Thousands of miles east of Boothbay’s Ocean Point, Russians troopers are being slaughtered in a conflict that was supposed to be a cake walk for Russia.

But is it?

Russia’s four-year invasion of Ukraine is just the latest chapter in a regional conflict dating to the 18th century when Catherine the Great annexed Crimea, and maybe longer.

After the USSR collapsed in the Cold War, and the current president wrestled his way into power in 2014, Putin sent his troops waltzing into Crimea and took it from Ukraine. In February 2022, after a free election kicked out Putin’s stooge government, Ukraine brought in a new regime headed by TV entertainer Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Putin tried to take another bite out of his neighbor by sending in thousands of troops and tanks.

Backed by several governments with billions worth of conventional military gear, Ukraine stopped the Russian push and, surprisingly enough, reinvented the art of war using homemade drones.

As our national press is obsessed with covering the American attacks on Iran, I wondered what was going on in Ukraine. So I turned to our local expert, Paul Zalucky, a retired senior American intelligence agent who served in their neighborhood.

As we sat down over coffee, he offered a quick take. "For Russia, not so good. For Ukraine, much better. It is so complicated, Things are changing,” he said.

The Chicago native, who learned to speak Ukrainian from his Ukrainian-born parents, based his assessment on publicly known reports drawn from recent events.

For example, he said thousands of Putin’s conscripts were being slaughtered by the UK drones, the Russian Black Sea Navy was sunk by a country that does not have a Navy, and a recent report that a major Russian leader warned Parliament of a possible economic collapse.

According to an account of that speech in London’s Times, the head of the Communist Party warned Parliament that Russia could face a rerun of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution unless it takes urgent steps to address rising economic discontent.

Zalucky said Russian military bloggers, who usually support the regime, have attacked the Ministry of Defense for being ineffectual.

Then he pointed to the reports describing this year's traditional Moscow May Day parade, the annual celebration of their World War II victory over Germany. It is usually a show-and-tell event displaying their latest military hardware. But at this year’s parade, the usual flocks of mighty tanks were AWOL, along with the lines of lumbering trucks carrying ICBMs. In fact, the retired American agent said Putin had asked President Trump to ask Ukrainian President Zelenskyy to refrain from sending his drones to attack Red Square, thus spoiling the show.

“The May Day parade was an embarrassment,”
said Zalucky. "Putin had to ask for permission to hold his parade. Think about that for a minute.”

While Ukraine was known as the breadbasket of Europe for its extensive farming economy, the retired agent said they always had a strong tech industry, with more than 1,500 Ukrainians working for Microsoft before the latest conflict began. And those UK tech workers provided the backbone for their homegrown military drone industry that is now able to attack Russian industrial production sites thousands of miles from their border, interrupting and halting military supply lines. “Ukrainian drone experts are now working with the American military to teach them lessons they learned on their battlefield,” said Zalucky.

Those drones are slaughtering thousands of Russian troops, conscripts mostly drawn from rural provinces and neighboring nations. Meanwhile, Russians living in Moscow and Leningrad, far from the war, are staying home and partying, he said.

But, over the weekend, Zelenskyy bragged that Ukrainian drones reached Moscow for the first time, showing Russians the reality of the war in person, not just photos on TV.

Zalucky said the military contrast is stark. “Russians are being killed by the thousands while Ukrainian drone operators are getting carpal tunnel syndrome (from operating drone control controls),” Zalucky said.

As the Trump Administration has slowed military support for the underdogs, Europe has stepped up. They approved a $90 billion loan package following the recent Hungarian elections that ousted a strong Putin supporter who earlier had blocked the transaction. Zalucky said the key indicators point to a Russian economy in big trouble, and that reflects on Putin and his government.

“Ukraine has changed the face of war. Putin needs something to save face, and I don’t think he will survive, he said.

“Russia is not winning, and by not winning, they are losing.” Is David taking the measure of Goliath in 2026?

Stay tuned. It is getting interesting.