George Barros

Zelensky goes and takes a selfie by the...

signed by the city limits, sort of emphatically disproving what Putin had said.

And I actually don't think that... I think Putin's lying about performance to make it seem like they're doing better, but I think Putin's also being duped a little bit because there's this sort of command economy trickle-up effect where the generals know that Putin wants to be told he's doing well, so the generals lie and the general officers lie and the men at the front lie.

So there's sort of this garbage-in, garbage-out take.

And...

I think as long as Putin thinks that his forces are moving, and they are, slowly, then it's not going to stop.

So we have to therefore figure out what's the military science problem and how to stop Russian forces cold.

We did pretty good.

The Ukrainians did good in 2025.

Less than 1% of the country seized.

I'd like to make that be zero.

Yeah, so the Russian economy is overheating.

We have inflation.

We have a labor shortage.

And we have regional budgets which are in deficit.

And so this is significant because

The Russians embraced a strategy of recruitment that is very resource-intensive economically.

I mean, the previous strategy for getting guys to the front line was paying them huge amounts of money, huge by Russian standards, three, four times the annual salary to go fight as a sign-up bonus.

And it's very interesting.

Putin, I think, is starting to change that because he's facing an economic problem.