State Of The War

Dustin Du Cane

16 Aug 2025 — 7 min read

Doug Mills/The New York Times

While talking with Dan Kaszeta yesterday, I realised something (video of talk coming soon).

I realised that I've stopped writing about the Russian genocide war for a simple reason.

I've written what I can and made all the warnings I could in 2022 and 2023.

Nothing has changed for the better.

1) Russia should have been at the very least sanctioned and blockaded like it was Germany in WW1. We would be well over the economic pain by now.

2) Preferably NATO should have imposed a no fly zone over Ukraine in February 2022. Ukrainians wouldn't be being bombed by waves of drones in 2025. It is beyond ridiculous and commentary that Russia can still be threatened with 'severe' sanctions in 2025. WW1 will be a short war in comparison with this war.

3) NATO should have actually intervened and if not tossed Russia back over the border, frozen the front lines a lot closer to the Russian border.

4) Europe should have tooled up for war by building all the factories. It hasn't. And now it can't rely on American industry. Oh and all the major companies should have been nationalised and that means you Rheinmetall.

Client Challenge

5) Ukraine should have got all the weapons from Europe and the US in 2022, it might have tossed the Russians back over the border then. It can't and won't now.

6) The 2023 Ukrainian offensive looked and smelled like Kursk 1943 before it started and fizzled out much like it. Ukraine doesn't have the troops it did in 2023 or 2024. The best die first. And Bakhmut was a Verdun, a bloody mess that nobody won, killing off professionals for what?

7) Ukrainian tactical fighting seems hamstringed by a deficient post-Soviet command structure and increasingly corrupt procurement process. I cannot understand how you can graft during a genocide war against your country but I'm not post-Soviet. The corruption is maybe a natural result of so much money entering the country. Ukrainian weapons aren't being sold abroad to terrorists but Ferraris are being bought with diverted funds. Unbelievable that there's serious graft on both sides of the conflict. You can easily make a good AND honest living supplying a war, why steal. Maybe that's why I fail at business.

Tom Cooper (military analyst from 🇦🇹) presents an unflattering characterisation of part of the #AFU command staff, along with a detailed portrayal of corruption in the weapons procurement system in Ukraine's MoD. xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/ukraine-wa... #TomCooper #Ukraine #RussoUkrainianWar
— John Lackland (@johnlackland.bsky.social) 2024-04-29T03:00:13.105Z

2/6 Ukraine is far from perfect. Corruption, command, training, procurement, and mobilization issues have all been valid criticisms. But here’s the truth: Ukraine is stepping up. Reforms are happening—even if there’s a long road ahead. The West? Not so much.
— Joni Askola (@joniaskola.bsky.social) 2025-06-17T10:51:56.733Z

Ukraine uncovers major corruption scheme in defense procurement
— EUwatch 🇪🇺 (@euwatch.live) 2025-08-03T14:12:26.293Z

8) Agile and innovative production can't match minimally competently steered state mass production. Sometimes you just need a huge factory. Russians are good at building huge factories churning out good enough murder tools.

9) Russians still do war crimes and war criminal Putin just visited the USA to put his dick in Trump's ear and piss.

10) Russia has a demographic advantage.

11) Russia's economy still isn't collapsing, Russians aren't revolting and Putin is firmly in power.

12) Europe flops about like a stunned fish on a chopping board instead of being the shark in bloody water it could be. Phil warned about this in our book.

13) I predicted Trump would be back. Phil warned about Trump in our book.

None of the above means Ukraine should surrender or agree to a cease-fire. Just that I've run out of words to warn, describe and comment. I've said it all.

What is there to add?

I'm not going to run a Russia can, must and will be beaten grift like Applebaum or Snyder. Maybe I'm too harsh on Snyder, he seems honest though that's the honesty of a broken record. However all those terrible pieces from 2022 made Europe complacent about Russia.

I'm not going to shit on Russian war-making and technology like Philips O' Brien and make insightful posts about how the trenches in Pipikova advanced a hundred meters.

And why write the seventh hundred essay about the dangers of repeating Munich 1938 and appeasing Putin?

Maybe I could write about technology in Ukraine.

But that's also a grift.

The major technology in Ukraine remains, just as it has for the last hundred years, boom boom.

You need superior artillery, whether by quality, quantity or usage, or whatever combination, in order to win on the modern battlefield. The only very expensive substitutes are surprise, air power or enormous numbers of soldiers, as in Chinese 1950 waves of soldiers.

Even clever experienced infantry has its limits and can't replace dropping lots of hot metal on enemies. And no matter how clever and experienced infantry is, warfare is a meat grinder that kills soldiers regardless. There is a life-span for an infantry soldier.

And we need to remember that drones are complementary to artillery and air.

Also that cyber and AI are endless grifts.

You can't cyber a tank assault. You can only drop a lot of metal on it.

You can't cyber a mine field. You can plot it with drones and electronics but somebody has to clean it up.

You can't cyber holding a town, a village and a bunker.

You can't cyber the endless logistics you need to supply bearded men with weapons, ammo, food, medicine and fuel.

Electronic warfare can do a lot of things, such as finding the enemy, telling you what they're doing and plan to do and making it difficult for the enemy to do that back to you but at some point you need an angry bearded man with an assault rifle to take a trench and he will like a big tank behind him and loads of boom boom before him.

Try and capture that trench, bunker, village and town with a drone or a laptop.

AI is good for war crimes as the IDF is showing.

Oh and fuck your another meeting Macron.