Putin’s Three Years of Humiliation

The Russian president can’t win his war against Ukraine unless he persuades its allies to betray it.

But Trump is wrong. Zelensky might not have money, and he might not be a brutal dictator like Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping. Yet he does have other kinds of power. He leads a society that organizes itself, with local leaders who have legitimacy and a tech sector dedicated to victory—a society that has come, around the world, to symbolize bravery. He has a message that moves people to act instead of just scaring them into silence.

Today, on the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, stop and remember what happened on the night it began. I’d had plane tickets to Kyiv that week, but my flights were canceled, and on February 24, 2022, I stayed up and watched the war’s start on television, listening to the sounds of explosions coming from the screen. That night, everyone expected Russia to overrun its much smaller neighbor. But that capitulation never came. Six weeks later, I made it to Kyiv and heard and saw what had happened instead: the hit squads that had tried to kill Zelensky; the murders of civilians in Bucha, a Kyiv suburb; the Ukrainian journalists who had driven around the country trying to tell the story; the civilians who had joined the army; the waitresses who had started cooking for the troops.

Three years later, against all obstacles and all predictions, the civilians, journalists, soldiers, and waitresses are still working together. Ukraine’s million-man army, the largest in Europe, is still fighting. Ukraine’s civil society is still volunteering, still raising money for the troops. Ukraine’s defense industry has transformed itself. In 2022, I saw tiny workshops that made drones out of what looked like cardboard and glue. In 2024, Ukrainian factories produced 1.5 million drones, and this year they will make many more. Teams of people in underground control centers now use bespoke software to hit thousands of targets every month. Their work explains why Russia has taken territory only slowly, despite being on the offensive for most of the past year. At the current rate of advance, the Institute for the Study of War estimates, Russia would need 83 years to capture the remaining 80 percent of Ukraine.

Russia doesn’t have the resources to fight indefinitely against that kind of organization and determination. Putin’s military production is cannibalizing his country’s civilian economy. Inflation has skyrocketed. The only way Putin wins now—the only way he finally succeeds in destroying Ukraine’s sovereignty—is by persuading Ukraine’s allies to be sick of the war.

He wins by persuading Trump to cut off Ukraine, because Zelensky has no cards, and by convincing Europeans that they can’t win either. That’s why Putin’s money bought American influencers in Tennessee and probably many other places, too, and it’s why his propaganda supported the pro-Russian far right in Germany’s elections yesterday, along with other pro-Russian parties across the continent. Putin can’t win on the ground, but he can win in his enemies’ heads—if we let him.

1/6 russia is losing the war it started in Ukraine. Only the cowardice of the West can save it from a strategic defeat

2/6 Had anyone been told in March 2022 that the situation would be the current one three years later, we would have all seen it as a massive Ukrainian victory and russian defeat.


3/6 russia won't reach its initial strategic goals, and it was closer to achieving them in March 2022 than it is now. As the initiator of the war, russia faces the pressure of reaching its goals if it wants to win the war.
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4/6 russia has suffered between 600,000 and 800,000 casualties, yet it still only occupies around 20% of Ukraine, down from 30% in March 2022. russia is also still fighting on its own territory and has been unable to push Ukrainians out of Kursk Oblast.
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5/6 russia's economy is facing a tough situation, with a 21% key interest rate that does not manage to stop inflation. The only way russia can avoid a strategic defeat is if the West saves it with undeserved compromises during negotiations.
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6/6 Source:
The Economist - How Vladimir Putin plans to play Donald Trump
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A federal judge has ordered Trump administration officials involved in Elon Musk’s “opaque” Department of Government Efficiency to testify under oath in one of the sprawling lawsuits seeking to block DOGE’s access to sensitive government databases.

U.S. District Judge John Bates agreed Thursday that “very limited” efforts to question officials connected to DOGE would help clarify what exactly the group is doing and whether it poses the risks to sensitive data that government employees fear. Bates’ order will allow unions and liberal groups suing to question four officials: one from DOGE’s White House headquarters and one each from the Labor Department, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

While the bureaucracy-slashing DOGE effort has sparked more than a dozen lawsuits, the order from Bates is the first that would force people involved in the project to answer questions from lawyers outside the government.

Those depositions will be capped at eight hours in total, ruled Bates, a Washington-based appointee of President George W. Bush.

Neither Bates nor the unions and liberal groups that brought the suit specified which particular DOGE members will be questioned under oath. They will be selected by the Trump administration, but must be knowledgeable about the data security and access issues within the agencies at the center of the suit.

Shareholders are using Musk’s own words against him, asking what five things he’s done for them in a reference to his DOGE team’s controversial email to federal employees. The stock dipped on Thursday for the sixth straight trading session.
Tesla shareholders want Elon Musk to get a taste of his own DOGE medicine.

Trump’s government efficiency czar sparked a backlash this past week when he demanded civil servants justify their paycheck by listing five things they accomplished in a week—a tactic he first used to thin the ranks at Twitter.

With Tesla shares down heavily since the start of this year, however, investors are now turning the tables on their CEO. They have taken to Musk’s own social media site X to ask what he’s done for them lately.

