On the verge of collapse! Energy truce reveals Putin's desperation

Russian President Vladimir Putin's proposal for a week-long energy truce is not the gesture of a confident commander, but a desperate maneuver by a leader whose army is on the verge of collapse, writes The Telegraph columnist Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former officer in the British regular army, Focus writes.

He notes that the Russian armed forces are in a state of deep decline. Putin has bought 15,000 soldiers from North Korea. Russian recruiters are scouring Africa for mercenaries. The prisons are empty. And now there are reports that wounded prisoners, many of whom have lost limbs, are returning to the front lines to fill critical personnel shortages. Some have not even been given prosthetics and are expected to return to battle on crutches.

All of these actions by the Russian authorities speak to two important things, Bretton-Gordon believes.

1. The Russian army is losing combat capability

Independent analysis shows that Russia is advancing more slowly than the armies in the trenches of World War I, and at a comparable cost in human lives. In the past two years, Russia has captured just over 1% of Ukraine's territory, losing more than 500,000 killed and wounded, and continues to lose about 1,000 people a day.

"This is a war of attrition at its most brutal. Wounded soldiers are being used as consumables to "take the bullets" in the hope that Ukraine will eventually run out of ammunition. This will only happen if we in the West allow it," the analyst notes.

2. This also shows the Kremlin's utter contempt for its own people.

While ordinary Russians suffer from crippling inflation and skyrocketing interest rates, Moscow pours its remaining resources into missiles and drones to terrorize Kiev instead of taking care of its own people:

"For the Kremlin, the Russian army is just cannon fodder. Prisoners and foreign recruits are worth even less, if at all,” the columnist writes.

He emphasizes that if this is indeed a true reflection of the state of the modern Russian army, then even a relatively small increase in Western support would turn the tide of the war and almost certainly allow Ukraine to win:

"All signs point to the Russian army approaching its peak. Ukraine must negotiate from a position of strength, not dance like a trained bear to please Washington, indulging in Moscow’s fantasies.“

With Putin rapidly depleting his men to throw them into the meat grinder of war, this could be a moment of real leverage. And Donald Trump has a real chance to make peace, but only if he puts pressure where it really matters: on Putin, the man who can end this war, Breton-Gordon writes.