LAST MAN STANDING? IS PUTIN NEXT?

Putins global strategy has slowly fallen apart over the past four years. Every country he trusted over the past decade or more has let him down. And he has been sure not to be there for them when the cards have to be revealed and the chips are on the table. “Fold” is Russia’s preferred call.

Armenia – he wasn’t there for them when the Azeris came for them despite their membership of his protection racket. They have learned their lesson and are leaving.

Syria – all the time he could call the shots and had no other distractions he terrorized the people of that country causing untold damage. With the war in Ukraine he wasn’t able to maintain the Syria conflict. Regime change came out of nowhere and Russia was in effect, expelled. Assad and his wife live in a small apartment as guests of the regime in Moscow – for now. Assad apparently plays computer games all day.

Cuba is in an economic mess, deprived of oil, credit and resources that once Russia donated or sold cheaply simply to maintain influence because of old Soviet era ties and it annoyed the Americans. Now he does and can do, nothing. Despite a delegation of beggars in the past few weeks, Cuba’s regime returned empty handed. Beggars asking a bankrupt for loan don’t get far.

The mutual aid treaty he signed with Nicholas Maduro of Venezuela last May – in effect a defence pact, went out of the window in minutes. Not even worth the paper it was written on. So much for Maduro’s bluster. Do these people really think Russia will be there for them?

The attack on Iran is covered under their mutual defence and friendship pact. As soon as it began Moscow said the pact didn’t cover military intervention in the event of a limited military operation, which is what the US and Israel are effectively carrying out. Iran clearly expected much more, especially after its support for Russia in its war with Ukraine. But no, Moscow is doing nothing practical to help. It really doesn’t have much it can do, this isn’t 1986.

One after another Russia’s closest allies have found that they’re nothing but a geopolitical nuisance, used by Putin to wind up the Americans, because he could. Every time, it’s fair to say his bluff has been called. Can he rely on the Kazakh’s or the Centra Asian ‘stan’ states? Not in the slightest. They’re not stupid enough to rile him up because he could make their lives difficult, but they’re not going out of their way to help him either. They might close an eye to some of his activities but not much. They’re not sacrificing themselves for him.

That leaves the Chinese. They too have lost out with the collapse of Russian influence, if only indirectly. They’ve done and are doing what they can without looking too deeply involved, to passively help with industrial manufacturing and refinements, but they’re not willing to face the severe sanctions regime of full involvement. And despite their mutual support agreements China doesn’t need Russia for anything, Russia needs it. If it can watch the west and see it engaged it knows it’s not engaged elsewhere – at least that’s how the start of the war looked. Now Trump is out of Ukraine and slamming Iran, it’s another slap in the face for China. The Iranians had been in Beijing only in the past month on a weapons buying spree trying to get the latest anti-carrier missiles. Nobody is sure if China agreed to supply them – the idea of sinking a US carrier would be a huge deal, but would they be prepared for the American response that it was Chinese made missile? Probably not, as they don’t like to rock that boat too much.

If Russia collapsed China has a lot to gain, but it hates instability. Its only move would be in stabilizing the Siberian end of the Federation as quickly as possible. So even though he is engaged in war, Putin knows that China won’t be a loser in his demise, no matter how much Xi pretends they love each other. It’s a marriage of convenience and China won’t be there to stop any end of days scenario when it comes to Putin. He’s alone. You can hardly call Lukashenko an ally – more a Vice-Roy of some impoverished Oblast whose people want him dead at the first opportunity.

As Putin’s war of choice against Ukraine struggles now on a level we haven’t seen since the rout of September 2022, Ukraine just keeps improving. I’m more convinced they’re going to win this now than I have been in a year.

Ukraine has started implementing efficiencies and operational practices that are fundamentally improving their combat capabilities. The ending of Starlink is one major boost, but Putin’s paranoia that Telegram had to be shut down no matter the consequences has been deeply significant because it attacked the home front and the battle front equally and its deeply, deeply unpopular. Rarely has a government cut its own nose off to spite its face in such a way in the middle of a war. It’s a shockingly inept move but no matter what, they’re doing it anyway.

Ukraine is on a drone and missile offensive against Russian targets like we have never seen before. Oil refineries are not so much on the list but the upstream processing and distribution facilities are getting hammered, as are the export terminals at Novorossiysk. Ukrainian drones have taken out record numbers of air defence systems deep behind the front.

