Ukraine War 2024 Review: Putin's Most Epic Disaster Yet
Despite multiple American betrayals, Ukraine spent the past year smashing an all-out grand offensive of astonishing size. Media types have the Ukraine War all wrong... again. This is how Putin falls.
It’s somehow 2025 now, and the Ukraine War is still raging strong. But contrary to the prevailing wisdom of most media coverage in the English speaking world, Ukraine isn’t losing. Putin is.
The Ukraine War could actually end in 2025, but not because Ukraine’s defenses collapsed. Putin’s astonishing military disaster in 2024 reveals the truth: his russian world is running out of gas, running a re-enactment of the Eastern Front that’s tantamount to national suicide.
In the first post of the new year, I’ll review the movement on the fronts between December 23rd and December 31st - a little more than a week of fighting. After, I’ll turn to an assessment of the catastrophic failure that was Putin’s war in 2024. The last section will briefly delve into the ideological roots of the banal media circus that is most English coverage of the Ukraine War these days.
Weekly Overview
Enemy casualties hit another record in December at close to 45,000, exceeding reported orc training throughput by 50%. That’s only what Ukrainian drone operators capture on video, so in reality the numbers are probably at least 10%-20% higher. Of course there’s a “trickle-back” effect as minor injuries heal, so I generally assume that the two offset. But the fatality fraction has apparently climbed from around 33% to over 40%, implying 18,000 KIA.
Ukrainian casualties appear to be between six and ten times less, though a 15:1 ratio has been claimed in Toretsk, where urban fighting has been ongoing for much of the year. An estimated 1,200 or so Ukrainian fatalities a month with probably as many permanently injured is a horrific toll. But wars like this are a numbers game in the end, cruel as that is.
The visible shift in how Ukraine manages the fighting that began under Syrskyi early in 2024 has led to a chunk territory being lost, but in exchange the entire orc machine has been badly weakened. In 2022 and 2023 Ukraine lost over 30,000 killed in action and as many badly wounded while taking out around 360,000 orcs, inflicting at least 120,000 fatalities. In 2024 Ukrainian fatality rates didn’t increase despite an expanded mobilization effort and dramatic intensification of orc efforts visible in a casualty toll of 160,000-180,000 KIA out of 430,000 total cargo 200 and 300s.
What appears to be underway is a classic case in frittering away resources for marginal gains with precious little strategic value. The situation with equipment is much the same. Yet committed to his grand bluff that russia is special and can do this forever, Putin stays the course. For all that, a chunk of Kursk remains under Ukrainian control and the orcs are only just now pushing Ukrainian forces out of Kurakhove - a month later than many solid Ukrainian analysts expected. Can’t say I disagreed.
Northern Theater
Moscow’s effort to collapse the Ukrainian salient in Free Kursk is ongoing, but remains stuck. Thousands of North Koreans were fed into the meat grinder to push Ukraine’s front a few kilometers towards Malaya Loknya, but Ukrainian troops chewed them up and even counterattacked locally to restore some positions. Their training appears to be poorly suited to the reality on the ground, with much of what has been revealed through captured documents suggesting a deliberate attempt to instill false confidence.
It’s always helpful, when sending disposables to their demise, to convince them that they are following rules designed to maximize survival odds. North Koreans are told to have a soldier act as bait so fellow can try to shoot down the drone coming to kill them. That may work sometimes, but as a standard tactic it reads as advice meant to make the soldiers blame themselves for things going horribly wrong.
Many soldiers are now using shotguns, but without a lot of training in hitting a fast-moving target (as someone who hunted ducks and geese a lot growing up, I can attest to the challenge) or aiming assistance devices success will be limited. Shotguns are actually proving to be excellent anti-drone weapons if the right ammunition is used - tungsten shot beats lead - but for a soldier in the field it’s always going to be a last resort. Ideally, a bigger shotgun mounted on top of an armored vehicle can create an anti-drone halo effect.
Regardless of their reckless tactics, the orcs only made a little bit of progress near Makhnovka, approaching the southeastern outskirts of Sudzha, but not enough to pose a serious threat. Ukrainian forces are making skilled use of the terrain to maximize the impact of the troops allocated. Only a fraction of Ukraine’s brigades are committed to Kursk, though they are among the best trained and equipped, and probably only one to two thirds are deployed at once.
The Kursk front continues to look like a testing ground for Ukraine’s new corps structure, with battlegroups sourced from 12-15 brigades rotating in and out. While still a lot to manage, if the structure is done right a corps staff ought to be able to properly track and support that many subordinate elements without too much rigid bureaucracy.
As far as a forecast for Kursk, I expected Moscow’s attacks to have more success. Ukraine’s perimeter in Kursk has scarcely compressed over the past month. Fully repelling Ukraine’s incursion by Trump’s inauguration looks highly unlikely now. Ukraine continues to launch devastating strikes with HIMARS and Storm Shadow missiles in the orc rear, taking out officers and soldiers in garrison. Very classic effort to keep the front as disorganized as possible.
