Why Russia Can’t Win, Part Two

A conversation with Substack’s Diane Francis about her start in journalism, her love and respect for Ukraine, and why a Russian defeat is inevitable.

By Michael Judge

Last week, in part one of my conversation with Diane Francis—the U.S.-born Canadian journalist, entrepreneur, professor, and author of 10 books—I wrote of her incomparable skill at “uncovering the intersection of power, money, and corruption.” And how her Substack newsletter is one of the best sources available on Russia’s bloody assault on Ukraine and how Vladimir Putin has been exporting his ruthless oligarchical model for decades. Below, in part two of that conversation, Francis explains how corruption under Putin-puppet Viktor Yanukovych weakened Ukraine’s military before Russia’s 2014 invasion of Eastern Ukraine and illegal annexation of Crimea. And how Ukraine’s 2014 Revolution of Dignity and the 2019 democratic election of Volodymyr Zelensky was seen by Putin and his gang of thugs, cronies, and oligarchs as a declaration of war on the kleptocracy that now runs Russia and its satellites. The good news is, as Francis says below, Europe now sees Putin as an existen…