On the frontlines OSINT specialist Andrew Perpetua who literally counts Russian front line deaths seen only on video and that can be verified, reports that the numbers they have seen reached a record number for the entire war in December 2025, Again a new Record in January 2026 and another new record in February (around 5,600) and that month was short two days. Ukrainian drones on the battlefield are increasing in number and frequency and the new incentive system seems to be driving it. They’re seeing verifiable deaths running around 300 per day now.

The latest complaints from the Russians are that Ukraine is employing small, fast rubber-propeller FOFPV drones so quiet you don’t know they’re there until they hit you.

It’s not all going Ukranine’s way, they suffer losses too, but nothing on the scale of the Russians and not in ways that fundamentally change anything on the front. Russia is up against a force that’s in some ways reminiscent of the Viet Kong. You know they’re there and they’re undermining you at every turn, but you can’t put your finger on them to stop them, and they’re getting better and better at it every day.

Putins army is struggling with communications and their answer is to lash out – and it does cause pain. If you throw several thousand drones into a combat area sooner or later you’ll hit things. But lashing out is not a strategy. No more than the strikes on Ukraines economic and civilian infrastructure which looks like a strategy. Yet everyone and their history loving uncle knows that civilians are never beaten down by such tactics. It makes them resist and hardens them ever more. As temperatures finally rise above zero (as much as 2C) after weeks of -20C or worse – it seems almost tropical for a brief moment. But Ukrainians know it’s the end of the harshest winter in decades. They pulled through. And what has Russia got to show for its attacks? Nothing.

As the economy stagnates and the financial crisis deepens, Russia is running out of options, and friends. Even ‘Putin’s Brain’, the fascist imperialist monarchist Alexander Dugin, the man who gave Putin the lecture on why Ukraine was Russian, and that Putin bought into wholesale, has his doubts now.

Dugin claims that the current Russian leadership is maintaining a “…false image that everything is fine in Russia and that peaceful life is going on as usual,” which he says has now “exhausted itself.”

He argues that unless “real patriotic reforms” begin inside Russia, the situation will become “simply unpredictable,” and he warns that Russia is “next” to face serious danger as its allies are “systematically destroyed one by one.”

These “patriotic reforms” are implicitly defined as a purge of “liberal” elites (there are still some in Russia?) and a full embrace of a harder nationalist‑imperial line to prepare society for a much wider conflict. He also thinks WW3 is already under way and Russia must conquer Ukraine – while at the same time less explicitly suggesting that’s not really viable right now. Like all philosophers he likes to leave an escape route for future pontification.

Dugin and his followers, including Putin are mistaken if they think they can change Russian society so drastically at this point. If Putin ever had an idealogical standpoint, which he never did and still doesn’t, he might have stood a chance. He’s never espoused fascism, or communism, or anything of the kind, even though he’s used the tools of both. That lack of imaginative ideology if he had embraced it from the get go, would now work. But he was too lazy, too corrupt and too comfortable to do what he didn’t think he would ever need to do. Inventing it 25 years into being President just won’t work, and he knows it.

Putin is isolated, alone both on the world stage and at home. He no longer knows the truth and he’s clearly paranoid. Nobody is willing to tell him the realities and the military just keep digging a deeper hole thinking that mass mobilization is the answer – I suspect that will happen in May after the May 9th GPW celebration and Telegram will be completely gone.

The Ukrainians are using new technologies and tactics, with new strategies to defeat this primitive hoard mentality the Russians are committed to, and it will work. When a single battle robot supported by external re-supply drones is able to hold a strong point for 45 days as happened recently, Russia has a problem, because that type of situation is going to get worse.

Even the air war is going against them. Mirage 2000’s have been deployed against the front for the first time, delivering French bombs on French aircraft. More F-16’s are being delivered with another small batch of upgraded Mig-29’s. And we all know that Gripen is on the way.

It doesn’t matter where Putin turns, because eventually he’s next. He’s said to be terrified of meeting the end that Muamar Qaddafi met in 2011 which involve a hot metal rod inserted violently where the sun doesn’t shine. If you have these fears it’s because you deserve them and your sub conscious is gnawing at you.

Evil does have a habit of meeting a bad ending. Stalin died of a hideous stroke, Trotsky was axed to death, Hitler saw his entire world view crushed and shot himself in a concrete bunker, Qaddafi we’ve discussed, Sadam Hussein was found in a hole on a farm and eventually hung, Ayatollah Khameini has just been bombed out of existence in his own home, most of his deputies and lieutenants have gone the same way. Radavan Karadic was found and imprisoned, Slobadan Milosevic died on trial. There’s always hope Putin will meet a suitable end. We don’t have to wait too long I think.

The Analyst

militaryanalyst@bsky.social

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