The war is becoming increasingly bloody, yet a broad positional confrontation has persisted for several years. People die daily, but it is becoming harder to talk about it. This is a daily nightmare with no visible military solutions for either side.

There is a separate genre – mocking Vladimir Putin, whose declared achievements have so outpaced the front line that they have reached Sviatohirsk, located about 20 kilometers from the actual location of his troops. However, this anecdote only works once. Putin has long been waging his own war, detached from the real state of affairs. Apparently, decisions are made based on optimistic reports of endless advances. The war is supposed to make Putin happy, so the generals indulge him.

However, reality has intruded upon this intimate relationship between Putin and his war.

Counteroffensive in the Lyman Area

While some were drawing maps in advance, Ukraine secretly prepared and conducted a localized counteroffensive in the Lyman area. Ukrainian forces not only significantly pushed back the front line but also, according to their claims, captured a record number of Russian soldiers in a single operation – 250 men. The presented video materials may not confirm the exact number, but they show dozens of prisoners.

The gap between reports and reality, the layers of lies have become so vast that if the enemy does not announce their plans and achievements, and sources like DeepState do not update their maps, the Russian military leadership and Putin himself will only learn about a local catastrophe after it has happened – when the Ukrainians start reporting on liberated territories and captured soldiers. Until reality presents irrefutable evidence of defeat, Putin and his General Staff will continue to wage war tens of kilometers away from the actual location of their troops.

Such events are a reminder of why a regime like Russia's should not wage war. Elections are much simpler: declare Vitaly Milonov the choice of the residents of St. Petersburg – and he is a deputy again. Declare that the citizens unanimously voted for another five years of war – and who will dispute that? Victory is surprisingly easy when you appoint the winners yourself. You can even know the exact outcome in advance. War does not work that way.

Putin now repeats in almost every speech, like a broken record, that Russian troops are advancing in all directions. He is shown a beautifully colored map. New place names are listed daily. Then, real battlefield reports come in, and it suddenly turns out that Ukraine has launched a localized offensive and captured 250 Russian servicemen. Suddenly, the war with a real armed enemy refuses to obey Putin's statements.

You can re-elect yourself for another term simply by rewriting the constitution. But including someone else's territory in the same constitution will not make it yours. Your troops will also not advance an inch closer to Zaporizhzhia because you have declared it a Russian municipality. In convincing yourself and everyone else of your successes on the front, the leadership has gone so far that, according to official Russian maps, Ukraine's current counteroffensive is taking place deep in the Russian rear. Even someone who understands nothing about the arrows and colored areas on these maps can see that something is wrong.

If your soldiers are taken prisoner on camera a few kilometers from the supposed front line, it is no longer a local setback that happens in any war. It is a clear sign that you have lied not only to everyone else but also to yourselves so thoroughly that you are losing control of the situation. Thus, by the fifth year of the war, this web of lies has grown so large that neither Putin, nor the Ministry of Defense, nor the generals – none of the leadership – has a clear idea of where their troops are and what they are doing. It is hard to imagine a more humiliating situation for a commander-in-chief than the truth emerging so unfavorably. It turns out that not only has there been practically no significant progress over the years, but he himself has become completely lost in his own war. Apparently, even a minor pro-government blogger with a few hundred followers is better informed about the location of troops, their condition, and actions than those who give orders. And the bigger the lie, the more humiliating the confrontation with reality. The worse Putin himself looks. It would have been enough if he had simply lied and exaggerated his successes. Politicians do that. But it seems that others lie to him, and he readily repeats their lies.

False Conclusions

We are not analyzing this to mock Putin. After 27 years, we have clearly learned how sensitive Vladimir Putin is to public humiliation. When he feels humiliated, he can easily take actions he would normally refrain from. Recall the last time, in the fall of 2022, when the war began to clearly fall apart in his hands. Putin had to hastily announce a mobilization, despite the system being completely unprepared. We know that he does not forgive or forget public humiliation. Promises and agreements mean nothing in such circumstances. Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose plane fell from the sky, could attest to this. And, obviously, there is only one way to drown out such humiliation: escalation.

