WE SHOULD NOT BELIEVE MOSCOW’S TEARS

The Kremlin has staged an extraordinary, grandiose—if it were not for the ongoing destruction of Ukraine, one might say New Year’s carnival-style—show. A macabre “Blue Light” spectacle, featuring not only a horde of rags (cannon fodder) or Russia’s so-called “opposition.” Some media figures—those who think with their “other end”—also rejoice in and support it.

The FSB/SVR and GRU elite, concentrated in Putin’s person, have thrown all their efforts into convincing the world that Russia is currently winning the war in Ukraine and therefore will inevitably win it in the near future. Immediately after that victory, Russia will supposedly attack Europe—and, surprise—most likely starting with the Baltic states.

Dressed in a military uniform, Putin pontificates about success at the front, stressing that there will be no need even for negotiations over the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces. In other words, Russians will occupy the entire Donbas within a few weeks. At the same time, Putin publicly beats his chest claiming he will not attack Europe or NATO—thereby causing great concern, since he spoke in exactly the same way before launching the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Into this mosaic of the empire-restoration bogeyman successfully inflated by Russia, an ill-timed quote is “pasted in”: a statement by Ukraine’s military intelligence chief that Russia will attack the Baltic states in 2027. On top of that, local media trumpet that NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has “spoken” about a Third World War and the need to prepare for it in Europe—although the Alliance chief was talking about hybrid war.

Taken together, the future may look extremely bleak, even tragic. Is it time to run headlong, shouting loudly and flailing arms and legs? Or should we try to look reality in the eye through all this thick fog of panic-mongering, through the slurry constructed by Lubyanka’s psycho-operators and splashed—while monetizing ads and your attention—by both social networks and traditional media?

First and foremost: Russia has no tangible, obvious advantage on the Ukrainian front line. Yes, there are minor tactical gains—advancing a few hundred meters here, retreating elsewhere—but that is part of a grueling positional war of attrition. The Kremlin has been unable to achieve its operational goals (the full occupation and control of four Ukrainian regions) as the fourth year of full-scale war draws to a close, after burying hundreds of thousands of so-called soldiers and tens of thousands of pieces of military equipment. As for the strategic goal—Ukraine’s capitulation—even with help from a partner across the Atlantic, it is out of the question.

The ragged rabble called troops are surrounded and beaten near Kupiansk, which is controlled by Ukrainian forces. Fighting continues in Pokrovsk, whose western part remains in Ukrainian hands. Yet—yet, yet—Putin again claimed the day before yesterday that Russian forces have once more taken Kupiansk. Is he lying? Yes, of course.

Putin is desperately bluffing, spreading fabrications to the millions in his rag-heap army and perhaps believing he will impress Trump, who will buy his delusions. Trump, as you know, is famous for doubting and publicly criticizing his own country’s intelligence.

The Kupiansk axis is a multi-layered strategic-military-psychological failure for Moscow. For the second time, the hapless dictator has declared the city captured, even though Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky recently visited it. Like a child, Putin claimed that this was untrue—that Zelensky had supposedly staged it all very well. Staged what? The liberation of Kupiansk?

This entire Kremlin dance around a failed—and still failing—military operation shows how extremely difficult things are for the Kremlin right now. The war requires ever more resources, which inevitably affects all of Russian society beyond Moscow. The services used for control and endless total surveillance, like the armed gangs of rags pretending to be the Russian army in Ukraine, are at the point of exhaustion. Even the wounded—barely mobile or unable to move at all without crutches—are thrown into senseless assaults.

But reality on the ground is of no concern to the aces of “multi-move” schemes. What matters to them is staging yet another impressive spectacle—a powerful information operation. No wonder Russia’s Führer claims he is about to seize Luhansk and Donetsk regions. He cannot take Pokrovsk for over a year, yet will capture the Sloviansk–Kramatorsk agglomeration over a weekend? All of this is worthless babble meant to sustain an emotional background.

Why does Putin rave? Apparently, in the assessment of the Kremlin’s psycho-operators, these ravings work on Western societies. If they did not, the so-called Russian “opposition” would not be harnessed as well. Some of these “good,” yet SVR-controlled, Russian leaders foam at the mouth shouting that Russia will “most likely, for sure” attack Europe within a year—and first, of course, as always, the Baltic states… to which hardly anyone will come to help. Well, maybe one or two neighbors.

What has happened to the Russian “opposition” that openly voices Kremlin psychological-operation messages? Why is it asserted so firmly that no one will defend the Baltic states, as if the Alliance no longer existed and as if American, British, Canadian, and German forces were not deployed there? We won’t defend ourselves? And what about Poland, Finland? Forgotten out of sheer foolishness? We doubt it very much.

Second, let us ask: with what, exactly, would the Russians attack Europe? Riding stolen pigs? With what resources would they finance a war? We are told Russia will continue the war because war is supposedly the only way to keep the country mobilized and its economy “breathing,” somehow surviving without dying.

But it is precisely the war that is the cause of Russia’s economy sliding into the abyss. We repeat: beyond Moscow, in the rest of Russia, there is psychological tension, despair, a life without prospects. We are talking about mafia-like Kremlin oligarch groups. Russia’s special services and oligarchic elite are searching for possible exits from a deepening external and approaching internal crisis. Constantly scaring the whole world with military/nuclear escalation has finally run out of steam; new directions are needed.

One of them is the launch of information “drops” (vbro­sy), testing reactions to Putin’s replacements. Served on an informational platter is former deputy head of the Presidential Administration Dmitry Kozak, who allegedly refused to demand Kyiv’s capitulation after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine and opposed a massive invasion. Kozak is said to have sought to turn Crimea into a “Russian Monaco,” envied by all neighboring countries.

Kozak is a possible reserve option—officially not smeared with blood, yet no less dangerous to us as a Moscow choice than Putin. The prospective (?) replacement served in Soviet GRU special forces. In 1994 he moved in the same circles as Putin—chairing the legal committee under St. Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak. Until September 18, 2025, Kozak served as Deputy Head of the Russian “President’s” Administration, overseeing post-Soviet integration and relations with Ukraine—previously handled by Kremlin ideologue Vladislav Surkov.

In conclusion, regarding the threat of war: yes, it always remains. In the near term, we can expect sabotage and information operations from terrorist Russia. But there is no basis whatsoever to speak of an attack on NATO’s eastern flank or a full-scale invasion of the Baltic states.

That said, we must prepare for war now—not in a year, not in five, but today. Only if we act here and now, today, without delay, does tomorrow change.

On the other hand, if we plan to start exercising after New Year’s, hoping for a miracle, nothing changes. Nothing happens by itself. A miraculous tomorrow, frankly, never comes. If we act now, rather than planning to start right after Easter, we will have done everything to ensure that war does not begin in Lithuania.

A safe 2026!

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