In Kharkiv little has changed - Ukraine’s test run of clearing a space with drones alone hasn’t led to any major shifts, but this isn’t to be expected. Thanks to limited orc assets, Kharkiv has been relegated to secondary importance, effectively subordinated to the Kursk front. Ukrainian force allocations to the area look pretty light, mostly consisting of pure infantry formations. Neither side appears prepared for major moves here, and the weather is an impediment here more than is the case further south.
Eastern Theater
At the moment, Moscow’s efforts in Donbas are best divided into four distinct zones: Kupiansk-Borova, Kostyantynivka, Pokrovsk, and Velyka Novosilka. They are no longer deeply connected in any operational sense: each is increasingly an independent franchise that competes for dwindling reserves. Having to commit some of Moscow’s tougher units to Kursk doesn’t help.
The situation looks best for Ukraine right now up north, where the orc attempt to bridge the Oskil near Kupiansk remains stuck despite holding a small bridgehead on the west bank. But for the past ten days the only orc progress of note came well south of the Kupiansk bulge, the orcs on the Senkove axis trying to creep south towards Borova.
Ukraine holds a tiny sliver of Luhansk province between Kupiansk and the Siversk bulge to the south, a salient that a mind like Putin probably wants to eliminate as a matter of principle. Ukraine has an interesting mix of forces in this area, including Third Assault, which continues to launch local offensives on the southern flank of the emerging orc push on Borova. South of their sector the embattled town of Terny is still holding out on the east bank of the Zherebets, 60th Mechanized Brigade leading a tough resistance there.
The Siversk bulge is another area where Ukrainian brigades are active in launching local counterattacks whenever an orc push runs out of steam. Siversk is a good reminder that there are large chunks of the line of contact where Ukrainian troops fight hard and well with little public acclaim. Yet they are tying down and destroying a lot of orcs that would otherwise be marching on Pokrovsk.
South of Siversk, the Kostyantynivka front is holding up reasonably well despite Ukraine having to slowly retreat from central Toretsk. Moscow is having to bleed for every block, and the road north from Toretsk doesn’t get much easier. The cost of breaking through Toretsk is why I believed well into summer that the orcs would eventually push north from Ocheretyne towards the Kleban-Bykske reservoir. Until the ridges between these two points are secure, one of Moscow’s main supply corridors supporting the Pokrovsk front remains dangerously vulnerable, as will the one it will need to actually lay siege to Kostyantynivka.

Breaking through Chasiv Yar to the east and occupying the high ground between it and Toretsk is also a basic requirement. Here, not only is Ukraine holding firm in central Chasiv Yar despite the orcs finally getting across the canal to the west in force, but there have been counterattacks. An industrial plant in the middle of town has been the site of intense fighting, and despite the enemy’s relentless attacks for weeks Ukraine remains in control.
The situation on the Pokrovsk front has been very tense through the end of December, with the start of Moscow’s assault on this important hub demonstrating a clear desire to surround it before committing to a costly storm effort. Ukraine would likely abandon Kursk before losing Pokrovsk, so if Moscow does start to break through I fully expect a Ukrainian counterattack on at least one flank.
However, so far the orcs have only managed to push a few troops across the gap between the Bychok and Kazenyi Torets rivers, at Vozdvyzhenka on the northern flank. It looks like the veteran 15th National Guard Kara-Dag brigade that put up such a good fight for Selydove with limited support is holding here now. The village itself might fall, but there should be a series of defensive positions to the west, as the road linking Pokrovsk and Kostyantynivka is only five kilometers away and was a target months ago.
On the south side of Pokrovsk, the situation is similar. The orcs are trying to cross a line of reservoirs sitting on the line of what was probably once a free-flowing tributary of the Solona river, towards Kotlyne, five kilometers away. Another highway leading into Pokrovsk as well as a rail line leading back to Dnipro both pass through here, making it an obvious target. The hard-fought 68th Jager along with elements of 155 Mechanized and the tough Bradley-equipped Skala battalion are savaging the orcs while the equally experienced 25th Airborne and attached forces cover the direct road to Pokrovsk.
Had Moscow’s troops been able to develop real momentum after breaking through the Vovcha line east of Pokrovsk this autumn, Ukraine might have faced a true crisis. Instead, Moscow shifted its attention towards Vuhledar, Kurakhove, and finally Velyka Novosilka. While this has substantially reduced the threat of a Ukrainian counterattack on the southern flank of the march to Pokrovsk, now Putin’s puppets are stuck trying to supply an even more difficult effort to surround and take the city, with the full length of the supply line vulnerable to drone and rocket attack.
