Russia is a wounded bear

  Russia is a wounded bear

Once upon a time, in the cold forests of geopolitics, there roamed a mighty bear named Russia. The bear was enormous, shaggy, and perpetually offended — the kind of creature that growls at its reflection just to stay in practice. Once upon a different time, it was feared by every animal in the forest — foxes, wolves, even the great Western eagles who spoke nervously of “containment” and “red lines.”

But now, the mighty bear limps. Its fur is patchy. Its roar echoes, but with a rasp. The bear insists it’s fine — “just resting!” — yet everyone in the forest knows the truth: Russia is a wounded bear.

The injuries aren’t just physical; they’re existential. Once it strutted through the woods with imperial swagger — commanding forests, building space rockets, and frightening anyone who disagreed. But then came the slow bleed of modernity. The trees started trading in ideas and innovation, not oil and nostalgia. The bear, refusing to change, decided instead to roar louder and crush a few smaller creatures to feel relevant.

Whenever ignored, the bear lashes out — at a democratic beaver here, a defiant squirrel there. “Defensive maneuvers!” it declares, though its claws always seem to land on someone else’s territory.

Worse still, the bear faces a deeper, quieter crisis: there are fewer cubs in the den. The young have stopped coming. Some fled west, seeking forests where they don’t have to salute every sunrise. Others stayed but lost the will to roar — or to reproduce. Even the bear’s own biologists whisper about “a demographic winter.” In the dens of Moscow, where lullabies once echoed, now only propaganda plays on repeat.

The bear, however, refuses to discuss such things. “We have strength!” it insists. “We have tradition! We have missiles!” True — but what it doesn’t have are cubs. And a bear without cubs is not a dynasty. It’s a museum exhibit waiting for its label.

To distract itself, the wounded bear hosts parades — great spectacles of tanks and trumpets — hoping that thunderous noise will drown out the silence of empty nurseries. It points to history like a security blanket: czars, victories, space triumphs. But nostalgia doesn’t reproduce. You can’t rebuild a population with memories, no matter how many medals you polish.

The other animals in the forest watch carefully. Some pity the bear — a tragic old brute gnawing its own paw, haunted by the ghost of its former glory. Others keep their distance, knowing that even a wounded bear can maul out of desperation.

And so the bear dreams on. It dreams of being feared again, of cubs filling the caves, of songs of victory echoing through the taiga. But when it wakes, it sees only its reflection — older, lonelier, roaring at a forest that has moved on.

Yes, Russia is a wounded bear — limping, bleeding, and childless.
And the tragedy is not that it is dying.
The tragedy is that it would rather burn the forest down than admit it’s alone.