1. Tyrannical regimes are deceptively brittle.

War is a form of politics, and the russian regime is altered by

defeat.

2. The war ends, when Ukrainian military victories alter russian political realities.

3. Ukrainians turned out to be stunningly good warriors, because they have carried out a series of
defensive and offensive operations that someone would like to call “textbook”, but those “textbooks” have
not yet been written, and when they are written, the Ukrainian campaign will provide the examples. They
have done so with calm and sangfroid, even as their enemy perpetrates horrible crimes and campaigns for
their destruction as a nation.

4. We have a certain difficulty, seeing how Ukraine gets to victory, even as the Ukrainians advance. This is
because many of our imaginations are trapped by a single and rather unlikely variant of how the war ends:
with a nuclear detonation.

5. We seem to lack other variants and nuclear detonation feels like an ending. Focusing on that scenario
rather than on the more probable ones prevents us from seeing what is actually happening and from
preparing for the more likely possible futures. Indeed, we should never lose sight of how much Ukrainian
victory will improve the world we live in.

6. This war is almost certainly not going to end with application of weapon. States with nuclear weapons
have been fighting and losing wars since 1945, without using them. Nuclear powers lose humiliating wars in
places like Vietnam and Afghanistan and do not use nuclear weapons.

7. As soon as the topic of nuclear war comes up, it seems extremely important and we become depressed
and obsessed. This is exactly what putin is trying to lead us to with his vague hints about nuclear weapons.

8. We imagine threats that russia is not actually making. We start talking about a Ukrainian surrender, just
to relieve the psychological pressure we feel. This is doing putin’s work for him, bailing him out of a disaster
of his own creation. He is losing the conventional war that he started. He tends to convince everyone that
the only way to defend themselves is to build nuclear weapons and that means the global nuclear
proliferation.

9. Even if it happened, it wouldn’t end the war or at least not with a russian victory.

10. The anticipation that use of a nuclear weapon would trigger powerful responses from other countries.

11. He also wonders whether russia would take the risk of bringing nuclear weapons into or even near
Ukraine, given Ukraine’s accurate long-range artillery, russia's leaky logistics, and the ability of the
Ukrainians to get hold of weapons systems the russians have brought into their country. It is hard to
overstate the difficulty the russians have in to keeping hold of their own stuff. russians might use a missile
instead but some of their missiles fall to earth and more are shot down. russian planes tend to crash and to
get shot down, to the point that russian sorties are rare and attract negative attention.

12. putin gets us into what we are to supposed to believe is his own psychological space. But this is all just
feeling. It is not really a motive. If sheer emotion resulting from defeat was going to motivate nuclear use,
it would already have happened, and it hasn't.

13. putin wants us to sympathize with his situation, which is of course a highly suspect move in itself. putin
is backed to the wall.

14. russians are anxious about the war now, thanks to mobilization. And now their television
propagandists are admitting that Russian troops are retreating. So unlike the first half-year of the war,
putin cannot just claim that all is well and be done with it.
 15. his political career has been based on using controlled media to transform foreign policy into soothing
spectacle. In other words: regime survival has depended upon two premises: what happens on television is
more important than what happens in reality; and what happens abroad is more important than what
happens at home. It seems to me that these premises no longer hold. With mobilization, the distinction
between at home and abroad has been broken; with lost battles, the distinction between television and
reality has been weakened.

16. putin is doing the actual commanding, this has to be divisive. The kremlin responded to kadyrov
directly and army propaganda has been showing a criticized commander with his troops in the field.

17. prigozhin is infamous for critics of the russian high command and for recruitment poster for wagner. He
is portrayed there as “great russian leader”.

18. prigozhin and kadyrov claim for the intensification of the war, mock the russian high command in the
most aggressive tone, but at the same time seem to protect their own. That’s why it looks like a trap.

19. As Ukraine continues to win battles, one twist follows another. Television is inferior to reality. The
logic of the situation is in favor of the one who realizes it the fastest, knows how to control and rearrange.