The opportunistic Russian invasion of Ukraine offers many reasons for pessimism about human affairs, but I would note the hopeful implications of how the tyrants’ main tools – cruelty, ruthlessness and repression, so long and often the ultimate deciders of ‘human affairs’ – are failing to win that struggle.

Russia’s attack might not have gone disastrously had capable managers executed it, but Putin’s regime regularly precludes ‘capable managers,’ as rulers like him dare not empower anyone clearly able to take over from them (this applies especially to military personnel, but Putin also pads upper ranks of the civilian administration with those dependent on his favor). So his dilemma is that what he demands most from subordinates is loyalty, but what he needs most to conquer valiant, resourceful Ukraine is competence. Faced with this choice, Putin has prioritized loyalty, and a ghastly battlefield impasse is the result.

However: The Russians’ bungling may have greater repercussions than just thwarting their own criminal assault (vital though its failure is). Might Putin’s shambolic conduct of his aggression manifest that modernity – increasingly reliant on subtle comprehension, planning, regulation, etc. – has passed a ‘point of no regression’? A threshold beyond which even a semblance of a modern state (like Putin’s kleptocracy) can no longer be kept functional with primordial methods like ‘cruelty, ruthlessness and repression?’

The uniformed bandits Putin entrusted with his ‘Special Military Operation’ are evidently deficient in the temperament and brains to handle the intricacies of 21st century warfare strategy, logistics, etc. Many of them presumably rose in rank due to willingness to implement his orders fiercely and without question, in return for being allowed to commit near-limitless thievery.

So is it really a surprise that tragicomic failure results from a culture in which loyalty precedes ability, corruption starts at the top, cascades down from the extravagant Black Sea villa ‘Putin-hof’, past layers of larcenous Apparatchiki, to ordinary soldiers (for example) rendering military vehicles useless by stripping out their copper wire to buy vodka with the proceeds of reselling it? Is it a shock that such a culture cannot just roll over well-organized, adept patriots like the resolute (NATO armed/trained) Ukrainians?

Thus, this bully-writ-large undertaking may have a positive side, if it exposes that despotism does not – cannot – deliver effective governance in the modern world. That a mentality of rule that comes from the Dark Ages cannot ‘keep the lights on’; that what worked for Ivan the Terrible does not succeed in the era of the Terabyte.

Of course, pitiless use of force was the habitual standard for rule everywhere, including in the West, till the mid-18th Century (for example, the Battle of Culloden, and subsequent repression in Scotland). But whereas much of the developed (modern, functional) world has long since progressed beyond such preliterate impulses, the Russians – acting as if the savagery of their barbaric medieval occupation by the Mongols is still a proper standard for behavior and leadership – evidently have not. Or at least, not nearly enough.

But such cannot remain the standard. Life’s complexity is getting deeper, the Kremlin dinosaurs are in way over their heads, and are lashing out in bewildered frustration at a world in which moderation, not their reflex primal resort to raw power, is likelier to avail. So the ludicrous course of the invasion may represent a little-remarked, but vital evolutionary step for humanity beyond the domination of those (like Vlad the Impeder) who would keep us unevolved and pliable forever.

If they can; and if the rest of us let them. Please bear this perspective in mind in terms of the interests of the civilized world in providing aid to Ukraine till it vanquishes Putin and the Jungle Law he personifies. This would be truly elemental progress, and we need to keep up its momentum.

Ukrainian victory is still far from certain, but their survival for this long in the face of a vastly larger and remorselessly cruel foe, suggests that the Putins of the world have not got (and cannot grasp) what it takes to operate a nation state that meets 21st century expectations. If their main goal is regime survival and blunt force is their go-to tactic to ensure it, its failure to prevail in Ukraine, and the resulting domestic disruption, may prove that such an approach will never again be a reliable means to run a country (especially one with grandiose ambitions) in today’s world.

