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By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with [2]
It’s a brave king who fights on after losing his arms and his legs.
It’s a foolish king who asks his army and his people to believe in the certainty of swift victory and then requires them to pay the costs of attrition.
Or is it the other way round — the lionheart who promises blitzkrieg and instead gets protracted and permanent war; the fool who keeps fighting after his adversary has cut off his limbs?
President Vladimir Putin’s Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, his Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina, and his special negotiator with the Trump administration Kirill Dmitriev are telling him that it’s now too late, too long, too expensive for the special military operation on the Ukraine battlefield. They say he must either cut the war short by armistice on the enemy’s terms; or the Russian people must pay for the attrition by mobilization of the young, by taxation of the poorest, and by cutting the budget deficit with the destruction of demand, real income, and investment in economic growth.
In response, the General Staff and Admiral Igor Kostyukov, head of military intelligence, tell Putin that if he gives the word, they will unleash such a continuous salvo as to remove the Kiev leadership; cut all power, water, telecommunications, and transport so that the Ukrainian state can no longer function; drive the Ukrainian forts and forces from the Donbass; and compel an armistice on Russian terms in just three months’ time.
Putin’s answer is to agree to both with a combination of half measures – half from the first faction; half from the second. This is neither brave nor foolish. There won’t be a word for it until the evening of September 20, when the votes are tallied and published for the elections to the State Duma.
In the meantime, in the new podcast with Jamarl Thomas we discuss the four strategic mistakes arising from these half-measures, as Russian sources now acknowledge them — and the strategic outcome they make inevitable:
Strategic mistake No.1 — neither by attrition nor by decapitation, can Russia win its war aims – demilitarization of the territory to the Polish and Romanian borders; and denazification of the regime from Kiev and Lvov to Rzeszów. This is because the US and NATO intend to keep up the permanent war on Russia. Replacing the limits on land forces, artillery, armour, rockets and missiles of the Istanbul draft treaty of April 2022, the combination of Ukrainian, American and European development of drone numbers, surge capacities, range, and firepower were not even counted for limitation then [3]. They cannot be counted now because they extend across all of the NATO states.
Strategic mistake No. 2 – winning the hearts and minds of Ukrainian voters may be achievable by Russian military operations but they don’t count. The Kiev regime will sacrifice them at the front or across the border, repressing whoever and whatever opposition remains. Killing them or exiling them has made, will make, no difference to the sustainability of the regime. The cuts in direct US financing for the war by the Trump administration have been and will be offset by NATO financing, weapons co-production, and integration of Ukrainian warfighters in NATO commands, bases and plans. American and European hearts and minds can also be won over but they are now equally impotent at changing the warfighting policies of regimes from Greece to Finland, Ireland to Estonia.
Strategic mistake No. 3 — de-nazification is a myth for Americans, Europeans and Japanese. Even if Vladimir Zelensky were replaced [4]by Andrei Biletsky, the Azov commander, or Kirill Budanov, the current presidential office head and former GUR chief, the US and NATO don’t care if they are fascist, any more than they cared ninety years ago that Adolph Hitler was fascist. The target was then, is now, and will remain for another hundred years of war — Russia.
This [5], by the way, is the reason Poland and Israel will put up with the current glorification of the Banderite executioners of hundreds of thousands of Poles and millions of Jews during World War II.
Strategic mistake No. 4 — Putin is now in command of the destruction of the Russian economy for the benefit of the financial sector and the resource export sector – that’s to say, the commercial and state banks, the Central Bank, and the oligarchs. The outcome is a budget deficit which can only be funded by state borrowing, windfall profit taxation, or by cuts to social welfare, industry and regional support; and protected by the repression of the criticis and their means of communicating through the internet. When the alternative is mobilization and militarization of the economy, Putin believes he can preserve political equilibrium.
Strategic outcome — this is permanent war at high profitability for the oligarch-controlled economy without industrial recovery, plus corruption and intensifying repression; a pause for Russian rearmament without the financial means to match the escalation of US and NATO capacities. In this future, President Xi Jinping, Putin’s strategic friend, is not unhappy; Iran, North Korea, and Cuba, Russia’s strategic allies, must fight on — almost alone.
“I believe this is mostly correct,” a military source in a position to know comments, “except that making Ukraine unfit for anything except bare subsistence existence has not yet been tried; nor has going after the likes of Biletsky. They [Banderites] are not that hardy, not at the top, and not at the bottom.”
Another Moscow source, also in a position to know, says: “The question has been asked: so what if we have Sarmat, Zircon, Oreshnik? So what? There is no answer. Only that we should talk to the Americans and the Americans alone because they are our equal. But the Americans have cancelled everything and stopped talking a decade back. Faced with this reality, there is only one choice and that is to fight on until a compromise can be reached. My understanding is [Putin] wants an end to war before the Duma elections and declare some victory. Otherwise he will lose.”
