Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts (no Iran/Israel war).
Author: Ian Welsh Page 2 of 410
#SorokaThe hospital is located between two major Israeli military sites: the IDF’s main intelligence headquarters and a central command facility, both of which are situated in the Gav-Yam Technology Park. These installations reportedly serve as critical hubs for Israel’s cyber operations, digital command systems, and military intelligence infrastructure (including IDF C4I and C4ISR systems). While the hospital sustained shockwave damage from nearby blasts, it was not directly hit, Iranian reports emphasize.
Sororka is the primary hospital for military casualties, I understand, but it wasn’t targeted. It got hit in the blast.
Now, of course, for Israel to be complaining about a hospital attack is ludicrous. Wikipedia has a list of Israeli attacks on Gaza hospitals. There are dozens.
My post on the initial attack on Iran noted how serious Mossad penetration was. What’s interesting about Iran’s missile attacks is that they seem to be prioritizing intelligence sites even more than strict military ones. They know their weakness and are working on it.
Iran has mainly been going after Israeli intelligence in the last couple of days: Mossad and 8200 bases throughout the country, from north through center to south. This seems to be their main focus now. I have no way to assess hits and damages, but these are large, extremely expensive, highly prized targets. They know where everything is – and if you remember the Hezbollah drone videos from a year ago, you can guess how accurate their information is.
Iran also has high-resolution satellites in space – this is Israel’s first war against an enemy with such capabilities. Israel has not reported a single IDF casualty since this war began, but tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians work in those places and in the other big bases that have been attacked.
Meanwhile, estimates are that Israel has less than two weeks left of interceptor missiles. If the US sends everything it can spare, well, that’s maybe two more weeks.
This is entirely a race between Israel’s ability to destroy missile launchers with its aircraft, and Iran’s ability to keep launching missiles. The math is that simple. As an aside, Iran should be priority-targeting Israeli air fields alongside air defense.
And Iran has only begun to use its better missiles.
12 interceptors vs 1 Fattah-1 pic.twitter.com/rUezFPTBGm
— Dr.Snekotron (@snekotron) June 18, 2025
I don’t know how the math is working. Israel is sending its cops after Israelis posting video or pictures of attacks. Iran has shut down most outgoing internet. This makes sense for both sides, no reason to let enemies know how successful their attacks are.
Iran has also told its citizens to get rid of WhatsApp and Instagram, as both are easily hacked. Going forward, I’d suggest that all countries need their own OS and their own social networks, hosted in their own countries, at a minimum. China has this. Android and IOS are extremely vulnerable, no matter what apps you’re using. As I’ve been writing for years, carrying a cell phone is carrying a bug, tracking device, and surveillance camera with you at all times. (The best OS for privacy right now appears to be Graphene, which only runs on the most recent Google Pixel phones, I believe.)
As you’ve probably heard, the US is moving three aircraft carrier groups to the Middle East. It’s not clear if the US will join the war. In fact I doubt anyone knows if it will. Even Trump couldn’t tell you, because he changes his mind so often.
Absent the US getting involved, I put the odds in Iran’s favor, but it’s not a strong bet. It’s simply too hard to tell the actual situation. Some claim Israel has complete air dominance over Iran, others say that’s not true, and I don’t know. Likewise, lots of claims are made about how many launchers have been destroyed, but there’s no reason to believe either side on this. Attack volumes from Iran are way down, but is that because of strategy or capability? If it’s capability, they’re sunk. If its strategy, maybe not. It’s quite conceivable they’re holding back a lot as they degrade AD and force the Israelis to run through their AD missiles.
Do bear in mind that Iran has the simplest advantage: It’s much larger than Israel, has a much larger population, and it is an industrial state which has the ability to build its own weapons. China is not going to intervene militarily, but I’m sure they’ll sell Iran as much cheap materials it needs to build more missiles and drones. China has the cheapest and most extensive supply network for both.
The elephant in the room, of course, is that if Israel decides it is losing, it does have nukes, and if any country in the world other than US is psychotic enough to use nuclear weapons, it’s Israel.
