Back on the second, I posted the following: “Second, I’m going to do something no author or pundit is ever supposed to admit: I hope I’m wrong. Not a little bit, not a lot, but run away and hide in shame wrong. Mercilessly mocked wrong.”
Here’s one I’m hoping is right. I’m not a fan of the current pontif, to the point I regard him as an anti-pope. Yet, I’m going to pray that what he said here is right. It would be nice if some sanity has broken out behind those red brick walls. I hope you will join me in praying for this outcome, as I will take being mocked as a victory lap for mankind. It would be a far better outcome than the one being pushed by the hardliners.
Either way, the 9th should reveal that to come.
Perhaps we in the West are putting too much weight on the symbolic importance of May 9th. After all, the Russian government controls the domestic media and ruthlessly suppresses any public dissent. So it can use that day to promote any message that it likes, without the need to back it up with specific policy announcements.
If Putin announced some big escalation, he would be admitting that Russia wasn’t winning, on a day that was supposed to be all about Russian victory. He would be promoting two conflicting messages at the same time. If he tried to declare some arbitrary “victory” and then withdraw from Ukraine, as the NY Post’s Vatican scuttlebutt suggests, then he would risk alienating Russian nationalists, who would see it as a betrayal of their cause.
The most beneficial approach for Putin would be to use the occasion to stir up a patriotic fervour which can be channelled into support for the current war, without committing to any specific actions. That means lots of speeches denouncing NATO aggression and portraying Russia as a victim, with captured Western weapons (real and/or fake) being prominently featured in the military parades as “evidence” of those claims, but without any real changes to actual political policy or military strategy.
My guess is that nothing significant will happen on the 9th.