White House Forced To Pivot As Putin's War Failure Becomes Embarrassment

To be clear, the Trump administration would still prefer that Putin prevailed in Ukraine. 

But what's a declining superpower to do about its treasured image of invincibility when the side it has so obviously backed is getting annihilated despite everyone's best efforts? Allies can be useful, but reputation is more important. JL

Phillips O'Brien reports in his substack:

Over the past week, the Trump administration made a number of pivots in its public stance towards Ukraine: trying to start de-Putinizing themselves. Both JD Vance and Marco Rubio were part of this. Vance might be the most pro-Putin, anti-Ukraine member of the administration, boasting his “proudest achievement” was cutting aid to Ukraine - and now he claims Trump, who publicly sneered Ukraine "has no cards," is pro-Ukraine? Rubio lied outright, saying the US has not been bullying Ukraine into taking a bad deal. They are trying to convince the American public the administration is more pro-Ukraine and anti-Putin because the intelligence they are receiving is that Russia is struggling and Ukraine is doing much better, as they now understand everything they said in 2025 was wrong.

Ukraine Lyman Counterattack Shocks Kremlin As Fake Win Claims Exposed

It's come to this: the Russians are so desperate to claim any sort of victory that they are staging "assaults" in towns they have occupied for a long time, then claiming them as new successes. 

The problem, in the internet era, is that everything can be time-stamped and geo-located. So when the Russian command claimed to have 'taken' Borova, near Lyman, the Kremlin was then shocked to learn that the Ukrainians were attacking from there because the reported Russian effort had been staged to given their superiors the good news they craved. JL

David Axe reports in Trench Art and RFU News reports:

On Friday, the Ukrainian 3rd Army Corps counterattacked north of Lyman (after) Russian sources claimed to have achieved a major advance near Borova, on the Oskil River in Kharkiv oblast. According to Russia, it had broken through Ukrainian defenses, cleared a chain of strongpoints, and entered Borova. (But) open-source intelligence quickly geolocated the footage and discovered the Russian soldiers shown storming houses were not in Borova but 25 kilometers away in long-ago captured Kolomyichykha in Luhansk oblast.

After Kremlin's Spring Offensive Flop, Russians Struggle To Hold and Fall Back

Ukrainian forces are now in the third stage of their 2026 success. In the first, they stopped the Russian late winter and then spring-summer offensives before they even began by destroying troop concentrations and vital logistics, preventing them from getting to the front. Then, the Ukrainians began counterattacking - in Orikhiv, Barova and other sectors.

Now, Russian troops are not just failing to advance, but are being pushed out of previously held positions, some of which they have held for years, as the combination of Ukrainian battleground advances with medium and long range drone or missile attacks further degrades their ability to defend what they have occupied. JL

Vlad Litnarovych reports in United24:

Russian forces are no longer struggling only to advance, but are having trouble holding some existing positions, falling back in parts of southern and eastern Ukraine. “In Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk, they are already retreating." That is why Moscow is trying to intensify the psychological and information pressure now (because) the Kremlin understands it cannot sustain the current intensity of missile strikes for long, operating near the peak of its missile capacity. Russia is trying to achieve through fear, hysteria, and intimidation what it has failed to achieve on the battlefield. (But) each new wave of attacks becomes less effective than the previous one, exposing the limits of Russia’s military capacity.

Uber, Others Say AI Spend Hard To Justify As Token Use Rivals Labor Costs

The whispers are growing louder. While it may still be a career risk to question the benefits of AI, the harsh reality is that more executives at more companies are doing so. It is important to note that they are not challenging AI's potential impact - emphasis on potential: what they are raising is the cost benefit equation. They know the cost - boy, do they - but the benefit? In too many cases, eh, not so much.

And given that one of AI's ostensible features is its ability to supplant human employees, that corporate execs are now stating that the cost of tokens had driven AI costs up to the level of that much maligned human capital, thereby threatening a core premise for AI adoption. Silicon Valley hypesters can flame doubters all they want, but when too many leaders' compensation became threatened, there was always going to be pushback. And that has now begun. JL

Cris Tolomia reports in Quartz and Reed Albergotti reports in Semafor:

Uber's COO said the company is struggling to connect its rising AI costs to meaningful gains in consumer-facing products. Uber's engineering leaders concluded that greater token consumption was not yielding a corresponding rise in features delivered. "It's very hard to draw a line between those and, 'now we're producing 25% more features." In April the company exhausted its entire Claude Code budget for 2026 — just four months into the year. That was a "head-exploding moment" about the cost of tokens and what the company gives up to sustain it. Uber is not alone in reassessing its approach to AI usage. The cost of tokens is now competing with the cost of headcount. "Unit costs are going down but aggregate costs are going up." Free AI models are “the gateway drug” to paid versions. “What should we be spending, and how do we measure ROI?” 

