Desperate to assert control, Russian forces have lost 3,720 troops in 48 hours
Kremlin is hunting for ideas
On November 11, 2024, Russian forces suffered a record loss of 1,770 personnel — only to shatter that record within 24 hours, with 1,950 more troops lost on November 12.
One day before the U.S. elections, I wrote that Putin would throw everything he has at his disposal over the coming weeks.
If I were advising the devil, I would say that this period from November 5th to January 20th is when he should try to unleash everything at his disposal to see how far he can get. Reserves or no reserves, it won’t matter. Russia will continue to attack as much as possible. They will likely employ a sine wave strategy: pushing their resources, losing them, taking a break, and then pushing again.
You might be wondering why Putin is so desperate, even after Donald Trump was elected as the next President of the United States. Trump's team includes several pro-Putin figures, including Elon Musk, who has regularly criticized Ukrainians.
While there are plenty of anti-Ukraine voices within the MAGA movement, the Republican Party itself is highly factionalized. To a large extent, it was the Republican leadership in both the House and Senate that helped set boundaries for the Biden administration. The Kremlin hopes it can sway Donald Trump to its side, but that is far from guaranteed.
Donald Trump needs House Republican votes to advance his agenda. Put simply, if it ever comes down to choosing between protecting his own image or supporting Putin's, there is virtually zero chance Trump would choose the latter. This uncertainty weighs even more heavily on Putin due to Russia's dire economic conditions.
Putin is eager to see sanctions lifted but does not want to appear as if he's bowing to Trump. The sudden ramp up of “cannon fodder” strategy in Ukraine is one way he seeks to assert control. This desperation may also explain why Russian state media has recently plastered photos of future First Lady Melania Trump across the country. They were presented in a tasteless and crude manner.
To add to the Kremlin's unease, Donald Trump has chosen Rep Mike Waltz as his National Security Advisor. Unlike Elon Musk, J.D. Vance, or Donald Trump Jr., it will be Waltz—a combat veteran and former Green Beret with strong anti-China views—who sits beside the President in the White House.
Trump made many campaign promises regarding China, and Waltz aligns well with that vision. On Ukraine, Waltz has proposed a pragmatic approach to handling Putin, reinforcing the impression that these strategies ultimately reflect Trump's own vision. As a Congressman, Waltz brings a political perspective that strengthens his influence.
Here’s what he wrote in The Economist:
The next president must change course. Supporting Ukraine for “as long as it takes” in a war of attrition against a larger power is a recipe for failure. The next administration should aim, as Donald Trump has argued, to “end the war and stop the killing.” America can use economic leverage, including lifting the pause on exports of liquefied natural gas and cracking down on Russia’s illicit oil sales, to bring Mr Putin to the table. If he refuses to talk, Washington can, as Mr Trump argued, provide more weapons to Ukraine with fewer restrictions on their use. Faced with this pressure, Mr Putin will probably take the opportunity to wind the conflict down.
His objective at the start of the war was to conduct lightining strike to subdue Ukraine on his way toward reconstituting the Russian empire. Fighting a costly war for three years to get an outcome in which Ukraine remains indepdendent and more firmly anchored in the West would be a strategic defeat for the Russian leader and seen as such in Beijing. Moreoever, this plan is superior to the current White House approach, which lacks a stated goal but will end in a stalemate with Russia occupying some Ukrainian territory. The current path will take more time, blood and treasure to get there.
That was an extremely smart way of framing it.
Waltz presented the entire idea as if it originated from Trump, anchoring it as Trump’s plan.
Then he brought China into the equation (yay, for China hawks) and criticized the current White House (double yay, for the MAGA base).
As a Congressman from Florida, he does understand the importance of political frames.
His appointment will give ranking House Republicans a clear path to reach Trump. From the framework Waltz has laid out, it’s evident that he is well aware of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his intentions, which provides Britain and France with some flexibility in their dealings with the Trump administration.
Many Ukrainian military bloggers were pleasantly surprised by Waltz’s appointment. Perhaps the Kremlin saw this coming. I still can’t get over their decision to target Melania Trump — that was unbelievably foolish, just monumentally so.
Fear can indeed drive people to act irrationally.
I have no doubt that Team Trump will increase pressure on NATO spending. However, I think it’s reasonable to assume that we are past the “bottom is going to fall out for Ukraine” phase.
Trump is inherently impossible to predict. Strongmen cannot stand to be tied to any notion of weakness. Ukraine is going to be framed in this light for months to years under Trump’s watch. As a comparison, Hitler stopped the bombing on Britain’s RAF just as they were about to lose operational capacity, all because a British bomber got separated from its squadron and bombed Berlin civilians. Hitler had assured the people of Berlin that they would never be touched in this way. So when it happened he reacted wildly, irrationally, diverting resources away from an RAF on the cusp of complete collapse to instead bomb Britain’s citizens in turn. Strongmen are weak men.
This article gives me the first real hope I have had for Ukraine in months. If Walz is this savvy about handling Putin, we are lucky. Putin has been hoping for Trump and hoping that Ukraine would be abandoned by the U.S. But that gives Putin power over the U.S. and power globally. He is facing serious trouble at home as he devotes more and more of the GDP to the war. He has done his best to suppress talk of the conflict internally, but without the North Koreans he will need another call up Russians are getting angry. The war propaganda is wearing thin. And he is showing them no benefit for the sacrifices of people and money. He cannot hope to keep word of these extraordinary numbers of deaths from leaking out. And I doubt Kim Jong Un will see his way to losing much of his army. He boasts of his huge army, but he won’t have one if Russia is killing 2,000/ day. The original deployment was only some 10,000 I believe—that is 5 days worth of cannon fodder.
Ukraine cannot be forced to give up large portions of its territories. On principle this would merely embolden Putin. But as a practical matter, Ukraine was the bread basket of Russia. Putin wants a major and conveniently located food source back in his power along with the strategic location of Crimes which doubles as a favorite vacation location for Russians.