Derek Blackmore

PUTIN'S STRATEGY IS WORKING: MEARSHEIMER REVEALS THE WEST'S FATAL MISTAKE US Professor John Mearsheimer joined host Glenn Diesen on October 28, 2026. The realist scholar laid out why Russia is on track for an ugly victory in Ukraine and how decades of NATO expansion created the conditions that made this war almost inevitable. The West still refuses to face the strategic reality staring it in the face. RUSSIA IS WINNING AND THE WEST KNOWS IT ➡️ Many Europeans, maybe even most, now understand that Russia is going to win the war. ➡️ Even Mike McFaul, a longtime Putin critic and staunch supporter of the Zelensky government, just published a piece in Foreign Affairs titled “Putin’s Strategy is working.” ➡️ Trump has shifted the burden to the Europeans because he fully understands there is no war-winning strategy for the United States in Ukraine. ➡️ He wants to cut a deal, but Zelensky, the Europeans, and the deep state stand in the way. THE GLOVES CAME OFF ➡️ The Russians took the gloves off in their strategic bombing campaign in midsummer and ramped it up across Ukraine. ➡️ They have seriously damaged the Ukrainian economy and the infrastructure that supports the troops on the front lines. ➡️ This makes Ukraine ever more dependent on European economic support at a moment when Europe is in no position to deliver. ➡️ Zelensky has already said the €52 billion pledged for 2026 is not enough and that he needs another €27 billion. For 2027 he has asked for an additional €82 billion on top of the €52 billion already pledged. THE TERRITORY LOGIC ➡️ Putin cannot trust the West or Ukraine to stick to any deal. ➡️ He has a deep-seated interest in taking as much Ukrainian territory as he can conquer and govern because that is the best way of maximizing Russia’s security over the long term. ➡️ From a Russian point of view the choice is simple: either Russia controls Odessa or Ukraine controls Odessa. If the Russians can take it at a reasonable cost, they will. ➡️ The goal is to turn Ukraine into a thoroughly dysfunctional rump state that is in no position to join the West or threaten Russia again. ➡️ “We have incentivized the Russians to weaken Ukraine as much as possible and to take as much Ukrainian territory as possible for strategic reasons.” THE NATO ROOT CAUSE ➡️ If there had been no NATO expansion and no talk of bringing Ukraine into NATO, Ukraine would be intact today in its pre-2014 borders, including Crimea. ➡️ McFaul has said there is no evidence Putin was intent on taking Crimea before 2014; he was spooked by the possibility that the Crimean Peninsula would become a NATO naval base. ➡️ Putin was not an imperialist before 2014 and he was not an imperialist before 2022. The conquests that followed are driven by strategic necessity, not empire-building. ➡️ Russia lives in a dangerous neighborhood. Napoleon invaded in 1812, Imperial Germany forced the Brest-Litovsk surrender in 1917, and Nazi Germany launched the most barbaric campaign in recorded history in 1941. NATO, a mortal foe during the Cold War, has now moved up to Russia’s border. The United States sits behind two oceans with weak neighbors. Russia does not. THE BOTTOM LINE Mearsheimer’s assessment is blunt: Ukraine is definitely going to lose the war, the Russians will win an ugly victory, and no one can tell a plausible story about how Kyiv rescues the situation. Decades of NATO expansion that ignored Russian security concerns produced exactly the outcome the West claimed it wanted to prevent. This is the price of refusing to see the world as it is. #Mearsheimer #UkraineWar #NATOExpansion #Russia #Realism #PutinStrategy #UkraineDefeat HT: YouTube Glenn Diesen