In news that will surprise precisely no one who has been conscious for the last eighteen months, MI6 has issued a fresh assessment that Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin remains as flexible on Ukraine as a frozen radiator. The man who single-handedly turned ‘denazification’ into a punchline is, according to the spooks, intransigent. In other news, water is wet, the Pope is Catholic, and bears do unmentionable things in the woods.
But here’s the kicker, my gin-soaked comrades. The Kremlin’s war message, that carefully curated slurry of Soviet nostalgia and victimhood, is apparently fracturing faster than my last marriage. Yes, the very narrative that has kept Russia’s cannon fodder marching to their dooms is showing more cracks than the pavement outside my local. MI6, in their infinite wisdom and presumably after a long lunch, have whispered this to the press as if it were a state secret and not the bleeding obvious.
One can only imagine the scenes at the Lubyanka. Can’t you see it? A room full of men in ill-fitting suits, all looking as though they’ve just been forced to drink my cooking sherry. They’re wringing their hands, sweating through their shirts, because Comrade Ivan from the frontline has started to ask pesky questions like ‘Why are we here?’ and ‘Is this really about NATO expansion or just your ego?’ The propaganda machine, that once-greased beast of lies, is now spewing out contradictions like a bad curry.
The assessment, which I imagine was delivered over a cryptically secured line and possibly a glass of duty-free gin, suggests that Putin’s grip on the domestic messaging is loosening. The war, once a glorious special operation, is now a grim slog that’s harder to sell than a timeshare in Slough. Even state TV, that bastion of upbeat drivel, is starting to show signs of narrative fatigue. They can only deny the number of dead soldiers so many times before even the most brainwashed babushka starts to wonder why there’s a shortage of both black paint and husbands.
But let’s not get carried away. Putin intransigent is still Putin in power. He’s not going to wake up tomorrow, phone Zelenskyy, and say, ‘Sorry, old boy, got carried away. Fancy a pint?’ No. The man is as likely to back down as I am to order a water with my meal. The fractures, however, are real. And fractures, my friends, are the first step to a full-blown collapse.
So raise a glass of whatever rancid spirit you can find. To MI6 and their obvious observations. To the cracks in the Kremlin’s facade, which may yet widen into a chasm wide enough to swallow a few oligarchs. And to the hope that this whole sorry circus might, just might, be heading for its final act. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a date with a bottle of gin and a dictionary of synonyms for ‘intransigent’.
