Russia is trying to secure at the negotiating table what it can no longer secure on the battlefield.
Jason Jay Smart speaks with former SEAL Team Six squadron leader Chuck Pfarrer about the central problem facing Moscow: the Kremlin keeps projecting momentum while the battlefield points to attrition, command failure, and shrinking options.
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Russia claims Luhansk is effectively finished, but the reality around Pokrovsk tells a different story, and the cost keeps rising. Repeated assaults, poor battlefield leadership, and a striking failure to adapt have left the Russian military burning through men without producing decisive strategic results.
Moscow is now leaning on propaganda and negotiation to chase what it has failed to secure through maneuver and firepower. A system with no credible Plan B can keep throwing men forward long after the military logic has collapsed.
Pfarrer, a Kyiv Post Special Correspondent, explains that today, Pokrovsk is the clearest example of that trap. The deeper issue may lie inside Moscow itself. If this war now serves elite clan interests more than the long-term interests of the Russian state, then many of the Kremlin’s most destructive decisions become easier to understand. That is why the damage keeps growing even as the risks become more obvious. This is a hard look at Donbas, Pokrovsk, and Putin’s war machine, and at how long a state can keep consuming men, money, and credibility before the collapse can no longer be hidden.