By splitting Ukraine’s front here into portions centered on Pokrovsk and Velyka Novosilka, the orcs actually did Ukraine a favor. The Khortysia Operational-Strategic Grouping was too big and unwieldy. Breaking it into two distinct corps, as seems to be slowly happening, was always likely to prove necessary.
I fully expect Moscow to make some progress on both sides of Pokrovsk in the coming month, but it will be painful. In more urban fights Ukraine generally relies on different brigades than it uses out in the open fields, so if Moscow does focus on Pokrovsk and Kostyantynivka into spring many of the brigades Ukraine will need to launch a general counteroffensive this summer should get some needed rest. Frontal assaults are likely at some point, but all in all Pokrovsk looks set to hold for a long time.
South of Pokrovsk, at the junction between the Southern and Eastern Theaters, is the toughest front for Ukraine right now. I’m calling it the Velyka Novosilka front because Ukraine’s posture in this area probably depends on how well the southern flank of the grouping here holds over the next month or two.
Ukraine finally made the choice to withdraw from Kurakhove as December waned, troops presently holding out only on the outskirts of the industrial zone and the village of Dachne behind. The valiant efforts of 46th Airmobile, 33rd Mechanized, and 79th Air Assault, along with attached battalions, allowed Ukraine to hang on to Kurakhove for six weeks longer than most observers expected.

This group of forces will likely pull back all the way to the Ulakly-Andriivka-Kostyantynopil area within a couple weeks, as the three kilometer gap between the Vovcha and Sukhi Yali rivers plus the triangular configuration of the towns here creates a natural fortress. A ridge north of the Vovcha - it flows due west in this area - overlooks the towns, and provided it holds out against orc assaults from the northeast and Ukraine can hang on between Rozlyv and Zelenivka, where 37th Marine Brigade is deployed, Moscow’s offensive on this axis may run out of steam in a month or two.
This is where Velyka Novosilka comes in. Moscow’s progress in this area stems from being able to create two flanks that act like closing jaws. That exposes Ukrainian troops deep inside the resulting bulge to frontal attacks, forcing them to retreat. Ukraine stands a solid chance of holding back the orcs trying to create a northern flank thanks to the terrain in this area. The vaunted Magyar’s Birds drone brigade (the thing just keeps on expanding - a true startup!) is here backing up 59th Motorized, 151st Mechanized, and 35th Marine, and the founder claims to be on the verge of being able to shut down a 100km section of front.
Here’s hoping, because that would put the entire stretch of front between Pokrovsk and Velyka Novosilka under the eyes of the brigade’s capable drone operators. And I expect that the Ukrainians fighting near Velyka Novosilka need added support, because for the past few weeks this has been Ukraine’s softest flank, and if Moscow commits enough forces here soon, Ukraine’s hope of stabilizing the line may fade.
That wouldn’t be a catastrophe, but given the ongoing outright assault by the western press on the very idea of Ukraine’s victory, the fewer setbacks the better. With both of the paved roads leading into Velyka Novosilka either cut by orc advances or close to it, in January Ukraine will face the choice of committing reserves to a local counteroffensive under less than ideal conditions or seeing the defense in the area truly crumble. A retreat of twenty or more kilometers to the west would become highly probable.
Under the circumstances, I’m troubled by the apparent reliance on two brigades with a recent history of command issues - 110th and 31st Mechanized - to defend Velyka Novosilka and a stretch of front line to the west along a critical supply route that has apparently been severed. To be fair, the issues could have been rectified over the past few months.
However, given Moscow’s recent behavior I have to expect a devoted effort to test these brigades. My suggestion would be to send a proven and reasonably rested brigade to shore up the defense. If 72nd Mechanized is back in shape, that could work. One of the brigades assigned to Kursk, 21st Mechanized or maybe even 82nd Air Assault, since it’s been there a long time, would be another option.
Southern Theater
Talk continues of orc offensives across the Dnipro or towards Zaporizhzhia; while possible, the risk of anything substantial enough to crack Ukraine’s lines in either area appears low. Moscow has attempted to take control of the Dnipro delta’s islands, but seizing an actual bridgehead remains an exceptionally difficult task.
Ukraine is more likely to try something like this when the orcs aren’t looking. However, the Krynky operation demonstrated that if you can’t quickly bring up bridging units to support a bridgehead seized by surprise, the operation will never be anything more than a raid. While useful, they’re also inherently risky.
Air, Sea, & Strike
It’s been fairly status quo on the supporting fronts - Moscow naturally demonstrated its disdain for western Christian traditions by attacking Ukraine on Christmas. The russian fascist church prefers to believe that real Christmas comes later, because if there’s one thing that will always be true about any monotheist dogma, it’s that the thing is bound to splinter into sects over some petty matter like calendars or what shape of hat is correct.
