The drone and missile attacks on deep Russian infrastructure, especially oil refineries and shipping facilities continues to damage the Russian economy and its warmaking capacity. For example, Russia had suspended the sale of gasoline to foreigners, denoting a shortage that forces the Russians to choose between revenue to sustain the war economy and shortages at home, probably generating insurrections.
Meanwhile, Russian aerial attacks on Ukrainian facilities continue unabated, causing intended effects, plunging countless numbers of Ukrainians into darkness and unheated dwellings in the dead of winter. The Russian attacks are indiscriminate, or actually quite discriminating, intending to punish civilians and break the Ukrainian will to resist.
So these two nations are in a foot race to avoid exhaustion before their enemy. Russian weakness is that it has been exposed as a pathetic, corrupt and feckless conventional warmaking foe, on a path to bankruptcy. Ukrainian weakness comes from its limits of manpower which to some degree they have compensated for with ingenious innovations in drone warfare.
At this time of American abandonment, Europeans, whom many here ignorantly accuse of fecklessness, have manned up and supplied Ukraine with money and material with which to wage their valiant fight for survival. The Ukrainians themselves have developed missiles and drones at scale that are on the cutting edge and have changed the nature of warfare forever. They have proven that they fight well above their weight.
The Trump administration, in contrast, has traduced Ukraine, its president, stopped providing weapons, threatened to withhold vital intelligence, and converted to a war profiteering role by selling arms for use in Ukraine. It is time this administration provided Ukrainians with Tomahawk missiles to disrupt Russia's oil patch and force Russia to the table.
All that being said, the administration deserves credit for tightening the sanctions and especially for seizing tankers in Russia's shadow fleet. These moves will hasten Putin's willingness to negotiate in good faith as his treasury drains and even his manpower reserves diminish to the point of political resistance.
As the structures around Putin tighten, the danger for him personally increases, the danger to us of a nuclear spasm increases as well. That risk must be borne or we will be forever victims of nuclear blackmail
