Putins Verbündete beschweren sich darüber, dass er sie wegen eines Krieges gegen die Ukraine im Stich gelassen hat – Bloomberg

What did they expect? The Kremlin has always promised to bring you home when you couldn’t stay out in the field anymore — not to keep you out in the field.

Assad got his ticket and lives under GRU protection. Yanukovych got his ticket and lives under GRU protection. Maduro got his ticket and lives under GRU protection. It was the same back in the Cold War. They never guaranteed your regime, just that they’d put you safely in a trophy case when your regime failed.

I hate to blame victims but these people aren’t any smarter than the Houthis or the Kadryovites or any of the other poor bastards who hear about the weakness and decadence of the modern world over the propaganda channels, and go and get themselves killed to no effect. Just to make Putin happy with his corpse collection.

They’re not the USSR. They never had the resources to commit to so many conflicts at once.