Russia Has Already Won

The city of Slovyansk fell yesterday to the Kiev junta. The blue-and-yellow Ukrainian national flag flies from the city council building as Ukrainian soldiers patrol the streets. The junta could not resist crowing, as reported by David Herszenhorn in "Pro-Russian Fighters Routed From Stronghold, Ukraine Says":

Government officials were jubilant. “Run!” the Ukrainian interior minister, Arsen Avakov, wrote in a Facebook post on the retaking of Slovyansk. “The terrorists are bearing losses, surrendering.” 

Ukrainian officials said that those fleeing included the well-known commander Igor Girkin, who the authorities here say worked for the Russian military’s foreign intelligence directorate. In east Ukraine, he identified himself as Col. Igor Strelkov, which means shooter or gunman. 

Mr. Strelkov had posted a video on YouTube on Friday, pleading with Mr. Putin for broad-scale military support and predicting that Slovyansk would fall if help did not arrive soon. 

“The enemy has so much ammunition — I did not see so much in Chechnya,” he said, apparently referring to his time fighting in the Russian Army against Islamic separatists there.

The city of Kramatorsk is also under junta control.

Putin is being impugned as a "nothing man" for saying that he would defend the ethnic Russians of Novorossiya:

With the separatists losing ground, there were signs of growing frustration in the east with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for not making good on his promises to defend Russian people in a land with historic ties that he has referred to as New Russia. 

“What to say,” a rebel leader, Denis Pushilin, wrote on Twitter. “We were given hope. Given hope and abandoned. Nice were words of Putin about protecting the Russian, protecting New Russia. But only words.”

A sample of "the sky is falling" thinking is a post by Mark Sleboda, "What the Kremlin's inaction over the Ukraine means for Russia's geopolitics, international relations, and the Eurasian Union,"
which appeared on The Saker's blog yesterday:

If Putin's inaction in the face of what is happening in the Ukraine continue much longer it will not only mean the loss of Ukraine to the West, but in the long-term the suicide of Putin's own plans for a re-consolidation of even the core of the post-Soviet space particularly in the form of the Eurasian Union, as well as the end of dreams of a wider Eurasian civilization or "Russian world". The US will have achieved its primary goal in all of this, Russia's geopolitical horizons will shrink further to its own borders (or not even that), and it will in truth fade and diminish itself to the role and form of just another "normal nation-state" as fifth columnists like Dmitri Trenin at Carnegie speak of so longingly. "The end of Eurasia" as he once put it, in truth...

I don't think so. I think time is on Russia's side. Yes, Putin is coldly sacrificing the citizens of Novorossiya. But this is what heads of state do. The big picture is economic growth and trade with Europe. Let's remember that the Kiev coup was all about a trade agreement. Yanukovych was not allowed to bargain with both Russia and the EU. He was made by Europe to choose sides, one or the other. When he saw the onerous terms of the IMF bailout, he went with Putin's more generous offer.

While the Europeans were motivated by securing superior commercial arrangements, the United States was interested in two things: 1) keeping the EU yoked to a North Atlantic Alliance under the full sway of U.S. dominance, and 2) breaking off the prize chunk of former Soviet space real estate, the Lebensraum Eurasia land bridge of Ukraine.

I would argue that Russia has already won. Europe has abandoned any further U.S.-led sanctions and is talking with Moscow about the terms of Ukraine's association agreement, something it had refused to do earlier. There is no doubt that Germany has been alienated by the actions of Washington's neocons; France, too. Even Cameron has been a lackluster ally to D.C. Merkel knows that future German growth lies to the East.

And what is the actual strategic impact of the Strelkov's retreat from Slovyansk? Very little according to Dmitry Steshin:

Undoubtedly, Slavyansk became the symbol of the “Russian Spring,” moreover – it entered history. Forever. But the purpose of the city was different. Slavyansk attracted to itself all the battle-worthy forces of the Ukrainian army, it enabled the mobilization of the Militia in Lugansk and Donetsk. Slavyansk gave Mozgovoi an opportunity to crack the border on land and in the air. Whereby something real (you do not need to tell me about virtual YouTube armoured columns) actually made it into the region, by dribs and drabs, including “Tunguskas” purchased at the GUM [Note: GUM, or “State Universal Market,” in Moscow]. Slavyansk enabled the rest of the region to set up almost a dozen reinforced centres of resistance. Finally, it was Slavyansk that brought down the majority of Ukrainian fliers. And the “Slavic Sky” came true in every regard. Finally, Slavyansk gave the South-East time to create political centres of power, allowed to legitimize them, and, of course, provided covering fire for the referendum. And, one last thing, – thousands of untried militiamen and volunteers passed through the trenches of Slavyansk, all with minimal losses.

By the middle of June, Slavyansk outlived itself. Having drawn and bound to itself an enormous army grouping, the city, at the same time, required an ever-larger garrison, and, in return, started to tie up the not inexhaustible human and technical resources of the Donbass People’s Army. Besides, being the legal Commander-in-Chief of the Militia, Igor Ivanovich [Strelkov] could not provide fulsome guidance to his army from a besieged city. He had a direct line to the DPR government (I do not know about LPR), but this was, understandably, not enough for adequate control over the Militia units, each of which was beholden to the charisma of its direct commander. In a situation like that you need a “mega-Batka” [Note: Batka – an Old Man], but “mega-Batka” was forced to sit in Slavyansk and wax melancholy. I won’t be afraid of this word – he grew bored with blowing up endless ammunitions store on Karachun and pummeling Ukrainian checkpoints on the near and far outskirts of the city. Igor Ivanovich needed operational freedom, and, this night, he finally found it. Don’t forget – he came to Slavyansk some time ago with a few battered automatic rifles and even smoothbore “Saiga” and “Vepr.” He left with a column of armoured vehicles. No need to even mention the loads of other equipment.

Let Kiev crow. Its victory is cosmetic. It doesn't change the reality that the state it is creating is not a viable one. Inherently unstable, bankrupt, energy dependent on a shrewd behemoth, the chickens are bound to come home to roost. The name of that home? The Saker called it months ago. Banderastan.