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Thanks for making the effort to look up the names I provided for you. I presumed that I could count on you to do some basic research. Ukraine is a corrupt state; any oligarch such as George Soros may be wielding far more power than those officially recognized as politicians. Any billionaire who has called Ukraine their home at one time or another can be presumed in the interests of their own self-preservation to be a player in the local political game.

The mistakes in your perception are based mostly from placing importance on meaningless pieces of propaganda intended to shape your point of view and exploit people’s tendency toward confirmation bias. All wars have a propaganda component, this one seems to have an unprecedented amount provided by both sides. This is more of a sign of the times than an indicator of progress by either side.

Is this war going differently than what was expected by planners on the Russian side. Obviously! They were duped by incoherent foreign policy decisions made largely by the Biden administration. None of this would have happened if the Democrats had not been allowed to steal the 2020 election. But have the Russians been losing since last April as you declared in one of your recent posts? That is ridiculous. They have their own goals and measures of success that are unencumbered by political correctness or Western expectations.

Are the Russians anxious to end this conflict... it is hard to say. They have been pulling in 50% more revenue from their exports from less volume nearly all year long. Even our Western European allies have imported 20% more LNG (liquified natural gas) at much higher prices from Russia this year than last. Putin has been laughing all the way to the bank all year long as the West has implemented sanctions that help enrich him and hurt the West.

Putin truly is the “big guy” in Russia and his “cut” is likely much larger than anything that Joe Biden has even dreamed of. When the conflict ends with the damage already done to the worldwide economy, energy prices will drop. This means Putin’s share will drop. This is a perverse incentive to achieving “peace” in the region.

It is admirable that you have made an attempt to research the history of this conflict. Unfortunately sifting through the BS on the internet these days is nearly impossible. To gauge the actual situation, one must look at indicators that sometimes do not seem directly related to the conflict.

This morning while I was writing this, our power went out. We live near the foothills and when we have gusty winds the power often goes out caused by trees and limbs falling on power lines. We and our neighbors are accustomed to this. Within moments of the power going out I could hear generators running all around us. When my wife and I have been sleeping with the lights out, we have often heard generators before we realized that the power had gone out. The noise is an indicator. This year there has been a plethora of indicators that the situation in Ukraine is different from what Western news sources and politicians are telling us that it is. This also includes Wikipedia and other sources that you may believe are impartial sources of historical information.