Two Fried Fabergé Eggs

(Two Fried Fabergé Eggs)

With bacon, hash browns and white toast. Anybody who saw the Roger Moore 007 outing in Octopussy, can probably say what a "Fabergé Egg" is. It is a jeweled ornament shaped like an egg and crafted by Karl Fabergé as gifts for the Russian royal family, starting in the Reign of  Tsar Alexander III. Such eggs were plot devices in the Roger Moore 007 outing, Octopussy. A mad Soviet general wanted to smuggle a nuclear device onto a NATO air base using a circus and a jewelry smuggling operation. Of course, the plot was discovered and foiled by James Bond.

Today is the anniversary of the Vistula-Oder operation, January 10th, 1945. It was the penultimate strategic offensive operation carried out by the Red Army before the final assault on Berlin. This was a leviathan of over three million men with thousands of tanks and combat aircraft and tens of thousands of artillery pieces.

That had been the great-grandfather's Red Army. That is not the force being fielded in the Ukraine, presently. And, if current reporting is accurate, the Ukrainians have captured, intact, an entire Russian S-300 air defense system. This set-up is supposed to be able to track and engage Generation 5 aircraft. It is now open to Western examination and it could really be a quantum leap in air defense technology or it could be a lemon. There was a time when the Mach 3 fighter, MiG-25 Foxbat was feared, Then, in 1976, a Soviet pilot defected to Japan and it was discovered that the Foxbat was more sizzle than steak.

An S-300 in Ukrainian hands will complicate an already in-effective Russian air campaign and, without air superiority, the ability to affect things on the ground. As Ukrainian forces have inflicted devastating attrition on the Russians, especially in armor, for Moscow and President Putin to persist is becoming increasingly problematic.

As the war drags on, however, Moscow's financial situation will only detiorate and it will need to generate hard currency. Russia can still sell oil for selected markets but in the process, it has been auctioning off its legacy. Like the surviving Fabergé collection.