War that continues to go, i think, catastrophically for russia. catastrophically. ed, you ll remember the legendary european footballer, johan croy, whose famous saying was, if you can t win, for god s sake, don t lose. i think the question right now is, with quite many grievous consequences attached, is how does vladimir putin avoid losing, or at least looking like he is losing to his own people? well, this is really difficult because the ukrainians are now saying that their original war aim was to prevent the russians from expanding from their pre-february 24th geographic holdings in the east of the country, in the donbas.