Overall, the most interesting news has been the steady increase in Ukrainian capabilities in the sky and at sea, even as ruscist air power begins to be strained by the load of nonstop combat operations and the Black Sea Fleet is almost defunct. Ukrainian Magura drones recently shot down a pair of ruscist helicopters using onboard weapons. And Ukraine’s air force has publicly demonstrated how Su-25 close support jets use French Hammer rocket-powered glide bombs, deploying them just like a faster multirole jet would: fly at treetop level to the launch point, pitch up for ten seconds, release, then dive for the deck dumping decoys to confuse any missile that gets a lock.
To all the people who have insisted that Ukraine didn’t need A-10s from the USA because they couldn’t survive - you’ve just been proven wrong. If Su-25s lacking the jammers and decoys that an A-10 pilot has at their disposal can unleash precision strikes on the front line, Warthogs are badly needed in Ukraine, even if they never use their big old gatling guns.
It’s been amusing watching the techno-fetish types desperately ignore the mortal peril that drones and networks pose to fancy kit like the hyped F-35 or any other magical western product. Utterly ignored is the simple fact that you can get the exact same capabilities at a fraction of the cost using drones for front line roles with upgraded Cold War era designs backing them up.
But practical understanding about how to successfully wage war is apparently gone in most of the western world. It’s simply painful to observe the rigid American military bureaucracy already fighting tooth and nail to ignore the lessons coming out of Ukraine. Postmodern thinking is strangling quality science and the policy that depends on it. The incredible inability of western media types and their legions of paid experts to get across how badly Putin is bungling this war is one of many signs.
Putin’s Disastrous 2024: Energy Wasted, Gone Forever
By any reasonable military measure, the ruscist war in 2024 was an unmitigated disaster. That headlines across the world as 2025 dawns have not marked the ongoing suicide of the russian fascist state for what it is represents another black mark in the media’s dismal record of covering this war.
430,000 casualties to seize around 4,200 square kilometers in Ukraine - while losing around 1,300 within its own borders before taking back a bit more than half - is the very definition of failure, even without considering ongoing deterioration in the quality of most ruscist equipment as it gets more and more difficult to restore Cold War inventories. Putin spent the last few months of 2023 and all of 2024 doubling down on a bad bet: that through sheer force of will and firepower he could force Ukraine to submit. If this didn’t work, he hoped that by bluffing that the Muscovite empire can do this forever Ukraine’s allies would cease their support.
As it turns out, his most useful ally in 2024 has not been Iran or North Korea, but the English-speaking media and politicians, particularly in the United States. A narrow cohort of editors and owners who seek to curry favor with insiders are actively shaping coverage of the conflict exactly as Putin is counting on. Fortunately, fewer and fewer people pay attention: sadly, too many politicians and bureaucrats do.
But the physical evidence speaks for itself. Putin has managed to replay the horrific Battle of the Somme from World War One in slow motion, only with a twist: the Germans suffered as many casualties as the British in the process of blunting the Allied attacks back then. In 2024, Ukraine lost only a tenth of the people that Putin’s orc generals burned through. A terrible absolute toll, but the relative impact is what matters most, sadly.
The consequences are only starting to be felt across the ruscist system. A major component of the massive inflation tsunami that has begun to grip the orc economy is the loss of hundreds of thousands of bodies who, even if their contributions didn’t show up in official statistics, still kept wages down. The grey economy is real, and even alcoholics do odd jobs or get their kids to school, freeing up someone else’s labor.
After the recent pandemic, the loss of hundreds of thousands of people to Covid and incapacitation of as many by Long Covid remain the main cause of persistent inflation in most developed countries - though Putin’s war didn’t help, obviously. The USA coped somewhat better with its atrocious pandemic performance mostly thanks to a wave of immigration that offset serious damage to the informal labor market - and the attractiveness of US bonds when interest rates spiked. But inflation is sticking at the elevated 3% range in part because labor remains relatively scarce.
What the Ukraine War is doing to the ruscist economy is like being hit by ten pandemics. Putin’s russian fascism is a literal plague on this Earth. It will take a long time for the impact to full tell, but it will hurt more than leaky sanctions regimes. Military spending is inherently wasteful, an unfortunate necessity that prevents scarce resources from flowing to more productive uses. A tank’s job is to sit in a garage and depreciate in the hope that its existence prevents any need of its intended use. It isn’t a true capital investment like building a robust national telecommunications infrastructure or renewable energy plants. It has no added value; it’s just insurance, albeit in an unusually cool form.
And what gain has Putin brought his country for so much death? Some more farmland in Donbas and a few small industrial areas. In strategic terms, all that the orcs have accomplished in 2024 amounts to virtually nothing. A properly powered counteroffensive could reverse it all in a few weeks. This map gives a sense of what the orcs managed against what it was always pretty clear Moscow aimed to do in 2024.

While Putin absolutely aims to destroy Ukraine, any fool can see that he won’t be able to take Kyiv or even shatter Ukraine’s infrastructure beyond repair now. Moscow has built up a large stockpile of missiles, but Ukraine has certainly been building up stocks of air defense missiles. It is doubtful that Moscow can churn out new missiles faster than Ukraine’s allies can make and ship anti-missile missiles.
