Russia's chances of winning its war in Ukraine are falling faster than a dissident oligarch tossed from a rooftop.
On Wednesday, Vladimir Putin finally succumbed to the reality of his military's looming failure, as well as the country's more militant voices, and announced a "partial" mobilization of 300,000 new conscripts.
These are weekend warriors with little or no experience actually fighting, and they lack adequate training.
But they're all the country has left.
Russia has already exhausted its main fighting force, and it's turned out its prisons, offering clemency to anyone willing to trade in their jumpsuit for fatigues.
So now it's digging deeper into the civilian population to man a war that no one but Putin himself asked for.
It's a desperate bid that's badly exposed the myth that this effort is just a "special military operation" that Russia could and would win easily.
The response was immediate and jarring.
Google searches for things like "how to leave Russia" and "how to break your arm at home" spiked.
The few flights out of the country filled. Those who couldn't get on them made a break for Finland and Mongolia. And hundreds of people in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and even Siberia took to the streets in protest, resulting in more than 1,300 arrests.
The desperation was evident in the government's rhetoric as well.
"We will certainly use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people," Putin warned. "It's not a bluff."
Meanwhile, Putin's favorite lapdog, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, cautioned: "The United States, in fact, is teetering on the brink of turning into a party to conflict."
Ominous threats like these would be scary if they weren't so transparent.
After all, you generally don't have to tell people you're not bluffing when you're actually not bluffing.
Of course, there is a chance Putin will deploy nuclear weapons. Aside from the 300,000 fresh bodies he's drafted into service, nukes are the last trump card he has left to play. Everything else has been killed, captured, or destroyed.
But the consequences would be horrific - not just for the people of Ukraine but Russia too.
It would fully cement the country's status as an international pariah on par with North Korea and Iran, alienating even the few allies it has left, notably China. And it would almost certainly bring broader military, political, and economic retaliation from the West.
And to what end? The land and people Russia is so determined to reclaim would be rendered a smoldering ruin of charred corpses and radioactive cinder.
Where's the upside in that? There's certainly no glory in it.
So what we're likely to see instead is a protracted conflict until Putin relents or is removed.