No off ramp for Putin as Ukraine burns
This week, as the war in Ukraine raged on, an old Soviet joke made a comeback to the Russian-speaking web.
It tells a story of a Moscow resident who every morning buys a newspaper, carefully scans the front page and tosses it, visibly frustrated, into a bin. Eventually, the newspaper-seller asks the man what it is that he is looking for. An obituary, the man replies. “But obituaries are at the back of the paper,” the salesman says. “The one I am looking for will be at the front,” the man responds.
And there lies the most frightening insight into the current situation: there is no off ramp for Vladimir Putin and no way in sight out of this war.
It is clear that things are going badly for Putin. Russia’s narrative of its newly re-built, high tech powerful army now looks like another Kremlin lie. Russia’s military performance has shocked even the most skeptical analysts. The losses, both manpower and firepower, are enormous.