A week of wrong takes in left-wing media about the war. Here's a longer comment: Ukraine's strikes on Russia can indeed be said to be "based on science," on social science, in particular. There is indeed a significant section of the expert field on Russia which, in opposition to "decolonial" ethnonationalism that sees Russians as united by imperialist ideology, argues instead that Russians don't "really" support the war, win nothing from it, and that their attachment to the regime is shallow. Ukrainian strikes disrupting normal life for large sections of the population destroy any fragile basis for that support and will lead to a major political crisis, destabilizing the Russian state and opening the opportunity to win the war. If it isn't happening, we just need to wait a little longer for the grievances to accumulate. The uprising of the Russian working poor, suffering from an unbearable economic situation, was forecast to begin about now, or in a few months at most. An alternative explanation for why it isn't happening, against expectations, is that the basic premises of post-Soviet studies, formed on the basis of the "end of history" consensus, have proven wrong, and the field's consistent failure to predict any major development of the war reveals its growing intellectual crisis. Ukrainian strikes could be seen as a real-life experiment testing a range of fundamental assumptions underlying what we think we know about post-Soviet countries. Support for the Russian regime may be more real and material than assumed, and even where it is ideological, it may not be about imperialism at all. This is not to deny that the grievances of significant groups are real. The way from them to the "end of the regime" can, however, be much longer than assumed. One underestimated factor is the crisis of the US-centered order. Where it once could promise a better future to large sections of post-Soviet elites and populations, if only they broke with their "Soviet legacies" and post-Soviet dictators, fewer people now want to destabilize their countries. What for exactly?