The Telegraph: The Energy Truce Has Revealed The Kremlin's Main Problem

This is the maneuver of a "warlord" whose army is on the verge of collapse.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin's proposal for a week-long energy truce is not the gesture of a confident warlord, but a maneuver of a leader whose army is on the verge of collapse. This is the opinion of The Telegraph columnist Hamish de Breton-Gordon, a former British regular army officer.

He notes that the Russian military is in a state of deep decline. Putin has procured 15,000 soldiers from North Korea. Russian recruiters are scouring Africa for mercenaries. Prisons have been emptied. And now there are reports that wounded prisoners, many missing limbs, are being brought back to the front lines to make up for critical shortages. Some have not even been provided with prosthetics and are expected to return to combat on crutches.

All of these actions by the Russian government indicate two important things, Breton-Gordon believes.

1. The Russian army is losing combat capability

Independent analysis shows that Russia is advancing more slowly than armies in the trenches of World War I, and at a comparable human cost. In the past two years, Russia has captured just over 1 percent of Ukraine, losing more than 500,000 people killed and wounded, and continues to lose about 1,000 a day.

"This is a war of attrition at its most brutal. Wounded soldiers are being used as expendable material to 'take bullets' in the hope that Ukraine will eventually run out of ammunition. This will only happen if we in the West allow this to happen," the analyst notes.

2. It shows the Kremlin's utter disregard for its own people

While ordinary Russians are suffering from crushing inflation and skyrocketing interest rates, Moscow is pouring its remaining resources into missiles and drones to terrorize Kiev instead of taking care of its own people:

"For the Kremlin, the Russian army is just cannon fodder. Prisoners and foreign recruits are worth even less, if anything," the columnist writes.

Real leverage

He emphasizes that if this truly reflects the state of the modern Russian army, even a relatively small increase in Western support would almost certainly allow Ukraine to prevail:

"All signs point to the Russian army approaching a climax. Ukraine must negotiate from a position of strength, not dance like a trained bear to please Washington by indulging Moscow's fantasies."

With Putin rapidly running out of people to throw into the meat grinder of war, this could be a moment of real leverage. And Donald Trump has a real opportunity to bring peace, but only if he puts pressure where it's really needed: on Putin, the man who can end this war, Breton-Gordon writes.

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