Ukraine now fields an array of drones and missiles, many of small size, which will be extremely difficult to defend against as thousands come available. 2025 stands to see hundreds of successful strikes inside russia even if the US won’t allow Ukraine to use ATACMS once Trump takes office. Moscow’s air defenses have already proven vulnerable, with many modern systems destroyed. With at least two precious AWACS jets gone - out of perhaps ten - gaps in radar coverage are making it even harder to stop Ukrainian attacks.
From Putin’s perspective, in purely material terms it is ideal to freeze the war as soon as possible, regroup, then hit Ukraine again in three years. But after the Wagner rebellion and now facing a risk of serious public discontent in many regions by late 2025, Putin needs a victory to trumpet before he can attempt this gambit. Retaking Kursk might be enough, but it remains likely that his stated aim of seizing all of Donbas is effectively binding. That entails taking the Kramatorsk-Sloviansk urban area, with Kostyantynivka being the first major obstacle on the shortest road.
However, throughout the war Moscow has been fighting to form two flanks on either side of the Donbas front in order to avoid a bloody attack into the teeth of Ukraine’s defense. Even with artillery supplies critically low, thanks to drones Ukraine in 2024 demonstrated just how idiotic coming at the enemy head on now is most of the time. Awareness of this drove the entire operational plan for Moscow’s operations in eastern Ukraine back in 2022.
The assault on Kyiv and smaller march on Odesa are both best seen as part of a grand flanking maneuver. In 2022, success in heavily defended Donbas depended on stretching Ukraine’s active ground forces. That and the potential for simply seizing Kyiv as D.C. flew Zelensky away made the initial attack on Kyiv reasonable, if foolish thanks to the message it sent about Putin’s true intentions. And after Bucha and Irpin, no honest person can deny his aim is genocide.
Doubling down on the march to Kyiv after initial assumptions had been proven wrong was Putin’s next major error. Had he shifted to reinforce the more successful operations underway in Ukraine’s south and east, Ukraine might still have lost. By surrounding and destroying Ukraine’s best brigades, nearly all of which were in Donbas, Putin would leave Zelensky’s government effectively naked.
Throughout 2022, Ukrainian troops in Donbas fought prevent this nightmare scenario despite the orcs breaking through on the flanks along the Azov and in Luhansk. As late as September it was conceivable that orc breakthroughs near Velyka Novosilka in the south and across the Siverski Donets south of Izium in the north would end Ukraine’s fight in bitter tragedy.
In 2024, Putin’s orc generals tried more or less the same approach. Exploiting the bloody Wagner seizure of Bakhmut and Ukraine’s dwindling artillery supplies after the disappointing 2023 counteroffensive, six months of attacking Avdiivka, a heavily fortified town dangerously close to occupied Donetsk City, finally pushed Ukrainian forces back.
This allowed Moscow to contemplate a push north towards Sloviansk-Kramatorsk - but there was a problem. Even attacking Chasiv Yar and Toretsk, both essential to hold before going after the first city in the urban Donbas chain, Kostyantynopil, would not stretch Ukraine’s defenses enough. Another attack vector was required. After testing and failing to breach Ukraine’s defenses north of the Siverski Donets river near Lyman, in the spring of 2024 Moscow attempted to open a new front in Kharkiv.
Or rather, re-open one. In 2024, as in 2022, the ultimate goal was to reach Izium and Sloviansk beyond. Two pincers would force Ukrainian troops between to retreat. Once Ukrainian forces were fully engaged, another incursion over the border between Sumy and Kharkiv would either threaten one or both or push towards the Dnipro, perhaps in conjunction with an assault north in the Orihiv area.
First Ukraine smashed the Kharkiv incursion, then it prevented an attack further west by pushing into Kursk, defeating reinforcements Moscow rushed there in detail. This totally unseated the orc plan, making the successes scored west of Avdiivka largely moot. Instead, Moscow began working harder to get across the Oskil river in Kupiansk - something the Kharkiv front was also meant to enable - while charging straight through Toretsk in an attempt to seize both it and Chasiv Yar before the end of 2024.
Moscow also intensified an ongoing effort to break through in the Vuhledar area, the flank of Ukraine’s grouping on the Eastern front. Able to exploit the fact that Ukraine’s supply lines here were longer than at any other point, as well as Ukraine’s lack of an answer to intensive glide bomb attacks, Moscow was able to revert to a tactic which had worked reasonably well in 2022: total annihilation of all defensive positions over time.
Once Vuhledar finally fell, with Ukrainian troops also being pushed from the Vovcha line further north, on the road to Pokrovsk, it made sense to initiate an operational withdrawal to the west as winter approached. Thinking this a sign of wider weakness, Putin made a new mistake: prioritizing seizing territory for the sake of it. Watching another calamitous year unfold, towards the end he tried to boost his raw stats. Vain, that one.
