![image]() Vladimir Putin yesterday in the Kremlin
We are well aware that Vladimir Putin has no time, much less respect, for the judgments of the Western press. He considers them hired by his enemies and does not even conceive of the idea of "independent media" . He surrounded himself in the Kremlin with "yes men" who before February 24 made him believe he could conquer and subdue Ukraine in a few weeks, so there is no reason to listen to external opinions from a European newspaper. But it 's still worth noting that he was right to cancel his regular year - end press conference . To prevent a change of heart at the last minute, his spokesman Dmitri Peskov yesterday announced that the traditional end-of-year press conference will not take place this month. Maybe talk about it for next year. However, the spirit would be different: in December we look back at the last 12 months, we take stock ; in January instead the attention is focused on what lies ahead, on the plans for the new year . The reasons are evident in this context: it is better to dream of a future of victories than to concentrate on the defeats of the immediate past ; better to delude yourself than to acknowledge the reality. The facts on the ground speak for themselves . His "special operation" has become a tragic war of attrition ; his troops switched from an offensive to a defensive strategy in ten months; its weapons are obsolete compared to those that the West sends to the Ukrainians and the latter reveal astonishing inventive abilities in adapting the old ones from the Soviet arsenals that they still have. There is also a sensational fact that is worth emphasizing forcefully again: the total flop of Putin's propaganda . Today, his army is bombarding, forcing in the cold, darkness and without water, the same population that a few months ago proclaimed that it wanted to "liberate from the Nazis". The Russian army fails to beat the Ukrainian armed forces and therefore takes it out on the whole people , wants to punish them for their stubborn resistance, for their pro-Europeanism , for not actively pressuring their government to accept a territorial compromise in order to soon end one's suffering . Putin wanted de facto to annex the whole of Ukraine and now Zelensky finds himself positioning his troops not only to return to the February 23 borders, but even to liberate Crimea and other pro-Russian areas in Donbass eight years ago. We don't know what will happen next year. But Putin is undoubtedly right today to keep quiet and, as usual in difficult moments, let his most trusted collaborators speak to explain why things are not going as planned and "we still need to be patient". |