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I wavered between writing another Iran war update and this article, so I’ll say a few things about the Iranian war. There’s evidence that Israeli intelligence networks in Iran and elsewhere are being compromised fast. It appears that:
In simple terms:
Israel’s attack on Iran exposed a hidden network. For 25 years, India’s RAW and Israel’s Mossad have worked together using Indian tech workers across the Gulf as quiet access points into sensitive infrastructure. This network runs through millions of Indian… https://t.co/zkJRVuSoPx
— Thomas Keith (@iwasnevrhere_) June 17, 2025
That India, a Hindu/Brahmin supremacist state which is increasingly treating its minorities the way Israel used to treat Palestinians before it went full genocidal, is allied this deeply with Israel is not a surprise. That they were willing to flush their intelligence network down the drain for Israel shows that they’re as stupid as the US.
This will, of course, lead to Indian tech and guest workers being unwelcome, and a massive crash in foreign earnings sent back to India.
Meanwhile, the US is sending vast numbers of planes and supplies to the Middle East. Only B-2 bombers can deliver munitions powerful enough to actually crack Iran’s underground nuclear enrichment. Trump is screaming “unconditional surrender,” the propaganda operation is in full echo of the Iraq war, and it certainly looks like the US is going to enter the war, though Trump is so fickle that nothing is certain until it happens.
Still, my guess is that TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) rankles with Trump, and since he’s too gutless to stand firm on tariffs, he’ll start a war.
Likewise, as Bush Jr. understood, war-time Presidents are popular. Trump’s polls are atrocious, and he will expect a rally around effect from being a war President to repair them and save him in the mid-terms.
Now, to the larger picture. A US war against Iran, combined with Ukraine and all the munitions sent to Israel, means that the US will not be able to directly fight China or Russia for years.
The non-secret weakness of the US military is how little munitions they are able to produce, a weakness which extends throughout NATO. Western militaries are expeditionary forces, even the American one, intended for fighting non-peer adversaries who are expected to collapse quickly. This means that production of war materials is low.
For example, the US produces the following quantities of air defense missiles every year:
- Patriot: 500-550, expected to go up to 650 by 2027 (the rate of increase is itself pathetic.)
- SM-6 (Aegis naval AD): 125-150 a year
- SM-3 (Aegis again): 20-50 a year
- Stinger (man-pad AD, important in Ukraine): 600-700 a year.
- Sidewinder (short-range A-A): 1600-1800 a year
- THAAD (Air ground for intercepting short- to medium-range ballistic systems; Israel uses these, Ukraine doesn’t): 50-100/year
Numbers for offensive missiles are similar:
- Tomahawk missiles (sea-launched vs. ground targets): 68-100/year
- JASSM missiles (long-range precision cruise missile): 200-300/year
- Javelin anti-tank (man-portable): 1,200-1,500/year
- MGM-400 ATACMS (ground-to-ground, launched from HIMARS and MLRS launchers): 50-100/year
- Hellfire (short-range air-to-ground, laser-guided, launched from helicopters): 500-1000/year
Exact numbers are hard to determine for obvious reasons. Stockpiles of most of these missiles (but not all) have been drawn down vastly throughout the Ukraine and Israeli-everyone wars. If Iran is attacked, multiple years’ worth of production will be used up.
This means that China will have complete dominance in the their part of the Pacific, definitely around Taiwan and the first island chain, for years. Indeed, by the time the US re-stockpiles, China will be so far ahead in numbers of missiles that it will be hopeless, and that’s before we get to the fact that China can replenish stocks much faster than the US.
All of this goes without even discussing drones, where China’s lead is astronomical.
Empires do not go gentle into that good night. What the US is doing and enabling is monstrous.
But it is also accelerating American decline.
That is in foreign affairs. Domestically, Trump is systematically destroying the basis of American advancement in tech and science. The idea that private enterprise, which does not do basic research, can make up the difference is ludicrous to anyone who knows how science and tech works. Indeed, the current AI boom is based on university research from the 80s (Granted, it’s from research in Canada (!), a country the US has decided to turn from an ally into an opponent.)
Trump is also dismantling the social welfare system, turning the US into a police state (and not the sort-of-good kind, yes, they exist, China is one of them), massively increasing inequality and basically destroying any remaining social solidarity between Americans.
I can’t think of a more destructive US President except maybe Reagan (but that was long term). Even Herbert Hoover looks good. (He didn’t cause the stock market crash, he just responded badly.) Trump is just so actively malign. He’s not a Russian agent, but the cold war KGB couldn’t have put someone in place who was more damaging, even in their wildest dreams.
