The Eurasian Revolutions: Daesh On the Run, Putinism Has Its First Military Defeat

The Kurds have been fighting like hell, freeing Kobane from the execrable Daesh and retaking about 160 Kurdish villages across northern Syria. Meanwhile the Assadists are on the ropes in Deraa province, as the FSA closes the vice-grip on Assad's ever-shrinking pool of Alawites and Shiites.

In other news, Putinism suffered its very first military defeat. For the past month, about 10,000 Russian soldiers without official insignia -- but armed with hundreds of official Russian tanks, APCs, artillery pieces and infinite amounts of ammunition -- assaulted Ukraine's ceasefire lines in Donbas.  These were the same ceasefire lines Russia had agreed to in the September 2014 Minsk agreement, and no, Ukraine didn't violate the ceasefire first. The Putinists really do believe in their own lunatic propaganda, and figured two divisions of soldiers could drive the Ukes (this is the racist term they use for Ukrainians, never mind the fact that Ukraine's Slavic culture is more Russian than petroleum-drunk-Russia itself these days) all the way to Kiev.

They got nowhere. The Ukrainians were ready, and counterattacked efficiently. Hundreds of Russian vehicles were destroyed, and at least a thousand Russian soldiers were killed and a couple thousand were wounded. Ukraine's losses were dozens of vehicles, three hundred dead and a thousand wounded. (This is data from the professional military analysts who have proved, over the course of the past year, that they genuinely know what they're talking about).

This is an astonishingly good performance for a Ukrainian army which did not exist a year ago. Since August 2014, Ukraine has been fighting smart, by avoiding the use of mass infantry against armored units, employing its own tank forces, using its own low-cost drones, and using its extremely capable artillery wisely.

Ukraine was so confident, it sent its Azov unit to recapture some villages in the south of the occupied region. These villages were on the Ukrainian side of the original ceasefire line, and were illegally occupied by Russian forces. The villages were quickly freed with almost no Ukrainian casualties, while the Russian occupiers got clobbered.

Now another ceasefire has been signed and seems to be holding, for the moment. The frontlines have not significantly changed since the first ceasefire, which means Putinism's offensive was completely and utterly futile.

Why did Putinism throw so many lives away? What on earth were they thinking? It's actually quite simple. Putinism is running out of oil money, time, and legitimacy. Their only hope was a series of quick, fast and cheap military victories -- a series of shocks to paper over the lack of awe. Ukraine, on the other hand, needs time -- time to fully reequip and retrain its army, which will be fully mobilized by this summer, time to resupply that army with effective military vehicles (the arms factories are working overtime), and time to crack down on the corruption strangling Ukraine's economy.

Putin himself revealed the truth, by commenting that Ukraine was being supported by a "NATO legion" in Donbass. No such legion exists, of course, but the lie reveals something true: Putin is completely unable to comprehend the strength of a free army of free citizens, fighting for their homeland.

I am extremely impressed by the ordinary Ukrainian soldiers who stepped up their game, and stopped Putinism's final desperate throw of the military dice cold. The officer corps still needs improvement, though to be fair they have to work with Soviet-era equipment and inferior logistics, and many of the new volunteer officers performed well. Ukraine's logistics and medical services have also drastically improved, with their helicopters now serving as true medevacs, significantly reducing the death count. 

In the long term, Putinism has hopelessly screwed itself. The war remains deeply unpopular with ordinary Russians, who do NOT want to die for Putin's crazed and idiotic Novorossiya. Putinism could not even dent the frontlines of a partly-mobilized Ukraine with 30,000 of Russia's best-trained soldiers, and Russia has only 70,000 additional such trained soldiers in its entire arsenal. (Russian conscripts can't be used. They would desert en masse, 1917-style.)

Nor can Russia easily use its only ace card, namely its air force -- the EU has finally had it with Putinism's antics, and has made it clear that an open Russian invasion will trigger a devastating trade embargo, sanctions, military assistance, and an immediate US-EU no-fly zone.

Game over, Putin.