Weeks before the start of the fifth year of its all-out war, Russia is having more success obliterating Ukraine’s energy systems than it is securing any decisive battlefield victory. Ukraine’s exhaustion hangs over the US-backed peace talks, which have progressed further than any other negotiations

Moscow’s forces are grinding down Ukrainian defenses in several places along the 1,100-kilometer front line. But they’re moving at a glacial pace; the slowest in any modern war since World War II, according to a new study – and at an astronomical cost.

“The overall front is best described as ‘dynamic stagnation,’ meaning intense combat with marginal geographic change,” said Ivan Torres, a retired US Army major who is now senior Russian armed forces analyst for Rochan Consulting, a Polish research group.

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Pokrovsk’s fall to Russian troops, which experts say is imminent, will endanger other Ukrainian positions to the northeast, around the town of Myrnohrad, which is also largely under Russian control. Soldiers from the 7th Rapid Response Corps of Ukraine’s Air Assault Forces said that Russian units have brought heavy equipment into the town, and set up a forward command post, indicating confidence in their ability to hold it.

“Russian forces control most of the [two] cities, and even though Ukrainian resistance may still be present in some places, the cities can be considered lost,” said Kastehelmi, who just returned from a trip to Ukraine.

The fall of Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad are likely finally coming into view, but with this much time for Ukraine to harden defenses behind these cities and with the public image of Russia as a powerful military shredded to pieces by the defense of Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad what has Russia gained but a monument to the futility of their endeavor?

Militarily Ukraine won the battle of Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad make no mistake, the defense of these cities will be studied for decades into the future as an example of how to dismantle an overwhelming land army invading deep into your country and Russia’s image as a military superpower will never recover given the historic enormity of Russia’s continued strategic blunders at the cost of everything that made them strong going into the war.

I say fine, let Russia have these twin houses of skeletons, invite them in to dine with the ghosts that formerly lived vibrant lives there and beckon them forward into their final annihilation beyond.