Click to view or listen [6] to the podcast, first broadcast on Thursday.
[7]Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKAwHzfcYbc [6]
Here is some of the evidence referred to in the discussion:
RUSSIA’S WAR AIM – DEMILITARIZATION OF URAINE AS OF JUNE 2022
[8]Source: https://understandingwar.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Fact20Sheet20Istanbul20Protocol20Draft20Agreement20of20April20152C2020222028129.pdf [3] Assessment from the US and NATO perspective, published in June 2024: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/15/world/europe/ukraine-russia-ceasefire-deal.html [9]
THE “STALINIST” ASSESSMENT OF PUTIN’S ECONOMIC POLICY AS “NONSENSE”
[10]1st left: Senator Dmitry Rogozin can be followed here [11]. “The problem of Ukrainian strikes on facilities in the Russian regions will increase. In Ukraine and for Ukraine, a new generation of long-range weapons is being created, and the main question is not only whether the United States, Germany or France will transfer its cruise missiles. There is another scheme: the creation of an industrial long-range strike system. Politically, it is more convenient than direct supply of missiles from NATO arsenals” -- https://t.me/rogozin_do/8474 [12] “Germany took a gigantic step towards its involvement in the war with Russia, today signing with the hand of its defense Minister Boris Pistorius an agreement with Ukraine on the production of attack drones on its territory with a range of up to 1.5 thousand kilometers. They will fly to targets in Russia.The Germans are somehow involved in the aggression against our country. Their participation will lead to the internationalization of the armed conflict and its transformation into the Third World War, which threatens to perish all of humanity. The Germans are a very restless people. History teaches nothing of it. Apparently, a final solution to the German issue will be required” -- https://t.me/rogozin_do/8461 [13] For background and Rogozin’s past and future political stands, read this [14].
2nd left: Mikhail Delyagin, Deputy Chairman, Duma Committee on Economic PolicY – follow in this English dubbed interview broadcast [15] in April 2026.
Centre: Sergei Glazyev, head of the Secretariat of the Union State of Russia and Belarus -- follow his Telegram critiques and speeches at https://t.me/glazieview/7932 [16] “The ignorance of the Central Bank's leadership prevents the creation of domestic credit for the development of the economy and condemns it to external dependence. The damage from this ignorance is already about a hundred trillion undeveloped products and two trillion dollars of capital exported to unfriendly countries.”
Right: Nigel Gould-Davies, a former Russian intelligence analyst at the UK Embassy in Moscow, Foreign Office in London, and UK Ambassador to Belarus. Now a US and British think tanker, he was targeted for a street beating in Chita in 2007 [17]. In a paper published on May 18 last, he called Delyagin and Glazyev Stalinists. “Noting that a pre-1939 capital investment rate of 50% of GDP allowed the Soviet Union to prepare for war, [economist Valentin Katasonov] commented, ‘Today, we are conducting a military conflict, but there is no economic mobilisation. A 22% accumulation rate is a path to economic weakening. By comparison, in China, it is at 40%, and they are not at war.’ “ Click to read the full report [18].
WHAT THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION AND THE NATO ALLIES ARE SPENDING FOR THE UKRAINE WAR – EXCERPTS FROM THE PENTAGON INSPECTOR-GENERAL’S REPORT FOR JANUARY THROUGH MARCH 2026
[19]Source: https://media.defense.gov/2026/May/18/2003933281/-1/-1/1/OAR_Q2_MAR2026_FINAL_508.PDF [20]
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[24]PURL= Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List
[25]RUSSIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY LIST OF EUROPEAN PRODUCTION PLANTS FOR UKRAINIAN DRONES
[26]“According to available information, on March 26, 2026, the leadership of a number of European countries, against the background of increasing losses and a worsening shortage of manpower in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, decided to increase the production and supply of UAVs to Ukraine for strikes on Russian territory. A significant increase in the production of UAVs for the Kiev regime is planned due to the expansion of financing of ‘Ukrainian’ and ‘joint’ enterprises located on the territory of European countries for the production of attack drones and their components. We regard this decision as a deliberate step leading to a sharp escalation of the military and political situation on the entire European continent and the creeping transformation of these countries into Ukraine's strategic rear. The implementation of the scenarios of terrorist attacks against Russia announced by representatives of the Kiev regime using allegedly ‘Ukrainian’ UAVs produced by Europe leads to unpredictable consequences. Instead of strengthening the security of European states, the actions of European rulers are increasingly dragging these countries into war with Russia. The European public should not only clearly understand the true causes of threats to their security, but also know the addresses and locations of "Ukrainian" and "joint" enterprises producing UAVs and components for Ukraine on the territory of their countries” -- published by the Russian Defense Ministry on April 15, 2026 -- source: https://t.me/mod_russia/62686 [27]