Russia’s Ukraine War might not be won on the field, but in the backrooms of Moscow.
This is an odd conclusion, I must admit. This conclusion is based on recent battlefield victories in Ukraine, which we all witnessed over these last weeks. There are likely to be more victories.
I joked with a friend of mine online about how they might disagree over who gets Belgorod and other border towns — on the Russian side.
Ukraine has made significant progress since July 3, allowing observers to see its growing combat capabilities.
June: Maybe Kyiv can stop Russia’s exit from the Donbass
August: Kyiv may be able win some lands back but not Crimea.
October: Moscow may be unable to stop them from committing crimes in Crimea.
MilitaryLand’s crowd-sourced masters won’t publish anything they don’t verify. Here’s what you need to know about yesterday’s report.
Ukrainian forces continue to make steady progress. They have liberated another group of settlements from Kherson and Kharkiv as well as Luhansk Oblast. The Ukrainians continue their resistance to Russian advances and takeovers.
Russian forces retreat wherever they are pushed. Ukraine has not been forced to push for any hard in the last week.
Ed Arnold is a British military expert who stated Wednesday that the Russian front was in danger of collapsing.
Christopher A. Lawrence, of the Dupuy Institute, is cautious in his assessments. He now wonders if it’s a “controlled withdrawal” by Russia from that front or if they are collapsing.
Wednesday, he wrote, “This war will end on the battlefield.”
I’m not so certain.
It’s a fair question. But, if the Russian forces are performing so badly now, why isn’t Ukraine able to conquer the battlefield?
Because Russia’s battlefield has small size, this is why it is so difficult to win. Russia can only remain in the game as long as Vladimir Putin, the strongman can raise enough men to send them there. This is impossible for a country that has such a large arsenal of nuclear weapons.
It’s foolish (ahem), for you to threaten the existence of a regime with the power to destroy your nation’s existence.
Other than that, neither Putin nor Ukraine President Volodymyr Zilenskyy seems to have any peaceful feelings.
Putin has put everything at risk in this war. He didn’t just annex the four Ukrainian provinces. Putin also signed a decree to amend Russia’s constitution, which forbids any Russian leader from taking over these provinces.
These provinces were never fully controlled by Russia, but it was part of an international peace agreement. Despite the fact, Ukraine actively pushes them out
ASIDE: Putin has given some flexibility in how many of the four provincials he annexes. Maybe that’s a pretext for a peace deal in which Russia only retains some of its conquered territories. While Kyiv appears to be agreeing with this view, it is winning.
Putin declared that Russia’s borders were constitutionally inviolable.
This isn’t the kind of ledge from which Putin can gracefully descend.
He may need to be pushed. Russia’s Defenestration Retirement Plan is very popular.
But when and whom?
There are so many possibilities that it is difficult to predict which one will be realized.
Already there are signs that the Putin regime is becoming more fractured.
The less cluttered things appear on the battlefield, the more they look in Moscow.
This is an error. It would have been great to see the war come to an end quickly, with Russia unable to disrupt European peace for many generations.
These are simple concepts that I am sure almost everyone who has ever read them or spoken with them understands.
