THIS MAY BE RUSSIA’S LAST WAR

How the Tide Has Turned in Ukraine

The End of the Russian Empire

(Fires in Ukraine and Western Russia over the past week. NASA/FIRMS, public domain)

Until now, Ukraine has been fighting a bloody war against a numerically superior enemy with one hand tied behind its back. Despite the odds, it has done better than anyone (including me) expected. Ukraine’s offensive of last summer failed without air support. An overwhelming imbalance in artillery and artillery shells has pummeled Ukraine’s forces on the ground. Yet the “quick victory” promised to Russian soldiers in 2022 has transformed into a war of attrition, with wave after wave of Russian soldiers thrown into a meat-grinder of Ukrainian positions. The front has remained relatively static. Russia’s success in Kharkiv has proven short-lived, and now pockets of Russian soldiers are surrounded, surrendering to Ukrainian forces. “The entire 83rd Airborne Brigade is urgently withdrawn to the rear to restore combat capability,” one observer notes. “There are too many casualties, they can’t fight, there are too many 500s.”

In Russian military parlance, a “code 500” is a soldier who refuses to fight.

The survivors of an entire battalion — that’s hundreds of troops — have been trapped in a chemical plant in central Vovchansk for two weeks, while the Ukrainians have been reducing it to rubble. UK military intelligence has put the Russian casualty rate in Ukraine at 1200 a day in May, which it said was the highest since the start of the war. It also reported Russia’s total number of killed or wounded since it launched the invasion in February 2022 now stood at around half a million.

MAGA Republicans did all they could to slow American support to Ukraine. One result has been an uptick in NATO spending across the alliance. Today, for the first time in a generation, NATO defense spending has risen to cross the recommended guidelines for the alliance, emphasizing materiel with a direct impact on the war.

(Defense spending and equipment expenditures. NATO, Public Domain)

American weapons and financial support are now arriving, with more on the way. The alliance has been abandoning former "red lines," authorizing Ukraine to use Western munitions against targets inside…