO efforts to halt Iran from supplying Russia with ballistic missiles to use in Ukraine are not yet having much impact. Ukraine reports they are still being hit by Iranian missiles fired by Russian forces. NATO sanctions are directed at Iranian airlines as well as key political and military officials. Iran says it will block any further missile transfers and admits that some missiles were sent to Russia in the past.
The U.S. government still bans Ukraine from using American-supplied missiles for attacks into Russia. That may change with the recent election of a new American president. Time will tell. Meanwhile Ukraine is building more of its own drones and using them for long-range attacks on Russian targets including Moscow. The Russian government can’t hide the explosions in and around its cities. Russian media may provide little information but Russians have access to foreign media via the internet and can find out what is going on.
Outsiders can also monitor Russian messages on international apps. The majority of Russian citizens are angry and fed up with the war in Ukraine. That war has brought the average Russian sanctions, shortages and threats from their own government to not criticize Putin or the war. That did not work because Russians realized the government did not have enough prisons for all the people who opposed the war. President Putin’s allies want the war ended because these allies are oligarchs with large holdings in the Russian economy. The war is costing these oligarchs a lot of money.
Putin has another problem. Russia has lost so many soldiers in Ukraine that they have run out of troops. It’s not just over half a million dead and wounded Russians, but several million Russian military age men who have fled the country. Putin tried to overcome that by expanding the age to 50 years old that men could be taken into the military. These older men had more clout, connections and ways to avoid being sent to Ukraine. Putin hired 12,000 North Korean mercenaries, but these are only a stopgap. The North Korean soldiers are more interested in deserting and fleeing to European countries than in getting killed in Ukraine, though they appreciate the video porn available on cell phones their supply sergeants sell to them.
Russian forces continue to gain ground in eastern Ukraine, but at great cost. Ukrainian forces are on the defensive and minimizing their own casualties while maximizing Russian losses. Ukraine doesn’t mind losing territory because the Ukraine front is a thousand kilometers long and the Russians can no longer man it adequately. Ukraine can and does make counterattacks, like the one in August where Ukrainian forces invaded Kursk province and still control over a thousand square kilometers of Russian territory.
Russia is out of everything, including ideas on how to deal with the mess they have created. One Russian operation is still working. That is a Cyber War and blackmail campaign in partnership with neighboring Belarus to carry out sabotage missions in Poland and other NATO countries that are aiding Ukraine. That is not working out because the targeted nations discovered details of the Russian operation and publicized it all. That caused Russia to deny everything and quietly back off.