I drop in once in awhile to see the craziness going on here, but I'm still confused about how Zelensky said Americans will fight in Ukraine. He did say at the WH meeting that the problems with Russia will ultimately land in America's lap (probably true but certainly debatable). But if anyone thinks that him trying to horse trade his own leadership for Ukraine's NATO membership (a highly unlikely outcome) is somehow equivalent to forcing American soldiers to fight in Ukraine, they must also be pretty miffed about admitting Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland (a very recent addition), and even Poland, all of whom have spent plenty of time on the wrong end of the Russia spear over the course of history. Oh well. I don't think Ukraine's joining NATO is particularly realistic for anyone, appears that their best case ceasefire would involve European peacekeepers.
It does seem like very few people in America have any sort of handle on what's actually happening in the war, as both idiot political teams seem to benefit from the argument that "Ukraine is on the brink." Problem is, Russia launched massive offensives in Ukraine across 2024, and the end result of Russia was very limited gains that have basically ceased over the last 3 months. It's not a disaster for Russia, but at best the Russian initiative is waning. At worst, Russia's economy and war fighting capabilities are on extremely shaky ground. In either case, there's not a great impetus for a "bad peace" for Ukraine itself (and frankly, Europe can keep Ukraine afloat under current conditions a lot longer than is acknowledged by many involved in this discussion, both pro- and anti-Ukraine).
If you don't believe me, you might believe Institute for the Study of War. Any which way, at the casualty rate suffered by Russia last year (about 104 casualties for each square kilometer of land conquered) relative to the territory in Ukraine not under Russian control, it would require nearly 200,000,000 Russian casualties to conquer the entire country. There are only about 140-145M Russians these days lol. Obviously, that's not how wars go, either Russia would perform better or stop fighting at this casualty rate, but it speaks to how difficult the fight is for our wannabe modern Soviets.
Russia has achieved relatively faster gains in 2024 than throughout most of the war after the initial invasion and developed a blueprint for conducting slow, tactical envelopments to achieve these advances, but Russian forces have failed to restore the
understandingwar.org
Separately, I am thoroughly enjoying the DOWN, DOWN, DOWN crime rates we are experiencing as we become further removed from the Covid chaos of 2020-21. As I pointed out back then, this all began in 2023 and continued through 2024. The good news is that it keeps dropping in 2025, particularly for violent crimes. There is growing evidence that the BLM movement starting in about 2014 was a huge hindrance to safety in black communities. This year, some of the early numbers in the big cities I track are flat amazing for violent crime reduction in 2025.
Look for increasingly good news on the drug overdose death front. Sounds like the preliminary numbers suggest a drop from 114K death from Q4 2022 through Q3 2023 to 87K from Q4 2023 through Q3 2024.
Separately, if you aren't a little worried about the economy, time to start. Consumer sentiment has dipped, and trade wars are inflationary (so are deportations, but the Admin has far more justification for this policy). Not a happy combination, but I'm sure the Economic Genius in the WH understands all this well.
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