It looks as if the war in Ukraine will go on for many years to come. And this will not be an accident. It may even be what the West secretly wants.
We know this from an startling remark on Friday by Tony Radakin, the interesting lawyer who has just stepped down as head of Britain's Armed Forces.
Sir Tony gave an unwise interview to the BBC's impossibly grand Nick Robinson, a man so unclued-up on foreign affairs that he actually referred to the Russian army as the 'Red Army', as if Soviet Communism had not collapsed 34 years ago.
Admiral Radakin would not have made such a mistake. He is right at the top of Britain's defence policy elite.
Not only does he have a law degree. He qualified as a barrister and then collected an MA in international relations and defence studies, while serving in the Navy.
Indeed, he studied so hard it is amazing that he found time to go to sea. Yet he did. And he became the ruler of the King's Navy.
He told Mr Robinson that the Ukraine war has been 'a disaster for Russia', not least because of Vladimir Putin's failure to take more land or capture Kiev.
Speaking to the BBC's Nick Robinson, Sir Tony Radakin said that the Ukraine war has been 'a disaster for Russia', not least because of Vladimir Putin's failure to take more land or capture Kiev.
This is an interesting argument though I think there is a better case for saying it has been a disaster for blasted, demolished Ukraine.
I am still not sure what Putin wanted to achieve and it is worth considering the grim possibility that he is content with the damage he has done and the mountains of corpses he has created.
Sir Tony joked that a snail could have crossed Ukraine faster than Putin's armies. True enough, and, as I so often say, our war enthusiasts can't make up their minds whether Russia is a useless, decrepit power or a towering threat to the whole of Europe. One or the other. Not both.
But then came the explosive moment of revelation. The Admiral first predicted that, if Russia carries on fighting for the Ukrainian land it says it wants, it will lose a further two million men, killed or wounded, on top of the million it is already thought to have lost.
Then he said: 'This is about Ukraine's bravery, Ukraine's courage, our support to Ukraine to keep them in the fight and to keep them imposing that cost on Russia.'
It's the frankness of that last bit that is so startling. I think the West doesn't especially want peace. Western policy in this region has the aim of preventing a Russian recovery.
This has been so since the moment it was devised by the ultra-hawk Paul Wolfowitz in the Pentagon 33 years ago. But you don't often hear it so clearly set out.
I frequently mention the admission by the former CIA chief and US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta in March 2022 that 'it's a proxy war with Russia whether we say so or not'.
I'm sure he now wishes he had kept his mouth shut. But most do not realise the nasty meaning of this phrase. It means that the West uses Ukraine as a battering ram against Russia. But it does not directly take part in the war itself.
It's all very well talking about Russia's huge losses but Ukraine, too, has suffered enormous losses - though the figures are a military secret. And these continue.
The 'coalition of the willing' assembled by European nations seems to have the sole purpose of keeping this war going even if the Americans have lost interest.
Will someone please explain to me what our national aim is in doing this? Europe spends three times more on its militaries than Russia, an economic dwarf.
The non-Red Russian army, faced with serious resistance, moves more slowly than a mollusc. Yet it is supposed to be the terror of the age, menacing us all.
Is there anyone up there who can think? A law degree is not required.
The real guilty party in a brutal murder
Sheridan Smith is superb as the furious mother of a murdered young woman in the ITV drama I Fought The Law.
The woman she portrays, Ann Ming, had every right to be angry.
Police wouldn't take seriously her justified fears that something had happened to her daughter Julie Hogg.
They claimed to have thoroughly searched Julie's house in Billingham, County Durham, but failed to find her body hurriedly concealed under the bathtub by her killer.
Then, somehow, two juries in two trials, one after the other, failed to convict the killer (we now know he was the killer, beyond doubt).
Mrs Ming successfully campaigned for the abolition of one of the most important safeguards of liberty in English law - the protection against being tried twice for the same crime.
So the killer went to jail for murder in the end. He had already done at least two prison terms for other offences.
Much as I respect Mrs Ming, I think this is the wrong outcome. This country has two problems well known to most of us.
One is the increasing uselessness of an arrogant and out-of-touch police service. The other is the unreliability of jurors, who can be as young as 18, totally inexperienced in real life and poorly educated. These problems are still as bad as they were before.
We cannot just chuck aside historic safeguards, such as the old right to silence or the double jeopardy rule, because our police are hopeless and we can't devise a sensible minimum qualification for jury service.
Hidden behind my local fire station is a rather disturbing graveyard of crashed cars (the other day one was actually on its side). It is a shocking reminder of the violence of road accidents.
I am sure I can recall, when I was a child, such wrecked cars being placed at accident black spots to get people to drive more carefully. Maybe we should start doing this again.
Too few people realise they are driving a lethal weapon.