Lacking resources, the advance on Pokrovsk ground to a halt: so did the Kursk counteroffensive. But Moscow kept pouring resources into attacking between Velyka Novosilka and Kurakhove. Apparently intoxicated by the sight of Soviet flags being raised in a few shattered rural towns, Moscow kept on driving into the teeth of Ukrainian defense lines that were never meant to hold for long simply to force Ukraine out of Kurakhove.
This is what a deliberate phased withdrawal under pressure looks like. The goal is simple: make the enemy pay the maximum price for territory you’ve already written off. The payoff moment will come when Ukraine can unleash a well prepared force at a place and time Moscow isn’t able to effectively respond. That’s what happened multiple times in 2022, and will again.
If anyone ever writes a book about the pathologies of bad strategy, the case of Putin in the Ukraine War will appear in most chapters. 2024 was an abject calamity in a military sense, Moscow not even close to the minimal strategic goal of taking urban Donbas and having secured only limited operational wins on fronts that simply aren’t vital.
So why on this good Earth isn’t that story being told? Why does nearly every news article or analysis by a big-name professional adopt the same tired tropes about how Ukraine is on the verge of defeat an must negotiate to survive?
Because the English-speaking media isn’t what it seems. Never has the artificial nature of the social reality declared by pundits been quite as clear as during the entirety of the Ukraine War. That in turn feeds right back into geopolitics: it’s one of the few levers that Putin can still pull to his benefit. He knows that many of Ukraine’s purported allies perceive their relationships with everyone in a self-serving way, and fully plans to use this blind spot to bring about their demise.
Geopolitics And Postmodern Values
Ukraine-USA
At the heart of the problem is the postmodern mentality that infests the western world. Without getting too far into the weeds, what’s basically happened is that a scholarly fad has managed to reproduce itself through the education system, especially in the United States. Mere aesthetic preferences about how everyone is supposed to think about life have been portrayed by a couple generations of educators as scientific facts.
The western world is basically a narrative scheme, a storyline that everyone in it is supposed to use to decide how to live their lives. The values that define it are malleable and impermanent, strongly influenced by whoever can secure the greatest share of public attention at any given time.
Educators themselves trained to reproduce a system they only inherited teach students to read the news, claiming that being informed is a civic virtue - which perhaps it is. But everyone prefers to hear news that caters to their particular concerns, generating markets. Journalists, pundits, authors, professors and everyone else who derives an income from participating in this market is beholden to whoever pays them. Ad-driven news exists to draw eyeballs that advertisers will pay to reach, so tracks general trends and interests. Subscriptions are great for news outlets that brand themselves in a particular way, catering to a certain audience. Government or industry funded media generally aim to remain impartial when it comes to certain concerns, but are content to be wildly biased in other areas.
Wikipedia remains perhaps the best model for producing something resembling universally workable information, and it’s a hybrid involving substantial direct user engagement on a volunteer basis. It also has its own flaws. Of course, even I have my own interest: I hope to sell a book or two to publishers this year. But nothing I write can ever stand if I abandon the ethical commitment to applying the best science that I know to the task at hand: victory in Ukraine. As I’m well convinced that my knowledge base can prevent a whole lot of needless death in the imminent future, I’ve no incentive to abandon this ethic.
Victory in Ukraine is now a prerequisite for achieving anything of value in world affairs. It is the test case of our times, the demonstration of where everyone’s values truly lie.
And the western world, through its reprehensible failure to step up and properly defend Ukraine for over ten years, has proven itself to be little more than a postmodern pyramid scheme. In it, those with the ability to command attention thanks to their wealth, influence, or authority exploit this privilege for their own gain and believe themselves fully justified in doing so.
Postmodern thought is merely dressed-up nihilism blended with secularized eschatological Christianity. Believing that nothing truly exists, reality being a figment of the imagination, what matters in life is the experience of it and nothing more. People are supposed to wander around in wide-eyed fascination of all the shiny things people with a bigger following tell them are important to care about and do. Then they wonder what’s wrong with themselves when that brings no lasting satisfaction. Social media is not the cause of today’s ills, only a reflection of the ethic that has driven the western world since postmodern thinkers reinvented it after World War Two.
If you want to understand the true nature of America and its relationship with Ukraine, look no further than the holiday tradition of serious news outlets reporting on NORAD allegedly tracking a magical fat man in a sleigh drawn by flying reindeer as he brings millions of presents to American children overnight. While I don’t mean to knock a bit of holiday fun, it’s worth recalling how smoothly renowned publications like the Associated Press will slip between talking about Santa Claus and Ukraine’s front collapsing any day now because its soldiers are exhausted.
How is a person who hasn’t been correctly educated supposed to know which article is facetious? Both are written in a certain way for a reason: to serve a market.
