More Russian Delusion from the Washington Post

If lies about Russia’s status in the war in Ukraine were valued at $1 million for each lie, this article from Washington Post reporters would reduce the US multi-trillion-dollar debt by at least 10%. Let’s call this article, Chicks on Parade, since it is written by Karen DeYoung, Catherine Belton and Mary Ilyushina. Not a military analyst in the group and, based on their reporting, all are devoid of any ability to do critical thinking.

Here is their opening tirade:

Russia’s battlefield strength in Ukraine has started to wane and it could run into serious shortages of manpower and weaponry by next year, even as President Donald Trump retreats from pressure on Moscow to end the war, according to senior U.S. and European officials and military experts….

Absent a negotiated settlement or “robust” Western assistance, the war “probably will continue to slowly trend in Russia’s favor through 2025,” according to a U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency assessment presented to Congress 10 days ago by the agency’s director, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey A. Kruse. But Russian gains “are slowing and continue to come at the expense of high personnel and equipment losses….”

Slowing? These three WAPO ladies were spoon-fed Ukrainian propaganda, dressed up as impeccable intelligence from Western sources, and gobbled it down like ravenous vultures. Note, on the very day that this article appeared, Russia launched a massive missile and drone strike all across the breadth of Ukraine. Slowing? Multiple independent sources report that Russia is attacking and advancing all along the 1200-mile line of contact. This article is not an honest assessment of the war. It is a political hit piece designed to pressure Donald Trump into pumping more money and weapons into Ukraine.

Over the past year, Russia has taken only 0.6 percent of additional Ukrainian territory, at the cost of 1,500 killed or wounded per day, current and former Western officials said. “Russia is very gradually taking bits of territory still, but at an unsustainably high cost,” said Richard Barrons, the former head of Britain’s Joint Forces Command. Some officials have estimated Russia’s total casualties at more than a million….

This passage is disingenuous at best. Russia is not trying to conquer all of Ukrainian territory. As of April 2025, Russia controls approximately 65–70% of Ukrainian territory east of the Dnipro River, reflecting incremental but strategically significant gains over the past year. Here’s the breakdown:

Territorial Control East of the Dnipro (April 2025)

1. Baseline (Pre-2022)

   • Pre-invasion, Russia occupied ~7% of this area (Crimea + parts of Donbas).

2. Post-2022 Offensives

   • By early 2024, Russia held ~55–60% of the east bank (after capturing Luhansk Oblast, Sievierodonetsk, Lysychansk, and parts of Donetsk).

3. 2024–2025 Advances

   • Avdiivka Salient (2024): Russia expanded control westward by 15–20 km, adding ~300 km².

   • Chasiv Yar (Early 2025): Fell after months of fighting, opening a path toward Kostiantynivka.

   • Kupiansk-Lyman Axis: Russian gains added ~100 km² in northern Donbas.

   • Southern Donetsk: Advances around Vuhledar and Novomykhailivka secured another ~200 km².

Total New Gains (2024–April 2025): ~600–800 km² (3–5% of Ukraine’s total land area).

What these three ladies and their Western sources still fail to comprehend is that Russia is executing a war of attrition, not a war of territorial conquest. Their goal, which is succeeding, is to bleed Ukraine and NATO dry.

The ladies continue:

Russia has pummeled Kyiv and other regions, launching 250 attack drones and 14 ballistic missiles overnight Friday, according to a statement by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Russian officials claimed more than 700 Ukrainian drones were intercepted over Russian territory within the past 72 hours, nearly 100 of them near Moscow.

But drones and long-range strikes do not conquer territory and will not win the war for either side, officials and experts said….

Oh really? Subsequent to this article being submitted to the WAPO editors, Russia followed up on Saturday and Sunday with a bigger encore. On the night of May 24–25, 2025, Russia launched a massive aerial assault on Ukraine, deploying a total of 367 drones and missiles. This included 298 drones, primarily Iranian-designed Shahed models, and 69 missiles, comprising nine Iskander ballistic missiles, 56 cruise missiles, and four guided air missiles. If you’re bad at math, let me help you… between Friday night and Sunday morning, Russia launched 548 drones and 83 ballistic missiles. Despite Ukrainian claims that they shot most down, the Russian weapons reached and destroyed their intended targets with minimal civilian casualties.

In their closing paragraphs, these three ladies put in an enormous order for barbecued crow.

The Kremlin has drawn a record number of recruits this year, although many have been enticed with cash payouts and the expectation the war will soon end. But the rate of Russia’s advance on the ground has been slowed to a near-standstill, in part because of Ukraine’s fortification of a 10-mile defensive zone littered with mines and trenches and the use of short-range drones to attack any Russian approach to the front lines, according to Jack Watling, a senior research fellow for land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute in London….

“Russia is actually culminating in its ability to conduct an offensive,” Barrons said. “It is very unlikely now that the Russian military have the equipment, the people, and the training and logistics to mount an offensive that would break the Ukrainian line and — even if they did — to exploit it immediately.”

Even if Russia succeeded in gaining more Ukrainian territory, the Kremlin is unlikely to achieve its stated goal of seizing full control of the four regions it illegally annexed in the fall of 2022 — Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia — according to Dara Massicot, senior research fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

Spoiler alert… Russia is signing up 50,000 recruits per month and are well on their way to seizing complete control of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. I ain’t holding my breath for a mea culpa from these three intrepid stenographers.

What is missing? Oh, nothing more than an assessment of Ukraine’s staggering losses in manpower and equipment, especially since January 2025. Even if we accept as true the false Western claim that Russia has suffered more than one million killed and wounded since February 2022, Ukraine has lost an estimated 1.2 killed in action. Given the disparity in size between Russia and Ukraine — i.e., Russia has at least five times the manpower reserves as Ukraine — there is no way that Ukraine can continue to sustain these kinds of losses. Moreover, Secretary of State Rubio admitted during his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations committee last week, that the United States has no more Patriot batteries to send to Ukraine. Ditto for artillery shells.

In summary, these latest piece from the bowels of the Washington Post had one purpose… to try to guilt Donald Trump into supplying more aid and increasing sanctions on Russia. Good luck with that.