Putin is running out of options?

The Russian effort to roll over the Ukraine is stuck….

The Russian military or 150,000 troops, with armour, rockets and aircraft are NOT gonna take the Ukraine major cities and is looking like it’s not so tough after all to resort to shelling civilians that do not shoot back…..

The West has joined in a effort to supply CONTINUISLY weapons to the Ukraine forces who have stalled or even repelled Russian advances…While soem military ‘experts’ say the Russians will the fight ulitamnly?

It sure doesn’t look that war and the Russian’s are far from home and have hads no rest…..

The country may have shed 1.5 million people…But upwards of 40,000, 000 seem to be NOT leaving…

The vast majority of the country is STILL under the Ukrainians’s control…

The cost to the average Russian is mounting along with gas/oil prices for the West…

The Russian President has, in his actions, made NATO , the European Unit and America a stronger and united group, something Putin has been trying break up….

And?

The Russian leader is now being labeled a ‘War Criminal’….

In the end?

What has Vladimir Putin gained?

What has won?

 

By Lawrence Freedman….

Vladimir Putin’s pointless war has already led to thousands of people losing their lives, suffering from life-changing injuries or left traumatised by their experiences, along with the destruction of Ukrainian homes and infrastructure. Throughout Europe refugees wonder about when they will be able to return home and what they will find when they get there. There is more tragedy to come. This is why the search for some sort of cease-fire is growing, though it is still hard to see the form it can take so long as President Putin sticks to his most ambitious objectives; despite his forces being further away than they were at the start of the war from being able to meet them.

There is a tendency to neglect these costs of war when seeking to make sense of the strategies adopted by both sides, for this does require dispassionate analysis, putting aside wishful thinking and emotion. Yet the human dimension must always be kept in mind. We are not looking down on a chessboard with otherwise inanimate pieces being moved by a strategic grandmaster according to some clever plan. Those being moved have their own perspectives and agency, their own motives and anxieties.

The decisions of numerous individuals will determine how this war ends. Can Ukrainian civilians remain steadfast in the face of merciless Russian bombardment? Can the apparently high Ukrainian morale be sustained through a major setback? And on the Russian side, what happens as people realise that they have been misled about the war’s purpose and that their young men have died in an exercise in futility? How are soldiers, many conscripts, responding to the frightening and unexpected situation in which they find themselves? What about officers, alarmed about their lost men and equipment and lack of reserves, unable either to fulfil their orders or to retreat? How do Putin’s courtiers, aware that the war is going badly, explain to their leader the dire consequences of the current strategy? And then there is Putin. At some point will it dawn on him that he has failed in the greatest gamble of his career?

Distant observers should be cautious when seeking to predict the responses of those caught up in these events, but these intangible considerations are already influencing events and will continue to do so, along with the more tangible considerations of force levels, firepower, mobility and logistics….

…

Russia has now committed well over 90 percent of the massive force that was gathered around Ukraine before 24 February, and is still unable to take its early objectives, let alone work out, should they be taken, how they might be occupied and then governed. This suggests there is not much spare capacity for the western parts of the country, which is where Ukrainian forces, commanded from Lviv, could regroup with supplies coming in from Poland, Slovakia and possibly Hungary, if Kyiv were to fall.

But the maps don’t show the full extent of the quandary faced by the Russians. To repeat a point made in my previous post, presence is not the same as control. As we saw yesterday in extraordinary videos from Kherson and Melitopol, in which unarmed civilians were demonstrating against the Russians, these towns are not truly in Russian hands. The populations remain resolutely Ukrainian in their loyalties, providing evidence not only of their indignation about the Russian occupation but warning how the lack of effective control could have deadly consequences for Russian units if this turned into an insurgency….

…

There have been a variety of estimates about how long the Russian army can keep this up, especially if Kyiv and Kharkiv continue to resist. Without a major resupply effort it has been put at no more than 3 weeks. The Russians have not planned for a long war nor made provisions to sustain it over time. Certainly, wars can be won quickly….

…

The pre-war assumptions of a modernised and efficient Russian army that would soon overwhelm the outgunned Ukrainians have now been jettisoned but it remains difficult to accept the contrary assumption that this is a war that the Russians might lose. This is where the state of mind of those involved becomes important. Were it not for the fact that Russia still has the means to make life miserable for ordinary Ukrainians and use its firepower to push those unable to flee down into bunkers, one would say that it is facing defeat. Its army displays the pathology of one in disarray – at least away from the south, its logistics are literally being shot to pieces, command systems are degraded, and its troops demoralised and surrendering. We must keep emphasising that war is an uncertain business. The Ukrainians have yet to show how well they can cope with a major setback on the ground. But if they can manage more counter-attacks and start pushing Russian forces back and not just hold them off then we might have to revise the view that Ukraine’s best hope is to defend for as long as possible to give economic sanctions the chance to bite.

More…