If I meet Putin, I’ll say to him: “So you’ve finally given us back our territory, how much more are you ready to give as compensation money for taking away our land and helping those who took part in the escalation in Crimea and Donbas?” President Volodymyr Zelensky

Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, talked the United States of America into spending 350 Billion Dollars to go into a War that couldn’t be won, that never had to start, but a War that he, without the U.S. and TRUMP, will never be able to settle, President Donald Trump during an address before a meeting in Miami of business executives hosted by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.

I’ve been trying to ignore most of what I read about Trump. But it is rough; the SOB is everywhere. All the time. He has a three-year-old’s need to be the center of attention, and he is good at getting it. Part of Trump’s superpower is that he has no connection with the truth. The more outrageous he is, the more attention he gets. Now his Mexico will pay for building the wall. assertion is Ukraine started the war, and they will pay us for the equipment we gave them. They won’t, just like Mexico didn’t.

Years ago, I wanted to sue a guy. I don’t remember why, but I do know that it seemed like a slam dunk suit, but I do remember that my lawyer said it was an easy-to-win suit but that the guy I wanted to sue was Judgment-proof, meaning that when we won, he didn’t have enough assets to pay for the legal fees, let alone our damages. In other words, we could win, but it wouldn’t be worth it. I think, on a national level, judgment proof is equivalent to conquest proof. Just like Afghanistan – or Algeria, Vietnam – Ukraine is conquest-proof.

If Putin’s Special Military Operation had succeeded, Ukraine would have probably fallen in a short time, like France in 1940. But Putin’s Special Military Operation was stopped by a combination of extraordinary resistance by the Ukrainian military and Russian ineptitude. I keep reading that now this is a war of attrition, as if both sides had the same to lose. They don’t, of course. If Russia loses, they go home. There might be a forced regime change, but maybe not. On the other hand, If Ukraine loses, Ukraine will cease to exist.

Russia is not winning this war; they are losing it. They are losing combatants at unsubstainable rates that are increasing. According to The Institute for the Study of War, At the current rate of advance, it would take Russian forces over 83 years to capture the remaining 80 percent of Ukraine, assuming that they can sustain massive personnel losses indefinitely. Still, Ukraine is not winning, either. They are on the defense everywhere, and partially because of that, their combatants are being killed at a rate much lower than Russia’s. But, they are still being killed, and their cities and infrastructure are being thrashed.

To quote myself from a year ago: All this butchery because of a violent sociopath who is still intent on destroying the whole of Ukraine rather than what? being wrong? being embarrassed? Pretty much all Putin has left is to continue to push untrained, poorly led, and under-equipped troops into the Killing Zone, where tens of thousands are being slaughtered by the better-trained and superbly led Ukrainian Army. According to David Petraeus, former CIA director and US Army general, Putin thinks that Russia can outsuffer the West. He can’t. The West isn’t really suffering that much; Ukraine is providing the suffering, and Ukraine will suffer until the Russian troops go home.