Russian President Vladimir Putin must contend with faltering morale at home and on the front lines of the war in Ukraine.

“The Russian soldiers are having a terrible, terrible time in the field,” former U.S. Ambassador Kurt Volker, a one-time special envoy for the Ukraine crisis, observed to the Washington Examiner. “They’re freezing to death, some of them. They’re poorly organized. The least-trained are getting thrown up to the front lines as cannon fodder. It is absolutely abysmal for the Russian troops.”