So, all of this is awful. But the US’s days are numbered, truly. Unless you are very old, or die an early death, you will see the end of the American Empire and even of American hegemony over the Americas.
***
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Let’s take this in steps.
Air Defense Iranian air defense was not active for the first attack wave. They were online for the second one, about six hours later. It’s unclear why. I have heard two credible claims. The first is that they were hit by a cyber-attack, but came online faster than the Israelis expected.
The second is that the Iranians deliberately played rope-a-dope. The first attack was largely a matter of stand-off munitions, which the Israelis have (had) very limited supplies of. The Iranians tanked that hit, counting on the fact that most military targets were underground and hardened. Then when the second attack happened, which required close in attack, the air defenses were turned on. Because they had not been compromised in the first attack (air defense use makes air defense visible) they were much more effective.
Intelligence Penetration of Iran This was obviously severe, given the number of senior personnel killed during the initial attacks, and given how much of the initial attacks were carried out by drones and automated anti-air defense inside Iran. But what needs to be understood is that Mossad’s networks are being severely degraded. Intelligence networks which are passive, which don’t do anything very active, can exist for years or even decades, but when they go live and are actually used for attacks assets are exposed. Reports are pouring out of Iran of raids on Israeli intelligence agents and collaborators, and while they may be overstated, I find them credible, because it’s how such things work. Israel has gone big, and they are burning assets.
Iranian Counter-Attack This was strong, but not as strong as it could have been. While there’s reason to believe that a lot of the missile launchers hit were dummies, the Iranians should have been able to launch about a thousand missiles in a salvo, and they didn’t. Air defense systems are very subject to be being overwhelmed by numbers. Now it’s possible that they didn’t because they wanted the data from initial strikes to pinpoint air defense, and that each wave was designed to “clear a path”, the first strike, even, hit hard: taking out a lot of military assets and state capacity.
It should also be noted that Iran has not used its most advanced missiles yet. The stuff being sent is mostly old crap that would have been decommissioned in a few years anyway, interspersed with some better missiles, but not the most recent varieties. Iran still has a lot held for future attacks.
If you need a little cheering up, this video compilation of hits on Tel Aviv (obviously partial), may help.
A compilation of direct hits by Iran’s Ballistic Missiles on June 13th & 14th’s nights. pic.twitter.com/unmgJiCIdF
— MenchOsint (@MenchOsint) June 15, 2025
Here is some footage of destruction:
Israeli TV Channel 11 showed video of destruction in the cities of Bat Yam and Rehovot
Meanwhile, Iran’s high command issued a statement:
” Our old missiles saw what they did in Tel Aviv, the Israel will have to wait for our newest technical missiles tonight.” pic.twitter.com/K1xKddCMxv
— Sprinter Observer (@SprinterObserve) June 15, 2025
Some footage of destruction in Tel Aviv itself.
Yes, this is Tel Aviv.
What word would you use to describe this ? pic.twitter.com/JeFFVLj4Y8
— MenchOsint (@MenchOsint) June 15, 2025
All of this is much worse than the previous Iranian attacks. Real destruction. I will point out that if Iran had done this after the embassy assassinations they might have restored deterrence and not suffered this particular attack. Cowardice has its price, and it is often greater than that of bravery.
Finally, from the IDF itself:
IDF ‘would rather not millions of Israelis run to shelter’ pic.twitter.com/dzbvDp4Nbf
— RT (@RT_com) June 14, 2025
Israel does not have enough interceptors and air defense to stop the Iranians from completely devastating their country, which is why they are begging everyone to help them. Iran is already beginning to target Israeli Air Defense. US naval assets can only help so much, as they carry limited supplies and the US itself produces very few air defense missiles every year. Using them all up in Israel will make America completely defenseless in any other war (and Zelensky is already squealing.)
This is entirely a race between Israel’s ability to destroy missile launchers with its aircraft, and Iran’s ability to keep launching missiles. The math is that simple. As an aside, Iran should be priority targeting Israeli air fields alongside air defense.
And What About Nukes? Well, I find this interesting. Directly contradicting Khameini in public is important.
Iranian Major General Mohsen Rezaei on Iranian Radio and Television:
We are still exercising restraint and have not deployed all our capabilities to avoid global chaos.
However, we may reach a point where we use new weapons.
We are seeking to form an Islamic army with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and several other countries.
