Putin's delusions of being a new Peter the Great led him to believe his Russian legions would quickly crush the Ukrainian military and people. It didn't take long for his short and glorious war to become a bleeding ulcer that may turn down paths Putin cannot imagine. Or cope with.
Russia is ordering a stealth war economy. Although manpower shortages are not being successfully addressed.
Putin pretty much has Luhansk province now. The war continues its bloody path, piling up Russian corpses in pursuit of Putin's glory by slaughtering Ukrainian civilians and destroying Ukraine:
Since the war began four months ago, Putin’s invasion force has killed thousands of the Russian-speaking and ethnic Russian Ukrainians they claim to be protecting. The Russian military has also reduced multiple largely Russian-speaking Ukrainian towns and cities to rubble. Unsurprisingly, the unfolding carnage has forced a radical rethink of attitudes toward Russia and transformed many previously sympathetic Ukrainians into bitter opponents of the Kremlin.
Putin insists this path verifies his greatness. Putin seems unwilling to change course:
Vladimir Putin seeks to convey an indomitable will. Here is a man who has set his course and will stick to it, whatever the obstacles in his way and the costs of overcoming them. It is an image that serves him well. It is now widely assumed in the West that he will not back down in the war with Ukraine and, if things go badly, he will lash out. Such a man must not be provoked. Yet the image is starting to fray at the edges. Behind all the braggadocio his power is slowly eroding. The symptoms of this are to be found not in a readiness to compromise on the war, which remains absent, but instead in a policy paralysis; he is pressing on with his established strategy because he can think of nothing better to do.
Putin started the war confident it would be easy. Not even worthy of being called a war--just a "special military operation." But it is a war. One that is wrecking his army. That has certainly made him mad at those who created his ill-founded belief that he had a well-oiled war machine. He'd have to be crazy not to punish those who got him into this mess, no?
Are those people crazy enough to passively take the blame as he pushes his much-reduced killing machine forward to demonstrate his indomitable will? What will those people destroy to save themselves--and Russia itself?
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