The current strategy of the war faction of Thermidor is to fight the war to the last Ukrainian in order to attrit Russia.
Trump is obviously unhappy with this strategy, but the war faction, Marco Rubio, tell him that Russia is suffering huge enormous stupendous gigantic colossal casualties, so if we keep going just a tiny teensy weeny little little bit longer the Russians will concede better peace terms than they are now offering.
On the other hand hand, if we and Russia keep going at it bit longer, we will reach the last Ukrainian, and the political fallout from the disappearance of a European American client state is likely to be worse the Afghanistan retreat. The war faction strategy is likely to leave egg all over Trump’s face, and may well be intended to do so. Undoubtedly many recent recruits from the Deep State to Maga are chafing at Trump actually doing the job of president. They would much prefer to do that job themselves. “Oh Trump disastrously $@%#& up the Ukraine war, so he should leave this sort of thing to the experts”
The actual casualties on both sides are covered by fog of war, but we have some indicators of the ratio of Russian to Ukrainian casualties.
1. Russians are fighting a war of attrition, where the objectives are to maximise the cost in blood and treasure to the enemy, and minimise one’s own expenditure of blood and treasure. They only advance when they run out of Ukrainians opposing them on the front, whereupon they advance until they find some more Ukrainians willing to form a new front, and they retreat when the situation becomes unfavourable. We see lots of videos of four Russians on motorcycles taking a system of bunkers and trenches.
The Ukrainians, on the other hand, are fighting a war for bullet points in the next Washington power point presentation. In so far as their tactics make any sense, they make sense only in a war of maneuver, and this is not a war of maneuver.
2. Far more shells, rockets, and bombs are landing on the Ukrainian front lines, than are landing on the Russian front lines.
3. There are far more Russians on the front line than Ukrainians, which means that every individual Ukrainian on the front line is getting shot at by lots of Russians, while Russians on the front line are getting shot at by fewer Ukrainians.
4. The Russian army is obviously growing. Despite fog of war, we can see that the Ukrainian army is obviously shrinking.
Under these conditions, Putin is unlikely to offer easier peace conditions, and as the Ukrainian army continues to shrink, is likely to offer harsher conditions.
If Trump accepts current Russian peace terms, there will be a great deal of outrage and indignation. If he accepts even worse Russian peace terms next month, even more outrage and indignation, and if the war continues to the last Ukrainian, he is going to get blamed for that by both the war faction and the peace faction even more.
https://x.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1940515035090243862
This is an interesting interview of someone who I imagine to be a voice of Thermidor. He describes how insanely difficult it is to become an elite warrior, but at some point he says [*Does he say that?*]
Does he say that? I have always found your reports of what people say somewhat strange. I would have allowed this comment through if you had given me a timestamp in the video so that I could check what he is actually saying.
Would the war end if Trump were to accept those terms? My impression is that Western Europe would keep supporting Ukraine to fight to the last Ukrainian.
The Ukrainian Nazis will do what they are told.
By who is the question…
5. Both Ukrainian and Russian sources agree the Russians are massively outproducing war making materials compared to what the Ukrainians can get. Most importantly, this includes drones, the main method of inflicting casualties. Last report I saw was mutual agreement Russia is outproducing by a factor of 6 to 1, and that was probably a year ago. All indications point to the Russian government having extensively ramp up production.