Ukraine Might Just be Winning, Whatever that Means

  

Depending on where you live, gas prices are way up. No surprise. Thanks to Trump’s tariffs, his wars, and his general malevolent incompetence, we now pay between $4.00 and $4.25 per gallon in Michigan, and that fluctuates according to whatever pump-and-dump scam Trump has going on in world markets. There are states that pay more, and states that pay a lot more.

Four-dollar gasoline is a real hardship for millions of Americans, many of whom are now, as a result, cutting back on food and medicine, which aren’t getting cheaper either. This is the logical consequence of a war that started stupid and got stupider as time went on. Now in its fifth month.

So imagine if gas were twice that and threatening to go much higher. That’s what many Russians are paying on the black market — one of the few dependable sources — right now. And when it comes to hardship, Russian hardship is exponentially harder than ours. This is the logical consequence of a war that started stupid and got stupider as it went on. Now in its fifth year.

Both wars are wars of choice. Both were started by a single person. Both were a surprise to that single person's inner circle.  Both are exactly what historians mean by a “cult of personality.”

The two situations are not entirely analogous, but one similarity jumps out. Both Putin and Trump are now losing their wars, and neither has a clue what to do about it.

When I say ‘losing,’ we need to remember that the very notion of winning or losing a war has changed drastically in recent years. Whereas wars used to be about seizing land or treasure, those objectives no longer make any sense. The economics of taking and holding territory, then administering a hostile population long-term, makes it a losing proposition before it even starts. And seizing treasure merely invites sanctions, not to mention exclusion from the global financial system.

War has evolved, or rather devolved, into an activity in which destruction and death are ends in themselves. Destroying for the sake of destroying. Killing for the sake of killing.

Both Ukraine and Iran were forced into their wars, and both countries have paid a horrendous price. And while it is now common knowledge that Iran has gained the upper hand, having turned the Strait of Hormuz into an economic nuke, what is less widely known is that Ukraine is likewise on the front foot in its war with Putin. They could actually be winning, though again, who knows what that even means?

One has to wonder where Putin thinks his war is going. Russia is one of the world’s largest producers of crude oil, and it continues to produce plenty of it. The problem is what to do with it once it’s out of the ground. Oil needs refining, and virtually all of Russia’s refineries are under relentless attack from Ukrainian drones.

Ukraine, once again demonstrating superhuman pluck and ingenuity, has created an entire industry around drone technology, and is now turning out thousands of drones per month. This production is the cornerstone of a devastatingly effective strategy, one that specifically targets Russia’s petroleum infrastructure.

Refineries are ridiculously soft targets. They’re out in the open, they’re difficult to protect, and they’re crucial to sustaining Russia’s population. In recent weeks, they’ve been hit by waves of drones. No sooner do the Russians repair the refineries, then the drones hit them again. The improvement in drone range has been so dramatic, some of the sorties have flown 1,500 miles, deep into Russia, where they’ve done severe damage to virtually all the major refineries.

This has thrown a monumental monkey wrench into the logistics of moving usable fuel across a country roughly twice the size of the U.S. As damaged refineries go offline, the ability to re-jigger the supply lines to ship oil where it’s needed has become a national nightmare. And let’s not forget that a huge amount of that fuel is already spoken for. It’s needed by the military to pursue the ongoing idiotic war.

This is wreaking major havoc on the Russian economy. There are long lines to buy any gasoline that’s available. There’s widespread rationing as well, and the needs of industry and agriculture take priority over those of consumers.

And speaking of agriculture, harvest time is approaching, and the oil crunch is threatening the country’s ability to feed itself for the winter. The worst of the fuel shortages have already hit the small and medium-sized farms that produce most of Russia’s grain. Farmers are now paying two-and-a-half times what they paid last year for fuel, and far more for fertilizer, which has been largely unavailable. Some experts are warning of an approaching “food catastrophe.”

I’m not even scratching the surface. The dimensions of the deep shit Putin finds himself in are almost incalculable. He has reacted with short-term patches, kicking the can down the road.

The elephant in the room is that the Russian government heavily subsidizes gasoline, dedicating a significant piece of the national budget to keeping gas in the tanks of ordinary Russians. This is a big part of the implied social contract Putin has made with his people. The people get cheap food, cheap gas, cheap vodka, and a standard of living they find reasonable, though we in the West might not. In return, they let Putin and his thugs run their kleptocracy, without making a peep. Peeps now carry ten-year sentences.

But if those gas subsidies were to be removed, gas prices would go through the roof, some say as high as $19 per gallon, which would be five times the U.S. average. Couple that with the upcoming food catastrophe, and that social contract would be severely ruptured.

One wouldn’t think Putin cares about this, yet he keeps going for short-term fixes, seemingly desperate to keep those subsidies in place and his population docile. At the same time, he will continue to crack down on what little dissent there is, atrocity being a key element of his brand. He understands that Russians are conditioned to accept hardship and deprivation, and he wouldn’t want to disappoint them. But he has to be wondering how much stress they can take before they break.

Meanwhile, Ukraine is getting into the head of the average Russian. Even in Moscow, the black smoke of exploding refineries is an increasingly common sight, and residents of the capital are getting more nervous by the day.

So while it’s hard to discern exactly what winning might mean in the context of this war, it’s safe to say that Ukraine is definitely not losing.