This week’s “No [bleep] Analysis” award goes to Eugene B. Rumer for his Wall Street Journal op-ed, It’s Time to End Magical Thinking About Russia’s Defeat. Only took him 22 months to figure this out. He may be a slow learner but give him some credit, he finally awakened from his dream world and is beginning to grasp that the Ukraine project is swirling down the toilet.
Eugene B. Rumer is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University, Washington DC. Previously, he served at the State Department, on the staff of the National Security Council and at RAND.
Despite his pedigree, he is struggling to acknowledge reality and still feels the need to spin nonsense. Here is an example:
Putin has reason to believe that time is on his side. At the front line, there are no indications that Russia is losing what has become a war of attrition. The Russian economy has been buffeted, but it is not in tatters. Putin’s hold on power was, paradoxically, strengthened following Yevgeny Prigozhin’s failed rebellion in June. Popular support for the war remains solid, and elite backing for Putin has not fractured.
Yep. Russia’s economy is so battered that it is headed toward 4% growth, its defense industry is out producing Europe and the United States combined, it is manufacturing new, more deadly drones and the stores across Russia are filled to the brim. If that is “battered” give me some.