We should move towards the atomic bomb, but according to the Supreme Leader’s fatwa, we do not currently intend to build nuclear weapons.
Iraq should know, it is their turn after us. Iran may be forced to take actions that could destabilize the entire region.
It is, of course, obvious that if Iran had nukes, much or most of this would never have happened. North Korean leaders do not worry about being murdered in their sleep by foreign missiles, drones and bombs.
The China Syndrome. All of the materials required to build drones and ballistic missiles are available, cheap, from China. China gets a lot of oil from Iran, uses Iran for transhipment, and is in general a major ally of Iran. It is also aware that taking out Iran is one of the steps before war with it. Just as I said that China would not allow Russia to be taken out by sanctions (and was right), I expect China in the case of any sort of duration of this war, and, indeed, after it, to supply Iran with everything it needs to ramp up production of missiles and drones. Since China’s production abilities exceed those of the West when it comes to these requirements, this is not a small thing.
No Army Means No Fall. Iran cannot be defeated by airpower alone unless there is a significant uprising in the country which the army is unable or unwilling to stop. One should never underestimate the CIA’s regime change abilities, of course, but if they don’t pull it off then this war is about reducing Iran’s power projection ability: doing enough damage that they surrender in spirit if not in fact.
The Khameini Problem. Nations rot from the top, and this is clearly the fundamental problem in Iran. Khameini is cautious, even timid. He has underplayed his hand every single time during this crisis, most importantly when not sending ground troops to stop the fall of Assad. This caused great problems with the younger members of the Revolutionary Guard, who are hardliners almost to a man. The elimination of senior members of defense and government is not strengthening moderates, it is strengthening hardliners.
Israel has said that Khameini is not off-limits for murder. If they do so, it will be a huge mistake. It will end the non-nuclear fatwa (though the Iraniams will lie about that) and put hardliners in charge. Ironically, the best thing Khameini could do for Iran right now is be Martyred. If Allah Wills It, let it be so. I don’t want to get too down on him, in many ways he’s run Iran very well, but he is a victim of Machiavelli’s dictum that when times change most leaders can’t change with the times and the virtues that made them good leaders in the past make them terrible leaders in the present.
The Russia/China Issue. Iran could have had a full military alliance with Russia. If they did, they’d be in a lot stronger position. Iran really wants to be an independent major regional power. The other option is to be the junior partner in a tripartate bloc with China and Russia. I understand why they want to avoid that, but being #3 in the world’s strongest alliance (and yes, that’s what it would be) comes with an absolute ton of benefits. They need to reconsider this issue. They will get some support from Russia and China, indeed, a lot of support, but neither country is going to go all out for them. If either would, Iran would be in a lot less danger.
Final Ironic Cowardly Nazi Note.
BREAKING: The military cabinet meeting this evening will take place in the new fortified IDF headquarters beneath Ichilov Hospital, which is protected from Iranian missiles after the Defense Ministry was hit last night and is now unsafe.
Ichilov Hospital is a camouflaged… pic.twitter.com/FWZqUul3CN
— Sulaiman Ahmed (@ShaykhSulaiman) June 14, 2025
Most of Iran’s air and missile command was killed in an underground bunker during a meeting. Hezbollah’s senior leaders were killed in an underground bunker during a meeting. Israel knows Iran has missiles capable of doing the same thing to them, but they know that Iran won’t strike a hospital to kill them. They of course have destroyed many hospitals, in one were the high command of their enemies hiding.
May God grant the side of good, whichever side that is, victory in this conflict and bring an end to genocide.
***
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Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts (no Iran/Israel.)
The senior commanders of the air and missile forces are dead, and so is the commander of the Revolutionary Guard. Multiple nuclear sites were hit, plus civilian targets.
Iran previously threatened that if Israel hit their nuclear program, they would hit Israel’s nuclear sites in retaliation.
Iran’s leadership are incompetent. That statement will enrage some readers and commenters, but they have allowed their allies to be taken out one by one, they have not yet launched significant retaliation, and their current actions, sending a hundred drones to attack Israel, are pathetic. It is no favor to them to pretend their strategy is working; it is clearly failing.
They should have had a plan for an immediate, overwhelming counter-attack. Iran’s missile force is massive and has proven able to penetrate Israeli defenses.
