I've long said that Russia projects a Potemkin Village of military strength and indifference to casualties. The purpose is to demoralize Ukrainians and the West so that Russia can conquer Ukraine before its own troubles expand too much to continue the war. The Russians have turned the propaganda dial to 11.
The war goes on. Russia grinds forward at high cost in selected sections of the front. Ukrainians make Russia pay in time, men, and materiel. Russia proclaims this proves Russia is unstoppable.
Russia bombards Ukraine's energy grid and civilians. Ukraine bombs Russia's ability to sustain combat at the front. Even Ukraine's special forces are active inside Russia. That's nice. And it helps Ukraine.
But the war will be won or lost on the main land front.
Who is the Russian government fooling when even pro-war Russians can see through the facade?
Russian state media is leveraging Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent statements to intensify the false narrative that the frontline in Ukraine will imminently collapse, likely in an effort to coerce the West and Ukraine into capitulating to Russian demands that Russia cannot secure itself militarily. ISW continues to assess that the frontline in Ukraine is not facing imminent collapse. A prominent Kremlin-affiliated milblogger observed that the Russian state media, following Putin’s November 27 press conference, is widely spreading false claims that the frontline in Ukraine is collapsing as Ukrainian forces desert and surrender en masse and leave large areas undefended; that Russian forces will soon drive on Kyiv City; and that Russian forces have already defeated Ukrainian forces and only have to “finish them off.” The milblogger accused Russian state media of fabricating some territorial successes and amplifying Putin’s exaggerated claims, using artificial intelligence (AI) to generate fake videos of Ukrainian forces surrendering, and deliberately targeting social media users. [original emphasis removed]
How desperate is Moscow to resort to this level of deception?
Mind you, I don't pretend to know who will collapse first. I suspect Russia is more at risk but I could be biased by my hope that Russia breaks first. Yet I'm hardly blind to Ukraine's problems. Even if Russia's chances of collapse are higher, the battlefield consequences of a Ukrainian collapse would be far more severe because Russia has the strategic initiative and could more easily discover and push through a broken defense.
It is easy to make straight line projections of a slow-moving war. But the war is fought and sustained by people who have lost nearly three years of their lives with death and hardship. A hard winter is coming and I would not dare predict that the war will reach the four-year mark.
We must do enough to make sure Ukraine isn't the side that loses its will to fight.
NOTE: ISW updates continue here. Also, I put war-related links and commentary in the Weekend Data Dump.
NOTE: You may also read my posts on Substack, at The Dignified Rant: Evolved.
