Putin and the Decline of Third Rome

Defeat trajectory in Moscow

Territory is not victory. Attempts to parse a win out of minor map changes are at best propaganda, at worst a delusion. One army pushing another out of, say, Kharkiv Oblast looks great on an animated map, but it says nothing about the state of either army right now, or what it will be like next week. A lot else is going on.

Since last weekend, when Ukrai…