Once again Iran has underestimated Mossad’s penetration of their services; the air chiefs were taken out in a meeting at an underground bunker — exactly what was done to Hezbollah’s leadership. Iranian air defenses don’t appear to have intercepted anything of significance.
The entire conflict has seen the “Resistance,” with the exception of Ansar-Allah, allow Israel to set the terms of engagement, choose when attacks happen, telegraph their own rare attacks, and allow complete control of the initiative to Israel.
If Iran isn’t going to fight, it should submit. Give up its nuclear program, then slowly be destroyed by Israel and the US over a period of years, until they fall like Syria and Libya did. (Remember always that Libya was taken out after Gadaffi gave up his nuclear program, and that Iran was invaded not because it had WMD, but because it didn’t.)
If Iran is going to fight, it needs to take the gloves off and seize the initiative. Hit unexpected targets. Don’t telegraph moves. Make sure its allies have real dangerous weapons. Get the Houthis some serious anti-ship missiles, for example.
By letting their allies be badly damaged (Hezbollah) or destroyed (Syria), Iran finds themselves almost alone in the conflict. If they had been launching missiles throughout the first year of the war and had rescued Syria, they would be in a vastly better position now.
They also have either been lying about their nuclear program (and have some nukes) or have been complete and utter fools by refusing to get nukes. The idea that they could insist on their rights under the non-proliferation agreement is absurd, and has always been ridiculous. They were never going to be allowed to operate an enrichment program for civilian use. They could either join the nuclear club or submit, because only nukes guarantee the continued existence of their country and form of government.
Trump claims the US was not involved (I’m sure they at least helped with targeting and intel), but has made savage threats. The US and Israel will dismantle Iran if it does not make it clear that the cost of doing so is more than Israel and the US can stand.
Hit back. Hard. Or submit. Or die.
Those are the options. Stop talking about Resistance and actually fight.
Remember what happened to Gaddafi. Does Khameini want to die after being sodomized by a knife?
***
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As unrest spreads, I think it’s worth looking at the weaknesses of American police forces in particular. Most of these vulnerabilities also apply to the National Guard.
Non-violent protest has been the dogma, especially on the center-left, for generations now. It wasn’t always thus; old time unions fought pitched battles with police and, in one case, coal miners straight-up fought the military. Blowing up buildings was not verboten, nor was assassination. US history is not what pansy-moderns think it is, and the same is true of Britain, Canada, and so on. Our forbears did not think that letting the state beat you, shoot you, torture you, imprison you, and kill you without fighting back was either virtuous, or in many cases, smart.
Modern Americans, increasingly impoverished (average Chinese have better standards of living, more on that in a later article) and living paycheck to paycheck, increasingly homeless, and with less and less to lose may decide that dying on their feet is better than lying there and letting cops beat the shit out of them, or than having ICE deport them to some third world torture prison.
If they do, and I, of course, would never suggest such a thing, then American police have significant weaknesses. The most important weakness is simple:
Modern American Police have been trained to be cowards. This sounds like rhetoric, hyperbole, or at the least, like exaggeration for affect. Let me assure you it is none of these. American police are trained to care about their own safety more than anything else. As a result they are trigger happy and unwilling to risk themselves against anything that looks genuinely dangerous.
This means that they travel in packs, and when threatened, they clump up in large groups for their own safety. This was shown when cop-killer Christopher Dorner, a trained soldier, killed a cop and her fiance. The police immediately clumped into large groups and used most of the force to protect themselves and their families.
Nor is this just a matter of extreme circumstances. Anyone who’s watched how police act around demonstrations will see that even tiny demonstrations attract much larger numbers of cops than necessary. Modern police, unlike those of fifty years ago, almost always wait for SWAT teams or at least backup before entering situations they consider dangerous and their threshold for what they consider dangerous is often very low.
This makes the police easy to deal with by any coordinated group which has not been infiltrated. Simply set of a bomb or use a drone attack on police or their families. Then do it again. Then again. Make threats against a number of targets. They will clump up, be unable to search from their own fear and become ineffective.
Then the group simply hits whatever the real target is.
This speaks to the basic principle of guerilla warfare: Attack where the enemy is weak. It’s just that American police, and I’m betting the National Guard, won’t be much better. They are especially easy to move around, because American police are cowards and because their doctrine is one of overwhelming force and caution, it’s easy to push them into a defensive posture or to push them off balance.