Putin's "Senseless Decisions," Security Paranoia Spark Disillusionment

The reports of disillusionment with Putin's leadership just keep coming. From pictures of him like the one at left with his massive phalanx of very large security service protectors to concerns that the faltering Ukraine invasion is being prolonged by senseless, self-destructive decisions abetted by dishonest military reporting, there is a growing sense that he has lost the narrative. 

There are, as of yet, no credible reports of potential coups, but a lingering disappointment with his inability to find a way out that will lead to an unhappy ending for everyone in Russia. JL

Pjotr Sauer and Shaun Walker report in The Guardian:

Putin is entering the most challenging period of his rule. People in his orbit, as well as sources in the Russian business world and western intelligence officials, paint a picture of an isolated leader surrounded by an elite that is disillusioned, both with the faltering war in Ukraine and the economic downturn. “There’s definitely been a shift in mood among the elites...profound disappointment in Putin, a growing sense that some kind of catastrophe is looming. There is a growing realisation that utterly senseless, self-destructive decisions keep being made. People who once defended Putin no longer do. Any sense of a future has disappeared.” The Russian president has meanwhile increased his travel schedule in recent weeks, in an attempt to counter narratives over his security paranoia.

Russia Loses More Ground Due To Ukraine Assaults, Logistics Strikes

Combining assaults on the battlefields at the front with mid-range drone attacks on Russian logistics routes, Ukrainian forces have gained significantly more ground in May. 

The near and mid range initiatives work in tandem by putting pressure on Russian units at the front which then face difficulties with resupply and reinforcement, making them less capable of fending off the advancing Ukrainians. JL

Mick Ryan reports in Futura Doctrina:

In the  week from 12 to 19 May, Russia lost a net 29 square miles, a significant reversal attributed partly to Ukrainian interdiction of Russian logistics across southern Ukraine and partly to Ukrainian counterattack operations in the north.  Ukrainian forces recently advanced in Kharkiv Oblast as well as in the Kupyansk, Borova (Lyman) and Hulyaipole directions as Ukrainian forces seize and hold local initiatives. Ukraine has been prosecuting a systematic and increasingly effective interdiction campaign against Russian logistics across southern Ukraine and along the land bridge connecting Russia to Crimea. This campaign, operating in the 50-to-150-km range, is the most consequential military development of recent months as it disrupts or destroys Russian forces, supplies and command systems behind or en route to the front before they can be used.

Russia's New Kyiv Strikes Are Offset of "Humiliating Request For Parade Ceasefire"

The Kremlin's savage bombardment of civilian targets in Kyiv is not the demonstration of strength it believes but an admission of weakness and humiliation. 

Putin has evidently yet to recover from being forced to beg Trump to intercede on his behalf with Zelensky so that he could have his armor-less 45 minute 'victory' parade without fear of Ukrainian drone attack. The latest missile and drone attacks on Kyiv are part of his increasingly futile effort to project military might even as his army is being pushed back by Ukrainian forces on the ground and his air defenses are exposed as somewhere between inadequate and nonexistent. Putin's vulnerability is obvious and growing. Taking that out on Kyiv's civilians is his pathetic answer. JL

The Institute for the Study of War reports:

Russia's strikes on Kyiv are to recover from the humiliation of having to ask Ukraine for a ceasefire and permission to hold Victory Day parade. The strikes are an attempt to obfuscate Russia’s weakness and distract from Russia’s inability to protect its capital and other deep-rear cities from Ukraine’s intensifying long-range drone strikes. Putin is also struggling to shield the Russian population from the strain on the Russian economy as a result of his war, and Russian economic and societal issues are generating domestic discontent with Putin and his government. Russian forces are also failing to make operationally significant advances in their Spring-Summer 2026 offensive, as Ukrainian counterattacks, drone dominance, and mid–range strike campaign are inhibiting Russia while increasing the material and personnel cost of its Ukraine operations.