Putin’s latest speech is one that should never have been made. With his ill-considered speech, Putin has lent his weight to U.S. neoconservative propaganda that he is in a weakened and challenged position and that the U.S. can win in Ukraine. With the Ukrainian forces essentially defeated, the fake news “mutiny” is precisely what the neoconservatives needed to keep the conflict alive, which is why Scott Ritter thinks Victoria Nuland might have instigated the “coup.”