“Please share five things you did for Tesla shareholders this week,” celebrity photographer Jerry Avenaim posted on Wednesday, with a graph showing the poor performance of the stock. “Or are you working remotely? Asking for all of us.”
https://x.com/David_Leavitt/status/1894456813946360017

The first Trump FCC tried to give Musk nearly a billion dollars to deliver expensive Starlink access to some traffic medians and airport parking lots. The Biden FCC clawed back most of those subsidies, (correctly) arguing that the service couldn’t deliver consistent speeds, and if we’re going to spend taxpayer money on broadband, more future-proof and less capacity constrained options like fiber and 5G should probably be prioritized.

This reasonable ruling resulted in no limit of manufactured grievance in the Trump and GOP extended conspiracy fiction universe, with right wingers falsely claiming that Musk — who insists he hates subsidies until he doesn’t — was somehow being unfairly victimized by the previous administration......

The length and price tag of Starlink’s new FAA contract were, unsurprisingly, not publicly disclosed. Which is weird for a DOGE figurehead that professes to care so much about transparency:

“The contract comes while Musk is leading efforts to make deep cuts in federal government spending, including staffing cuts at the FAA, and some critics are raising questions about conflicts of interest over his role overseeing government agencies that are supposed to be regulating his businesses.”

......I’d just like to pause for a moment to acknowledge that as somebody who has probably written more about Verizon than anybody alive, it takes a very specific type of shitty villain to have me backing Verizon.....

Rank corruption aside, the GOP is genuinely convinced that Musk is an engineering super-genius who can fix government with a wave of his hand. They genuinely have no idea that this persona was a press-enabled mythology providing cover for a rank opportunist who takes credit for other peoples’ ideas, something the tech press only belatedly discovered during his bungled takeover of Twitter.

So they’re keen on throwing all of their eggs in the Elon Musk basket, fairly oblivious to the fact they’ve given absolute power to a conspiratorial oligarch who genuinely has no Earthly idea what he’s actually doing. So yeah, a lot of this is just corrupt cronyism pretty typical in an authoritarian kakistocracy. But a lot of it genuinely is being driven by rank delusion into Musk’s actual intellect and expertise, which is going to end extremely, extremely badly for absolutely everybody involved.

Right. Because America does not have an official language. Just more hurtful, performance art.

Puerto Ricans worry over new Trump order designating English as U.S. official language

While the White House official didn't specifically comment on how the change would impact Puerto Rico, the order would give agencies the flexibility to decide how and when to offer services in languages other than English. It also states that the intention behind the new designation is “unifying the American people."

Though Spanish and English are the official languages in Puerto Rico, Spanish remains the main language of the island's government and its public affairs. In schools, the established language of instruction is Spanish, but English is a mandatory academic course under the local education system. It's estimated that only a quarter of Puerto Ricans living on the island are fluent in English.

Rep. Pablo José Hernández, Puerto Rico's nonvoting member of Congress, said in a statement that the order "reflects a vision of American identity that conflicts with our Puerto Rican identity."

“There will be no statehood without assimilation, and Puerto Ricans will never surrender our identity. For those of us who seek a union with the U.S. without assimilation,” Hernández said, “there is only one alternative: maintaining and strengthening the current Commonwealth relationship.”.....

In an X post reacting to Trump’s upcoming order, the organization wrote, "As we have said many times, any legislation around #PuertoRico's status must make crystal clear whether a statehood scenario will continue to allow -OR NOT- Puerto Ricans to fully operate our govt, schools, courts -our way of life- in Spanish."

AUSTIN, Texas — President Donald Trump renamed a body of water. Now, Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick says he wants to change the name of a steak.

In a post to X on Friday afternoon, Patrick said a resolution will be filed to rename the “New York Strip” to the “Texas Strip” at restaurants and grocery stores here in the Lone Star State. He noted that Texas leads the nation with around 12.2 million head of cattle.

Patrick floated the idea to Texas Cattle Feeders and Cattle Raisers this week.

“Out of curiosity, I asked each of them their favorite cut of meat,” Patrick posted. “A few said New York Strip. I asked why we didn’t call it a ‘Texas Strip’ because New York has mostly dairy cows. Just because a New York restaurant named Texas beef a New York Strip in the 19th Century doesn’t mean we need to keep doing that.”

According to Patrick’s post, the Texas Senate will file a resolution to make it official. He said he’s asking restaurants to change the name on menus next time they’re printed. He said he’s also asking grocery stores to do the same and hopes it catches on around the country and worldwide.

“In a world filled with serious issues that we address every day at the Texas Capitol, this simple resolution will help better market Texas beef,” Patrick wrote. “That’s good for the Texas cattle industry. The Cattle Associations sure liked the idea.“

During the month of February, Ukrainian forces destroyed the largest number of Russian vehicles since the start of the full-scale invasion, according to Ukraine's Defense Ministry.

In the shortest month of the year, Ukrainians destroyed 3,472 vehicles and fuel tanks, as well as 596 armoured combat vehicles and 331 tanks, the statement said.

In February, the number of combat clashes dropped compared to January: 3,274 against 5,087. Instead, the number of enemy air strikes on the Ukrainian troops' positions and frontline settlements increased from about 2,400 guided aerial bombs in January to 3,522 in February.

The Ministry also sited the General Staff's information on Russia's manpower losses, which shows that the Russian army irretrievably lost 36,570 people in February.