Americans think the Ukraine-Russia War is going well for Ukraine, but the Russians are winning. Putin has said by war’s end Ukraine will no longer exist. From John Helmer at johnhelmer.net:
There’s an old Russian adage about swallowing too much and trying to talk at the same time – if you don’t want to die of gastroenteritis, keep your mouth shut. This isn’t an option for understanding the past week of the war, and preparing for the next.
Bear in mind that, in the middle of the Ukrainian ground offensive and hours before the start of the largest NATO air operation since the alliance was created in April 1949, the war in the Ukraine is having almost no impact on President Biden’s (lead image) job approval polls and thus on his re-election chances in November 2024.
By contrast, President Putin, who goes to election between January and March of 2024, has declared his new approach to what will happen between now and then.
Despite the steady drift upwards of disapproval of the US president’s performance, and the widening gap between negative and positive voters since the start of the Special Military Operation, Biden’s conduct of the war has been the only policy which he and his election staff can calculate to have been a winner; that’s relatively speaking, when contrasted with Biden’s performance on the domestic economy, inflation, crime, immigration, and the direction of the country.
