Russian propagandist absurdly calls war in Ukraine a 'learning experience for our future conflict' with NATO

Russian state television propaganda puppets are now claiming that President Vladimir Putin's fledgling "special military operation" in Ukraine is a trial run for a direct confrontation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which Russia would surely lose, as it is in Ukraine.

"For us, the war in Ukraine is a rehearsal for a possible bigger conflict in the future," Alexei Fenenko, an associate professor of world politics at Moscow State University, boasted on Russia 1. "We'll test and compare NATO weapons to our own. We'll find out on the battlefield how much stronger our weapons are than theirs. This may be a learning experience for our future conflict."

Watch below courtesy of The Daily Beast's Julia Davis, who provided the translation:

Fenenko's declaration is absurd. For starters, it completely contradicts the reality of what is happening on the ground.

The Atlantic Council estimated on Tuesday that in just 84 days, "one-third of the 190,000-strong invasion force" has been captured, injured, or killed. The organization calculated that "based on the current rate of attrition, the Russian army will suffer 50,000 combat deaths by September."

Met with valiant resistance by the Western-equipped Ukrainians from the moment that they crossed the border into Ukraine's sovereign territory, Putin's men are exhausted, demoralized, and have determined that the casualty toll and absence of necessary materials are unsustainable.

That became undeniable on Thursday when the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate posted an intercepted telephone conversation to its Facebook page in which an aggrieved Russian soldier revealed that he and his comrades plan to quit.

The situation is so untenable, the individual said, that "even the Chechen forces fighting alongside them mock them as 'meat,'" noted The Daily Beast.

Furthermore, in a second seized exchange that was shared on Facebook, two Russian fighters were heard contemplating how to quickly escape the carnage.

One of them encouraged his mate to "take someone else’s weapon, a Ukrainian one, and shoot yourself in the legs."

Fenenko's cheap bluster also demonstrated that the Kremlin and its minions are obviously unsettled by Finland and Sweden submitting applications to join NATO, which is a seismic geopolitical move that Putin has long-dreaded and has desperately sought to prevent. There are even some who suspect that their admission could be a pretext for granting member status to Ukraine, which would upend Putin's calculus about using nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction.

Perhaps that explains why Fenenko's female colleague justifiably exclaimed that his prediction was a "scary experiment."