Putin's cowardly strategic folly is catching up with Russia

23 June 2026

Background

President Putin has apparently been waiting for Russia's September legislative elections, before altering anything strategic — with regard to how to reform his absurdly restrained, uncommitted approach to the war in Ukraine.

Paul Craig Roberts, Gilbert Doctorow, John Helmer and I have all been critical of Putin's Russia-hazarding spinelessness.

All of us seem to think that the Russian president's lack of vision is likely to result in a nuclear world war, when Russia is finally and definitively forced to choose between being dismembered, or seriously begin fighting back.

I have even implied that the former Soviet Union's cadre of high-ranking World War 2 military commanders would have hauled this traitorous, globalist stooge out of the Kremlin and hanged him.

That so, for having repeatedly betrayed Russia's core national interests to the foreign imperialists, who are actively trying to destroy the Federation.

And now . . .

. . . a coercive finality is increasingly emblazoned in this drone and missile war's clouds.

Ex-pat Mike Jones (of Britain) has been in Russia throughout the Ukraine conflict.

Jones — who is pro-Russia and writes on Substack under the pseudonym, Foreign Agent Intel —has proven himself to be intelligently soberminded and objectively accurate in his reporting.

Today, he said that:

Ukraine’s long-range strike campaign is increasingly targeting Russian infrastructure. Oil facilities, logistics networks and transport routes have all come under pressure.

Whether these attacks achieve major strategic objectives is open to debate, but their impact on everyday life is becoming impossible to ignore.

The same trend is visible closer to the front.

Reports from Donbass describe roads lined with destroyed vehicles and conditions far more dangerous than they were only months ago.

Areas that were once relatively routine to travel through have become increasingly hazardous. New drone technologies are changing the battlefield, creating fresh challenges for Russian forces and civilians alike.

Nobody living here can honestly deny that. Fuel disruptions, infrastructure attacks and the escalating drone war are creating difficulties for ordinary people.

But there is also a growing recognition that many of these problems are the direct result of a conflict that Western governments continue to finance, prolong and expand.

The war has entered a new phase. The battlefield is changing. The pressure on civilians is increasing.

July and August 2026 are yet to come

If I were Russian, and had already seen 200-300 hundred thousand of the Federation's troops killed in more than four years of this strategically inept 'special military operation' — which has not accomplished even one of its announced goals — I would be exceedingly angry.

And if I were Ukrainian, and had seen Putin slaughter at least 1.5 to 2 million of my countrymen — under the pretended reasoning that Putin sees Ukrainians as fellow Slavs and treasures their lives — I would want to murder that rationality-pretending master manipulator.

The moral? — President Putin has run out Time's rope

We will see who hangs on it.

If I were a betting person, I would forecast that many more innocents are going to perish, due to the Russian General Staff's chickenshit lassitude.

In truth, strategic cowardice marks every one of the Axis of Resistance's most powerful nations. (Iran is not a member of that group.)

There is something about wealth that results in moral weakness. It does not matter whether one is pillager or patsy.

Wealth and power pretty consistently breed human scum.

PeteFree.com

Putin's cowardly strategic folly is catching up with Russia