You know the war is going badly when ...

1. Iran wants to repo drones Russia has not paid for,

2. 18,000 troops surrender in one day. Many times numbers cited by all sides are wild exaggerations. RantWoman has not cross-checked to see whether this number holds up from multiple sources. RantWoman does generally credit the commentary about the sequence of events described in the video. 

3. Jake Broe: Russia is getting invaded by Russians again

4. Beau of the Fifth Column on drones, Moscow, non-state actors but not the daylight part

5. Before Russia invaded Ukraine, it was supposed to have the second best military in the world. Now, Twitter quips that Russia has the second best army in Ukraine.

6. Reuters reporting on Blinken Speech in Helsinki

RantWoman is also trying to find the Quincy Institute citation noting that most US commentators on channels like CNN and MSNBC are either retired military or have some connection to defense contractors.

RantWoman would say that international channels also at times sound frankly like marketing videos for various weapons systems. However, international channels sometimes do a better job of talking about complexities such as history and domestic politics inside Russia.

Two points are clear to RantWoman based on these videos:

--The war in Ukraine is explicitly about demonstrating what different categories of drones  and "nimble" tactics.

--Several countries are shipping off to Ukraine a lot of old Soviet era military equipment. In many cases Ukrainians already know how to operate some of this equipment. In many more cases, RantWoman gets a definite sense that people are glad to use up older equipment so they have good excuses to upgrade and buy / sell more modern products.

A short summary of this ragged compilation:

--Arms sales are making RantWoman cringe but seem critical here.

--Whatever solution brokered from the outside needs to be a multilateral solution.

--Post-war civil society in Russia is going to be no picnic.

Enough for now.