The Ukraine coverage market has been impacted by the the way politicians and pundits choose to talk about Ukraine’s fight. As a mere character in a drama that has become stale and repetitive, shorn of novelty or hope of a storybook ending on a set schedule, Ukraine is now treated as an irritant in numerous subtle ways.
This is happening not because science justifies such a stance, no matter how many times some hack like the reliably awful Kofman gets another canned interview to advance his tired brand. It’s straight-up because a lot of powerful Americans are terrified of what happens if Ukraine wins. They will grasp at any argument that sounds good to push Ukraine into surrender.
Reminder: just because someone has a PhD does not mean that they know the first thing about science. Ask a historian to integrate a function sometime. But be prepared to fend off a formal complaint about how that request created a hostile workplace.
American media coverage of Ukraine has been all over the place for over three years because the job of the American news is to generate convenient factoids for partisans to argue about. That’s it, that’s all: this is the function of the market. Americans are taught to recite facts in order to “win” debates, which are always just a popularity contest. It’s considered normal to pretend that the winning side spoke the truth, which is part of why Trump stopped being called a fascist as soon as he won the election. Media types are already scurrying to curry favor, altering their coverage accordingly regardless of what they said about him just a few months ago.
This is how American popular culture works, and why it’s so unhealthy to imbibe too much of it or trust it too far. It centers on a false narrative that functionally gaslights the less-affluent majority of the population - hence the growing backlash to the thing. And rising counter-backlash, as wealthy interests try to reboot the failing national narrative by doubling down on ignoring the inherent flaws in the thing, transforming it into pure religion.
When you get right down to it, a certain note of jealousy is impossible to miss when it comes to American popular culture and Ukraine. Where everything America does seems to crash and burn, Ukraine keeps taking on a much bigger opponent and landing vicious blows.
That’s hard for a postmodern mind to accept, because from early on those raised in a society constructed on such a thin foundation are taught to assume that power is absolute. Freedom from the machine of society is illusory and must be defined in a way convenient for the high priests who make a living telling others how to live. Nothing really changes anyway, so everyone’s job is to find their place, make their peace in a socially acceptable way. A terror of violence lurks beneath the surface, because any incident reminds everyone of how fragile the postmodern delusion is. Question it too far, and the essential violence of the thing itself is revealed: the abyss stares back.
Then an alternative naturally arises: true liberation, as people focus on their own community first and move where they fit. Even if the process is sometimes messy, it’s for the best, like democracy.
While allegedly predicated on individual freedom, postmodernism subverts the individual entirely by forcing everyone into endless navel-gazing contemplation about themselves which wastes energy without bringing results. It’s a grand church of disempowerment - except for those who have enough resources to cope with social scorn campaigns (or just don’t care). The most powerful get to set the rules that wind up governing everyone, as most people eventually become too exhausted to resist. This was the response Putin counted on when he marched into Kyiv: fascism is a mutant form of postmodernism, a surrender to the pure terror of violent power.
For anyone wondering why I’m constantly harping on the west’s deficiencies, this is why. The thing is a deadly delusion, a pure mirage, an abdication of responsibility to act, and there are too many pressing hazards in the world to cope with that require clear, honest science to manage. While paying lip service to western ideals, those who claim to embrace them are usually more barbaric than the worst barbarians. Their endless efforts to push Ukraine into effective surrender is evidence of their true interest: preserving the status quo, even the power of monsters like Putin and his exiled buddy Assad, at any cost.
Just as they are clearly willing to contemplate forcing Ukraine into a bitter peace without hard military guarantees that will count as a victory in Putin’s book, achieving his objective of separating Ukraine from its partners, so will they sell out their own countries in a pinch. The United States of America and its Constitution mean as little to their kind as the collective west they yammer on about. They’d give up any number of states to keep Putin from nuking New York and D.C. Trump only says what Biden lacks the guts to.
The postmodern delusion was shattered in Ukraine when Putin invaded. For some the moment came in 2014, most everyone else in 2022. Then Ukrainians - and anyone else who happened to be there - woke up to discover themselves under attack in an epic example of postmodern lunacy run amok. Putin’s traditional values are sham: he’s a postmodern scam artist to his core.
Ukrainians found strength in their own communities first of all, then branched out to back the broader state. Volunteer groups continue to represent the backbone of Ukraine’s military logistics. Drones were adopted not because the government told anyone to use them, but because Ukrainians self-organized. There is no sign yet that they are unwilling to continue the fight, only questioning how it can best be waged. That’s the real reason Zelensky can’t negotiate away Crimea and Donbas. He lacks the democratic mandate. That’s also why many westerners want him gone, someone seen as more pliable, perhaps Zaluzhnyi, in his place.
Ukraine shows how the saccharine postmodern tragedy finally dies. After it withers away, the work of building something real can accelerate. Better options are emerging everywhere - the key thing is, they won’t look the same from place to place. What’s happening in Ukraine is only the beginning.
