Russian lawmakers authorize Putin to use military force outside the country, Part II

[Labster]

I feel a bit bad about not updating this thread for a while, but I mean, it's a stalemate.  Oh right, there was that one sally from the north towards Kharkiv, which had been a pretty quiet border.  It was repulsed pretty quickly, but it's annoying because it's more border to guard.

Military:
* Biden finally allows Ukraine to strike inside Russia with US weapons, on the basis that Russia is using North Korean arms to strike inside Ukraine.
* Battle lines are still pretty static this year.
* Salient repulsed in the north, as I mentioned above.
* Russia appears to be taking 5-to-1 losses in manpower, which is sadly sustainable for Russia but not for Ukraine.  Ukraine is now trying to draft the draft dodgers
* Russia's equipment losses are not particularly sustainable, but it kind of doesn't matter.  It matters in the long term for economic/security/arms sales reasons, but if the strategy is "zerg rush kekeke" it only really matters if the attrition affects Ukraine more than it does Russia.

Political:
* There's currently a peace summit for Ukraine going on in Switzerland, which naturally doesn't include Russia
* Okay so basically that's a war summit, like the Yalta conference (once held in now occupied Crimea)
* Apparently they all told Orban to put up or shut up, threatening to withhold all of the NATO goodies, and he chose basically neither, but to go along with everyone else while complaining about it.
* We were a bit worried earlier that Hungary and Slovakia were going to team up to block EU aid to Ukraine, but Slovakia is still in a bit of disorder after the assassination attempt on Fico, and it turns out that non-great powers can still be ignored when they're being dumb.
* Russia offered Russian peace if Ukraine gets no allies and gives away land it currently controls, which is what you call a non-starter.
* Russia sends a frigate to Cuba to spook the Canadians; a decade ago they sent the Moskva.  It's like a repeat of the Cuban Missile Crisis, except with bottle rockets instead of nukes.  Possibly a fair fight for the US Coast Guard if they borrow a speedboat from the set of Miami Vice.
* It looks like America is going to "loan" confiscated Russian assets to Ukraine.

As time goes on I'm less confident that Ukraine will win this war.  I'm sticking with the early assessment that Russia has already lost, since the land gained is worth less than the industrial capacity and diplomatic reputation that they lost.