George Barros

Either he's running out of liquidity or the pool of people who are willing to sign up and take a fat paycheck to go risk their lives is drying up or both things are happening.

Because in October of 25, the Russians passed a new law which actually lowers the legal threshold for mobilizing reservists.

It used to be the case that in Russian law, the Russians could only mobilize reservists to go fight in expeditionary wars during an officially declared war or a state emergency or that sort of thing.

But this new amendment to the law actually lowers it and says, actually, no, we can actually mobilize reservists without declaring a state of war.

And yes, they can go fight expeditionary wars, including in Ukraine, including in the parts of Ukraine we have annexed and declared actually Russian territory anyway.

And these reservists are actually starting to be mobilized now.

And that's what I should really mean because it's a violation of Putin's previous social contract, which is, I don't use the monopoly of violence of the state to force you to fight, I pay you to fight.

And if you die or wounded that, you took the deal.

But now the deal has changed.

It's like Darth Vader to Lando in Star Wars, the Empire Strikes Back, I've altered the deal, pray I don't alter it any further.

Now it's actually, you signed up to be reservists, but now we can recruit you anyways and put you in its compulsory.

And I don't think there's going to be a recognition of Russia or anything like that, but this is, I think, driven by the economic issues.

And it's a problem too, because it means that Russia might be able to generate forces much more cheaply, but it's not because Putin wanted to.

This is bad for his political stability.

He's doing it out of necessity.

Yeah.

The Ukrainian campaign is becoming increasingly sophisticated over time, in part due to American intelligence sharing, knowing exactly what part of the facility and target, what are the really critical zones.

And so it's matured and become more effective.

So you're looking at the Ukrainian long-range strategic bombing campaign against oil infrastructure in early 25 versus late 25, two different angles.

And they've compounded.