When footage shows Russian soldiers being captured in territory you have long declared your deep rear, you look like a man who has lost all control over the war he started. Therefore, you need to do something that will make this footage irrelevant. As usual, the revenge for humiliation will not be directed at those who caused it. Not at the generals who have been leading Putin by the nose for so long and making him look like a naive fool. Not even at Ukraine – Putin is already waging war against it with all his might. As always, a humiliated Putin poses the greatest danger to his own citizens. Especially now, in this dangerous post-election period.

We will return to this after the break.

We are back. We were talking about how a humiliated Putin poses the greatest threat to his own citizens. This is a dangerous post-election period. At the same time, a number of disturbing events are occurring. First, we must acknowledge that the creeping mobilization – completely lawless roundups of people that began in the Penza region – is now happening across the country and, apparently, is gaining momentum. Second, it is difficult to ignore how firmly the prospect of war with the Baltic states in one form or another has taken root in the official discourse. And the louder they deny this prospect, the more solemnly RIA Novosti deletes a controversial article from its website, the harder it is to shake off the déjà vu of early 2022. Back then, the same people, with the same theatrical indignation, denied any prospect of war with Ukraine.

We must remember that the more clearly the war is falling apart, and the weaker Putin looks, the higher the probability of some extreme action. No one will conclude that failures like the one currently happening in the Lyman sector require less lying. The generals have strong incentives to keep Putin happy, and they will continue to do so. Instead, they will draw other conclusions about how to avoid further humiliation. For example, that the front needs many more people. That bringing in another 300,000 men at once – a figure that French President Emmanuel Macron mentions when discussing the prospect of mobilization in Russia – would almost by itself solve the problem. Through numerical superiority, the Russian army could try to catch up in accordance with the fantasies of its leadership.

Or they will conclude that Europe, which is helping Ukraine with weapons and money, is to blame for Ukraine's successes, and therefore needs more pressure. They could move from individual provocations, such as the drone in Leipzig or regular "Geran" drone flights near airports, to full-scale missile and bomb strikes and actual acts of sabotage. The goal would be to make the cost of supporting Ukraine unacceptably high for its allies. Or they will conclude that instead of a deeply unsuccessful Ukrainian front, which continues to deliver humiliating news, no matter how the map is colored, Russia needs a front where it can achieve a real victory in three days. They could, for example, protect the Russian-speaking population, allegedly oppressed in the Baltic states, and take Narva.

With such an obvious failure, such a gap between statements and reality, our regime sees only two options: try to reverse the failure at any cost, or completely push it out of the news. To do something that will make these 250 captured prisoners, filmed on camera, irrelevant.

A Reason for Revenge

We must remember that for Putin, this war is no longer a political stunt. It is personal; the war has merged with his sense of self. For a long time now, he has been unable to talk about anything else. He remains fascinated by these maps and their endlessly newly acquired colored patches. When reality shoves his nose in his lies, it is not merely a battlefield defeat but a personal insult. Putin himself has listed the names of all these phantom settlements and dutifully nodded in response to his generals' reports. And Putin himself has been made a fool of. Even in the one task that is most important to him, his own cherished endeavor, he proves so incompetent that he only learns the whereabouts of his troops when the Ukrainian command decides to inform him.

The most reasonable assumption is this: the worse things go, and the more often he receives such feedback, the more ferocious Putin becomes and the more willing he is to sacrifice. Not to win the war – in its current form, it fundamentally cannot be won – but to avoid appearing as a weak and incompetent fool to whom any general can feed any story.

This brings us back to the eternal question of what influences Putin and what is important to him. Many tend to think that his decisions are shaped by the state of the economy, budget deficits, or public sentiment among elites or the general populace. But no. Putin is influenced by the clear gap between his ambitions and his capabilities. The realization that war is not an election, nor a matter of declaring someone a foreign agent or an extremist. The more victories you award yourself, the more humiliating the collision with reality will be.

When considering the prospect of escalation and Putin's willingness to take risks, we must look first not at numbers or rational arguments, but precisely at these events that have nothing rational about them. What they contain is humiliation and a reason for revenge.

Until tomorrow!