Putin’s Aura of Invincibility is Shattered
But not within Russia. Not yet.
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The final straw may be the body bags. 200,000 of Russia’s young men and women are bogged down and dying in Ukraine, without adequate food and fuel. They do not know why they are there or why they are killing innocents. My generation in the US sent kids to Vietnam to do the same things and it messed them up for life. And many, too many, came back in those body bags.
Russian control of the airspace has been pitiable, and that infamous 40 mile long convoy outside Kyiv is still immobile and being destroyed in a war of attrition. We hear reports of cluster bombs and hyperbaric munitions, both illegal under international law. It all looks pretty desperate.
Putin this week gave a speech ensuring the mothers of Russia that their children were safe and that conscripts (draftees) would not be used in combat. Only hours later his military backtracked on this and said conscripts were fighting, a remarkable crack in the armor of this self-proclaimed strongman.
On the street, 800 McDonalds stores began closing, causing a rush to get one more meal at these wildly popular American fast food joints. Starbucks followed suit along with most other major Western brands. Visa and Mastercard accounts no longer work. These are highly visible changes that the Russian people can’t help but notice and wonder about. Is this really a war by the West against the motherland?
But where is the evidence of that war in Russia?
We don’t know the actual number of Russian casualties in Ukraine, but it is likely at least ten times the 500 the Kremlin claims. If that number is close, 4000–5000 or more of those mothers are not hearing from their sons and daughters and they are going to start demanding to know where they are.
If the 4000 number is remotely accurate, the Russians will have lost more casualties in two weeks than we lost in the entire Iraq war, a war that lasted years. All this despite a brutal scorched earth policy against civilians, based on the Russian playbook used in Syria.
Russians are in the dark about the extent of what is actually going on. I watched a clip of a Ukrainian who had called his father in Russia and the father refused to hear or…