Russian Goliath still has a club, but Ukrainian David has ditched his sling for a mace-spewing drone. Not that advanced warfare methodology can’t be used for offense as well as defense, but one may hope that the primal instinct that the strong can, and therefore should, tyrannize the less strong may start to wither, along with the efficacy of cruder means of doing so. ‘Evolutionary,’ in that both that instinct and means are more suitable for beasts than for an advancing Mankind.

By contrast to the mindset of Kremlin creatures, perhaps those ‘elites’ in the (especially, and mostly Western) business world who can truly command 21st Century technology and organization will eventually prove to the rest of us that they are sophisticated enough to recognize that the finest use of their talents would be to transcend the immemorial Alpha wolves of the world. That they may show wisdom – even greatness? – by realizing the worthiest rewards must come from using their gifts to benefit Mankind, as much as themselves; or more.

Will they? Time will tell; but the palisade of slender ultra-luxury ‘Money-Liths,’ residential towers on New York’s Billionaires’ Row – visible from areas of seething poverty further north – suggests this group has not yet grasped, or cares, that they may have it in their power to substantially improve the material human condition as few people have ever had. Especially if they decide to rise above the coarser reflex to pamper and exalt themselves as indulgently as gods; a deed higher than any super-tall skyscraper, that.

We may hope they will recognize and act on that realization, but in the meantime, at least the Putin-derthals are revealing their own possible obsolescence. And such – that is, great physical (especially, male upper-body) strength and savagery no longer translating to keys to overall dominance – would not be mere transition, but true transformation.

As to Putin’s invasion, I pray Ukraine stays free, but even if it doesn’t, the world has seen how the ferocity he and his accomplices assumed would quickly overwhelm its supposed decadent Westernizing weakness did so only at enormous costs, with humiliating setbacks and irreversible damage to Russia’s economy. The latter includes eviscerating her fossil fuel market, and driving out legions of citizens with the skills most needed by a modern society (including those smart enough not to want to be cannon-fodder for megalomaniac Kleptocrats).

Far better that Russian military might and barbarity fail conclusively and comprehensively, but the fact that these have been so much less effective than initially assumed may reflect a fundamental shift, in which the needs of modernity – on which those financial and technology elites of Billionaires Row and beyond depend for their comfort and plutocratic sway – are irreconcilable with the primeval supremacy of brute force. If no other good comes from all the barbarous tactics of this invasion, perhaps at least their patent ineffectiveness will contribute to their gradual invalidation and eventual disappearance.

Finally, lest anyone suspect that I am simply anti-Russia, let me show my respect and admiration for her common folk by offering the accompanying video of a Saint Petersburg ballerina performing exquisitely, as evidence of what Russians are capable of, rather than being the biped cattle the Nazis considered them (and as Putin still treats them).

The story behind the video strikes me as characteristically Russian; this artist is dancing, en pointe, on a frozen lake at 5 degrees F, as an ecological protest (as explained in the narration; I don’t know if she succeeded, but hope so). It may not be ‘heroic’ per se, and few Russians could or would do this, but this spectacle nevertheless seems like something that would rarely, if ever, happen anyplace else.

And if a people among whom such talent, grace and strength – seemingly as elemental as their overlords’ cynicism – are to be found, finally realize they don’t have to let their leaders treat them like disposable beasts of burden (the fault line between modern ‘citizens’ and feudal ‘subjects’) forever, they might enact extreme retribution on Putin. Perhaps involving his bodily orifices and Stalin’s disinterred bones, wielded by mothers of Russian soldiers lost to his dictatorial delusions.

Such would be vicious behavior, but a cathartic response to ages of equally vicious oppression. Putin is this great, though tragic, land’s latest protagonist of that kind of rule, but perhaps he will be its last. If ordinary Russians finally reject and destroy the foul apparatus he wields, they would prove they possess tough nobility and truly inherent splendor, as this video suggests.

Ironically, the opposite of the chauvinist ‘glory’ Putin envisages for their Motherland.