Ukraine-Europe
Much as the postmodern Vichy Spirit animates too many Americans, there are more than a few European leaders who are beholden to masters in D.C. or Moscow. Fico of Slovakia and Orban of Hungary are two of Putin’s most fervent tools, but Scholz of Germany is so in bed with Biden that it’s just sad. Once he’s gone after the upcoming German federal elections, however, the UK-Germany-France triumvirate may share a united vision on how to best support Ukraine.
I hope so, because in the next six months NATO members have to get their collective heads out of their rear ends and start treating Ukraine as Europe’s active front line, with the other areas bordering orc territory secondary. Moscow is already engaging in classic shaping operations ahead of broader military operations by escalating sabotage efforts across Europe. It must be presumed that any break in the fighting in Ukraine will automatically generate increased threat to NATO members as Moscow feels less pressure to keep troop numbers high in Ukraine.
As much as the USA owes Ukraine several hundred tanks and a couple thousand troop carriers, so does Europe - even if that means active brigades assigned to NATO contingencies lack gear. If it comes to it, Ukraine will teach NATO how to paralyze any orc ground attack with drones - and more. And besides - who can trust NATO while Trump is in charge? The gear exists - only the will is lacking.
Middle East
As predicted, in the latter days of December Israel bombed the Houthis in Yemen in retaliation for Houthi attacks on Israel. The Houthis will probably shoot back sooner or later. Israel’s war in Gaza continues to kill innocent people without freeing any hostages from Hamas, but that’s probably not the point any more. The Hezbollah ceasefire appears to be holding, at least.
Everyone in the region is probably waiting to see what Trump does at the end of the month. Iran is almost certainly on the verge of having enough fissile material for a nuclear device or three, something Israel and the USA will likely decide is intolerable. An interesting situation, to say the least.
Syria is starting to get quieter, thankfully, and Moscow’s evacuation from its bases there continues. An orc ship sank en route to assist in another case of russians being bad at navy stuff. Ukraine has moved quickly to establish relations with the new government in Syria, likely to help accelerate Moscow’s withdrawal. In short, things are surprisingly okay in that tormented land. Good luck to Syrians in the new year.
Pacific
Fortunately it’s been fairly quiet on this side of the world. China’s naval buildup continues apace, and I fully expect Beijing to lure Trump into some kind of confrontation in the 2026-2027 timeframe. I would.
I was entirely correct about Biden being tested hard in 2021 by American adversaries after the ridiculous American freakout over the January 6th riot at the Capitol. First came Putin, then the Taliban, and after that Putin again - and China decided to show the world it can blockade Taiwan thanks to Pelosi’s pointless political trip there. Nobody is afraid of Trump any more. When he talks about doing deals, Beijing and Moscow hear selling out Taiwan and Ukraine.
Concluding Comments
430,000 casualties to seize around 4,200 square kilometers is not by any means sustainable. And while the struggle is obviously bitter and costly, Ukraine is steadily building up the capabilities required to take advantage of Putin’s poor gambling skills.
That this isn’t the story most people writing about Ukraine want to tell right now is a potent sign of where their interests truly lie. A bitter fact of the Ukraine War since 2014 is that it only happened at all because Ukraine was betrayed by a western world ruled by its own class of oligarchs who will sell out anyone to maintain the oh-so-profitable status quo.
If you want to truly understand what’s happening in the world today, don’t put too much faith in journalists, historians, or international relations experts. The business model most have chosen to embrace deliberately mystifies the science of human systems to disempower as many people as they can.
The goal: a captive audience. Same as in any cult.
But the war in Ukraine is not some squabble over territory. It isn’t the sort of conflict that can be safely frozen in the hope that one or both sides will change their fundamental position down the line. It’s unlike any conflict since the Second World War, and so classical approaches to managing it are bound to fail - these were built after the last Great War to prevent another nightmare like it.
The Postwar Order has totally collapsed thanks to the USA’s brazen refusal to honor its obligations under the Budapest Memorandum or the true spirit of NATO. Putin’s empire is already effectively at war with the alliance, launching sabotage operations and threatening strikes. Pretending otherwise is a fatal error. Will an attack that doesn’t kill Americans be covered under Article Five if Putin threatens nuclear retaliation? Virtually no one in the western media ecosystem and certainly not the US federal government will cop to the gravity of the situation.
Words don’t win wars, obviously. But as a scientist and writer, they’re the weapons I’ve got. In 2025, I will continue to work to cut through the media noise and help people around the world understand what it will take to bring about Victory in Ukraine.
That dream is closer to becoming reality than ever before. The marathon is in its last stage. Nothing about 2025 will be easy. But enough evidence has fallen into place over the past year to confirm my standing theory that Ukraine has a plan to win this thing, and it’s playing out as it must.