Simple, standard insurgency techniques will work well against American police. A few IEDs near where police can be expected to go, remote triggered as police drive over them, will see the police retreat even further into a shell. Civilian drones can easily be used to make helicopter operations dangerous, as well. The police will move slowly, in force, and retreat easily when something explosive happens.
All of this will work well against US paramilitary organizations as well. ICE would be trivial, as their movements are very predictable, and they are likely even more cowardly than normal American police, as their job is almost entirely about brutalizing unresisting people.
During the Irish revolution, assassins would walk in on British officials eating breakfast with their family, kill the official (leaving the family unharmed) and walk away.
A little fear goes a very long way to gumming operations up completely.
Smart insurrectionists will not, of course, do what Dorner did and target family members, as propaganda is always part of any successful guerilla organization. (Mao discusses this at length in his class work on guerilla warfare.)
Other principles of operation should be obvious. Use a cell organization so that damage from discovery is limited. People can’t reveal what they don’t know. In the modern environment, don’t use or even carry mobile phones, except perhaps ones that are deliberately damaged so they have no connectivity. (Everyone carries a mobile phone, so operatives should appear to do so.)
Do everything old-style. The modern state is excellent at electronic intelligence, but has let human intelligence wither to a large extent.
Successful insurrectionists will have a rule that they 100 percent kill any informants or undercover operatives. No deal will be made with prosecutors or police; they always backfire in the longer run.
Of course, I hope that none of this happens, and this article is just a look at what smart insurrectionists would do, taking natural advantage of police weaknesses. The police are welcome to read this and decide to change their doctrines and training to be less cowardly and avoid the worst of these weaknesses. As a side effect, they’d also kill less people because of their fear, and that would make insurrection less likely.
Ideally, American elites will realize that they are better off and safer if everyone is cared for. From enlightened self-interest, they might start taxing themselves again and make sure that ordinary people have enough money for rent and food. They will end predatory pricing, be fair and kind, and make medical care easily available. The American people, who, like all people, would rather live a good life, will respond and prospects of insurrection will fade like mist against the noon-day sun.
But if they refuse to discontinue their policy of mass impoverishment backed by fear, it should be understood that those who finally do decide on insurrection will not find, contrary to various myths about American impregnability, which repeated losses against men in pajamas should have put to rest, that American forces of law and order (or repression, depending on your politics) are not without weakness.
May God grant that it never comes to this. If it does, may the side of good, which cares for the welfare of the people, win.
***
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When the war started, I predicted that Russia would win militarily. That was an easy, obvious prediction based on the fact that Russia is larger, has more industry, and that China would not allow sanctions to take out Russia, knowing it would be next, but would keep the Russian economy running.
This prediction is a little more risky because the war could end due to a peace deal. There’s no question that Ukraine is losing, and that the battlefield is getting worse and worse for them.
Russian forces are back within 300 kilometers of Kiev. While advances are slow, they are speeding up. The Ukrainians are running out of manpower, are considering mobilizing women for infantry, and have huge problems with desertion and recruitment. Russia has ramped up weapon production far more than the West.
So I’m going to keep this one simple: The war will end next year with the Ukrainian army collapsing. Ukraine will be forced into an unconditional surrender, and Russia will take what it wants.
There’s lots of ways this could go wrong. The Euros could rush in “peacekeeping forces.” Putin could agree to peace before then. The “Ukrainians” could provoke Russia into using tac nukes with their strikes of strategic nuclear infrastructure. Putin might die, and if he does he’ll be replaced by someone far more aggressive. So this isn’t a “sure thing” prediction, just a best guess.
But basically, that guess is that the Ukrainian army collapses next year, and we see huge “big arrow” movement.
Putin is likely to remember the lessons of Syria’s frozen conflict, and of Russia and Ukraine’s fake peace of 2014/2015. No frozen conflicts, no fanatical enemies still able to fight. Russia has paid dearly to crush Ukraine, and it would be foolish to throw away what is being won on the battlefield at a fake peace conference with Europeans and Americans who have no intention of keeping any deal.
So, most likely, he will win the war and impose the peace. If he’s really smart, he’ll take Odessa and turn Ukraine into a landlocked state, even if that means some extra casualties and time.
Russia was always going to win the war. The questions are simply when, by how much, and what Ukraine is left with afterwards.
***
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