It’s strange to think that someone born on 9/11 is now old enough to buy alcohol. Coincidentally, it was eight years ago, on September 11, 2014, that I had my last drink. If you’re thinking you need to get sober, believe me, it’s something you can do. You’ll be a lot healthier, have money to spend on other things, and you’ll definitely be more dependable to your loved ones.
I don’t like to talk about alcohol or 9/11. But I definitely enjoy watching Vladimir Putin get his ass kicked. I am beginning to wonder if he can survive on Russia’s “throne.”
A day after routing Russian forces in a lightning advance that seized hundreds of square miles and a strategic town in the northeast, Ukraine claimed additional territory on Sunday in an offensive that has swiftly reshaped the battlefield in the nearly 200-day-old war and left Moscow reeling.
Ukraine’s rapid gains in the Kharkiv region have significantly weakened Russia’s hold on eastern Ukraine, which it has used as a stronghold to wage its war since February. Ukrainian officials said on Saturday that their troops had retaken the city of Izium, a strategically important railway hub southeast of Kharkiv that Russian forces seized in the spring after a bloody, weekslong battle.
Putin is going to lose this war if he doesn’t initiate a draft and fully mobilize Russia. But a draft would probably be massively resisted since no one understands his plan for Ukraine or wants to serve under incompetent leadership. It seems like he has no good options, and there must be people plotting his ouster at this point, probably from both the left and the right.
I don’t think anything can be resolved until Putin is gone, and I suspect this view is widely shared on both sides of the conflict. The way things are going for Russia’s armed forces, Putin could be removed at any moment. But what would follow?
We can mark 9/11 as a day in which the Kharkiv Oblast was completely liberated from the Russians. There’s still a ways to go, but there’s reason for hope. Onward.
I was speaking about what comes after Putin to a Russian coworker of mine a month ago or so. She was typically pessimistic: whatever comes next isn’t likely to be better and may be much worse.
That’s a reasonable assessment. We have to assume that anyone who might be a contender for power will have similar illusions of reviving the Russian Empire and will be as hard-line if not more so than Putin. I don’t know much of anything about the inner workings of the Russian Federation’s political system (such that is), but as Anne Applebaum reminded her readers in a recent column, there doesn’t appear to be any known process for succession once Putin is no longer in power. Putin doesn’t appear to have groomed a replacement. So, let’s say he falls out a window in the near future. Who is able to take the helm? My guess is there will be some sort of chaotic power struggle. And with the military apparently in shambles and in-fighting in the Kremlin a bit of a blood sport for a bit, what are the possibilities for some regional leaders to declare their own oblasts as independent nations and then run their own fiefdoms (with nukes, mind you). This could get messy, and we really should be preparing ourselves for some of those possible scenarios.
Oh…here is the Anne Applebaum link I was mentioning:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/09/ukraine-victory-russia-putin/671405/