Cogitation in the Time of War #30 - Victory or Defeat Day?

At the time of writing, we in Western Europe and also the USA are still on May the 8th, the day we celebrate Victory in Europe Day, when it was announced that the Germans had surrendered to the Allies and thus the war in Europe was over. 1 day before, the Germans had signed their Instrument of Surrender, the legal document in Reims where it was stated that fighting was to stop at 23:01 CET of the 8th. This is the main reason why the 8-May is considered the day for people in CET (Central European Timezone) or earlier (further West), because the war stopped officially on that day.

However it was already the 9-May in the Soviet Union when this occurred, and adding to this, the Soviet High Command didn't fully agree with the signing in Reims as they claimed it had to happen at the seat of Germany's government, Berlin. So another gathering occurred on the night of the 8th and a new version of the Instrument of Surrender was signed, the last signature being put to paper on the 9-May, 00:16 local time. These are the main reasons that Russia is celebrating the Victory Day of the Great Patriotic War (as they call WWII) tomorrow, Monday the 9-May, and not today with the rest of the Allies (USA, UK and France, the other countries that alongside USSR controlled a section of Germany after this).

This introduction was to explain a bit on the 9-May significance in Russia. It's one of their most important holidays, although after the collapse of the USSR was losing relevance until Putin rose to power, and promoting the glory of Russia, something that is now clear for us all to see with his vision of the new Great Russia empire, he made this holiday the most popular one.

With the ongoing war it has been a topic of debate what Putin, and Russia, would do in Victory Day. In the last 2 weeks the question is pertinent: what victory can they possible announce? Will Putin announce the country was now in a state of war and order mobilisation, something they actual need to win over Ukraine?

We don't have a question to any of these questions, we'll need to wait and see what happens. It won't take long now, it's just some hours and we'll know. Maybe by the time I finish and publish this cogitation, there are already reports of what they plan to do.

In terms of the parade itself, it's going to be weird. Losses are big in Ukraine and they can't hide that much longer. I assume the parede will be smaller than usual although it is equally possible they'll try to make a show out of it and have as many people parading as possible. But that will come with visible failures, like more conscripted soldiers marching and less equipment than before.

Although in that regards, they'll probably just parade the same "advanced" equipment they paraded in previous years but that it's nowhere near the front because it either doesn't work properly or they have to save this since they are losing everything else...

The only more specific report is that they will parade a bunch of ukrainian prisoners, in another violation of the Geneva Convention, so conducting another war crime. Who is keeping track of those?

So more than a Victory Day, this will be like a Defeat Day of their "Special Military Operation". If the Kremlin or Putin announce a general mobilisation, it is admission that the "special operation" failed. But on the other hand by not starting a general mobilisation they will condemn this war to a defeat.

Yes there have been gains on the ground here and there, but ukrainians counter-attacks nullify these gains. Even in Snake Island, that told the russian warship to "go fuck yourself" (apparently it was the Moskva that indeed fucked itself), they are losing with several videos showing boats and an helicopter being destroyed, as well as 2 Su-27 from the Ukrainian Air Force, that was completely destroyed weeks ago according to some pundits, bombed the shit out of it.

What else is there to say? Yeah, the russians are not fleeing and are not surrendering in hordes; They have been making small gains here and there, but like it was perfectly clear to me and many others, the new phase focusing on the Donbas and south of Ukraine, didn't bring any major change. And although they are trying to disrupt the ukrainian logistics, Russia is losing the race here: it seems clear to me that Ukraine will have all the weapons they need on the field in Eastern Ukraine before the Russians have made any significant and strategic conquest, so Ukraine will start pushing them even further away, pushing them back to Russia.

There is not much more I want to say today. Just sharing some interesting developments on the Russian side:

- In the past few weeks several fires had mysteriously appeared in the fuel depots or other important locations (for the war effort). It is a proof that the internal insurgency, the resistance, is there and it is active;

- Some analysis done in Russia have reached the West (via the Telegram shares) and since it is not the media running propaganda, these analysis reach similar conclusions to those done here by people in the West. 

- For many weeks I had a doubt on why Russia was doing such a shitty job with their propaganda, like showing a very different building when stating the Mariupol maternity was empty and being used as weapons depot; or when they claimed to have captured an Ukrainian agent that was going to assassinate someone in Moscow but the pictures they present had "bugs" such as the instructions paper being signed literally by "illegible signature" instead of an illegible (unreadable) fake signature and the cards for the SIMS game instead of showing different SIM cards (a typical thing seen with spies, where they keep different phone numbers); and more recently they showed a video collected by a drone showing a successful artillery strike on a Ukrainian trench but that trench was occupied by mannequins not soldiers! How could they make these silly mistakes? Well, now I had the proof they are just totally incompetent people. As the top image shows, a billboard for their most important holiday, that celebrates the Great Patriotic War, displays a US marine soldier. They couldn't even find a nice picture of a soldier from the Red Army during WWII to put on their billboard!

This is what happens when you run a regime and send away the dissident voices just because they don't say what you want. By surrounding himself with "yes men", Putin just kept the stupid ones, and now their government is full of dumb people that can't even make a simple task of finding a good and relevant photo...

That is why I believe that in reality this year Russia won't have any Victory Day, regardless of how much they pretend. It's gonna be a Defeat Day.

PS - If you want to have an update on the situation is progressing on the field, just read the latest thread from Jomini of the West (on Twitter).