Vladimir Putin’s loss of a key regional ally in Bashar al-Assad has weakened Moscow at a crucial moment.

For while the war in Ukraine reges on the battlefield, Russia is losing the economic conflict. The Kremlin’s oil export revenues are too low to sustain a high-intensity war and nobody will lend Vladimir Putin a kopeck.

Putin’s strategic victory in Ukraine was far from inevitable a fortnight ago and it is less inevitable now after the Assad regime collapsed like a house of cards, shattering Putin’s credibility in the Middle East and the Sahel. He could do nothing to save his sole state ally in the Arab world.

“The limits of Russian military power have been revealed,” said Tim Ash, a regional expert at Bluebay Asset Management. “Putin now goes into Ukraine peace talks with Trump from a position of weakness,” said Mr. Ash.

And as bad as that military weakness is, Putin’s economic weakness is far worse.  Following are examples of just how weak that is.

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Donald Trump couldn’t be clearer. He intends to abolish the Department of Education.  Good for him.

Indeed, for decades, ordinary Americans have sat back and watched a small radical fringe take over their public education system and academia. They did nothing as “woke” professors promoted a self-flagellating ideology that sees everything in terms of race, gender and oppression.

What started as “political correctness” 30 years ago has morphed into an explicitly anti-Western, anti-white, anti-heterosexual belief system. Middle America has had enough of it.

Team Trump is targeting the Department of Education not primarily to reduce government waste, but to end government “woke”.   That means  important implications for what happens to the federal government more broadly.

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The most shocking aspect of President Biden pardoning his own son, Hunter, may be that it was not in the least shocking, given the history of the Biden family.

This abuse of the pardon power was widely anticipated even by his allies as the president repeatedly denied that he would ever do such a thing as he ran for reelection. Indeed, it may be the single most premeditated unethical act in political history. However, it may not achieve what President Biden most hopes for: a clean slate for his son and himself in this massive corruption scandal.

Biden has recreated a sweeping immunity grant through his own powers by pardoning his son not only for the crimes of which he was convicted, but of any crimes committed between Jan. 1, 2014 to Dec. 1, 2024.  Think on that. It would cover anything from perjury to murder.

But it is not the absolute “get-out-of-jail-free” card that President Biden would like, for the pardon has that sell-by date.  Any crime he commits after then, such as being made to testify under oath to Congress and caught lying, is jailable.

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Astolphe de Custine, Letters From Russia - 1839

Russia has a long history with alcoholism. But after the fall of the Soviet Union, drinking was in decline. Now, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, official figures show alcohol addiction is surging again for the first time in a decade.

Vodka sales this year surged to a record high and policymakers are scrambling to halt a rise in alcohol-related deaths. What has changed is the war. It is becoming increasingly clear that the fabric of Russian society is falling apart.

As in the 1980s, Russian soldiers are returning from the frontline wounded and traumatized. Thousands more are dying, leaving grieving families at home.

But what is happening today is on a completely different scale. Around 15,000 Soviet soldiers died in Afghanistan. The Russian death toll in Ukraine is at least ten or more times that already.

Between Feb 24 2022 and Nov 19 this year, there have been at least 120,000 Russian military deaths in the war in Ukraine, according to analysis of probate records by Mediazona, a site that works in collaboration with BBC’s Russian service.

As many as 728,000 more have been injured, according to analysis by The Economist, based on leaked documents from America’s defense department.  Vast numbers of them have turned to vodka to drown their pain and trauma.

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On November 27, a powerful force led by Islamist group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) launched an offensive in northern Syria. Taking advantage of the dysfunctional Assad regime forces – the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) – and Russia’s preoccupation with its grinding war in Ukraine, HTS and its Turkish-supported allies advanced to the south – and swiftly took the city of Aleppo from Syrian strongman Bashar Al-Assad, his SAA and his Russian backers.

The Russians know Tartus is in trouble. On December 3, commercial satellite imagery revealed that every major Russian warship known to operate from Tartus – three missile frigates, a diesel-electric attack submarine and two lightly-armed support ships – had unmoored from the port’s three large piers and sailed into the Med.

Losing Tartus would be catastrophic for Russian power projection in Southern Europe and North Africa. Realistically, the only way for the Kremlin to replace the vital shore infrastructure in Tartus is to regain access to the Med via the Bosporus.

But there’s almost no prospect of that happening while the war in Ukraine still rages. Russian president Vladimir Putin may soon face an unhappy choice: keep fighting in Ukraine but lose influence in the Mediterranean region; or sue for peace in Ukraine and open up access from the Black Sea to the Med.

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On November 30, Chinese social media posts showed what appeared to be half a dozen bodies left strewn across a busy road in Neijiang City in China’s Sichuan province, after another apparent attack using a car.

We will perhaps never know the truth of what happened, but since February, China has suffered one mass killing after another. In an especially horrific incident on the 11th of last month, a man drove his SUV on the exercise track of Zhuhai Stadium, killing 35 people and injuring 45 others. For decades, disaffected Chinese have resorted to violence as a first choice instead of the last one.

But the Communist Party’s reaction has been to censor news of incidents and prevent expressions of grief and mourning. These actions, by further bottling up emotions, are making a bad situation even worse.

CCP authorities are especially worried at the moment because the economy is suffering a prolonged downturn, the first since the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976.

Further, the gloom in Chinese society is forcing collapse of birth rates. “In this country, to love your child is to never let him be born in the first place,” has become a popular sentiment.

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