Both Stubb and Zelensky came out swinging at Davos with a fantasy claim of no fewer than 35,000 Russians killed in action last month - for context this would be more deadly than any given month on the Somme. As I pointed out earlier, nobody is dumb enough to believe this.⬇️ These are moronic, trivially debunked lies. There is no evidence at all supporting them. The only explanation I can offer for these increasingly deranged pronouncements is that our current crop of Western leaders know Ukraine is doomed and moreover doomed in the near future, and they are suffering a collective mental break and attempting to manifest an alternate reality - one where they remain the drivers of history and not the passengers - via magical utterances. This is a strong statement, but it should be realized that the Davos Regime's Russia policy is dependent on the maintenance of a reality-simulacrum created via all-consuming Ukrainian propaganda laundered through every outlet imaginable. This includes the capture of intelligence output at the highest levels imaginable - back in 2023 SACEUR was being briefed on raw brOSINT drivel, and there's no reason to believe the situation has improved in the interim. Countless decisions costing a million-plus lives, trillions of dollars in stolen prosperity, and the strategic integrity of the Davos project itself have been made based on carefully curated nonsense, all based on a catastrophically bad gamble that Russia will eventually collapse and all of these debts - moral, financial, and ultimately an epistemological deficit owed to reality itself - will be paid off. That has not happened and it will not happen, and thus we're seeing people with access to literal intelligence agencies retreat into fantasy as the cold - literally cold! - reality of inevitable Russian victory becomes clear. Although this may seem strange at first blush, this collective break with reality fits a long pattern of doomed national leaders throughout time. They will be awakened by the cold water of history soon enough. It occurs to me that Stubb in particular must be bitterly regretting the immense strategic blunder that Finland's leap into the arms of NATO - doubtless fueled by dreams of securing the 1939 borders and far more from a collapsing Russia - has truly been. Now the Finns stare death in the face across what was once a friendly border and the awful knowledge that, should it come to war, NATO's high command will happily feed their national future into a meatgrinder in a desperate attempt to draw a few Russian divisions off the Vistula front. 2026 will be the year of decision, friends. Russia has never been stronger, while Ukraine has exhausted not only its own able-bodied male population but NATO's financial and industrial ability to continue to support the conversion of that male population into military units and combat power. At this point the only question is when the Russians will feel comfortable enough in their military ascendancy to cave in the front line and end the war.