Russia is its own worst enemy and made its mental health issues the West's problem by invading Ukraine and publicly displaying day after day its paranoid delusions about NATO, nukes, and Nazis.
The Winter War of 2022 goes on. There isn't much to say about it except that I wonder if Ukraine really is building up a reserve of units and supplies to conduct a major counteroffensive with the potential to be decisive.
Heck, as Russia's attacks slow to a crawl, I still wonder if the Russians are holding troops and ammunition back to launch their own offensive or to meet the expected Ukrainian attack.
So there is a moment to ask, just what is Russia's major malfunction?
Psychologists would have a field day treating Russia if it was a person:
In an interview with TV channel Rossiya-1 on February 26, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that he does not know if "such an ethnic group as the Russian people can survive in the form in which it exists today" if the West succeeds in "destroying the Russian Federation and establishing control over its fragments."
Excuse me?
NATO never wanted to destroy Russia. The struggle to defeat the USSR was long and expensive enough. The West would have been content to ignore Russia and go about its post-Cold War business:
If Russia had continued to behave like a developing ex-communist ally, NATO would have dissolved or atrophied. Instead, beginning with the 1999 march on Pristina airport after the Kosovo War to carve out a Russian occupation zone, and continuing through the Georgia Olympics War of 2008, with sabre rattling over the Baltic States, Ukraine, and European energy supplies thrown in as bonuses, Russia has given Europe a reason to keep NATO--with America in the lead--intact.
So all Russia has done with their so-called revival is alienate potential allies in NATO should the real threat to Russian territorial integrity--China--decide to act to reverse those unequal treaties that gave the far east to Russia.
But the fools in the Kremlin have figurately stripped to the waist, strutted about, and convinced themselves that they're back!
Despite the talk of a rising, rearmed, aggressive, Russia, the Russians are declining. A death rattle is not evidence of life.
But Russia seemingly wants to believe the West is out to
destroy it. Hell, they may need to believe it. So Russia gave the West incentive to defeat Russia, even though the West has no interest in destroying Russia despite Russian claims. Putin is the one risking that outcome.
For God's sake! Do the Russians think the West doesn't want Russian help to contain China? We're gathering a coalition to contain China yet wouldn't welcome Russia as part of that?
I want to flip Russia to be a friend of the West--but not at the price of appeasing a Russia that has no interest in friendship with the West. Throwing Ukraine even a little under the bus to flip Russia won't work.
And set aside your goal of a nuanced diplomatic solution to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. If you think the Russians won't eventually see any peace deal we engineer as a stab in the back that deprived Russia of its glorious victory, you need the mental health intervention.
I swear, Russians need to be feared and fear being ignored. They need to get some help. Before they destroy themselves and drive away everyone who might help Russia hold off those really out to get Russia.
#WhyRussiaCan'tHaveNiceThings
UPDATE: ISW discusses Russian worries about a Ukrainian counteroffensive. Ukraine launched a local counter-attack around Bakhmut.
I'd prefer to attack farther west and aim for Melitopol. It threatens Crimea and the Kherson front's rear. And it is farther from Russian logistics bases than any target in the Donbas.
And by making an advance south threatening the rear of the Russian Kherson front anchored on the Dnieper River, Ukraine may have the opportunity to cross the river with boats, pontoon bridges, and airmobile units to add to the pressure.
But I concede that Ukraine needs a battlefield offensive victory anywhere as the first priority. And I don't know where the prospects are best. Perhaps the Bakhmut area as Russia's offensive culminates is the best chance for victory.
UPDATE: Ukrainian defenders at Bakhmut believe they are not being given enough weapons and ammunition. Is this a failure of the Ukrainian military? Accumulating ammo for the big push? Or is it to reduce the loss of ammo and weapons when the order to retreat from the city is given?
UPDATE: It's been a long journey to Russian insanity, as I commented in 2007:
The question is, why is Putin spouting off nonsense when he and the rest of the Russian leaders know better?
Is it to prepare the people for a more aggressive posture toward the West or simply to justify autocracy by raising a false threat? Certainly, complaining about a false threat that is not actually a threat makes it easier for the Russians to get away with this nonsense.
Sadly, it will take another generation for the Russians to get over their superpower nostalgia. Unless the Russians unexpectedly become aggressive, we'll need to put up with Russian bluster until the ex-Soviet generation passes from the scene.
Was I an optimist to assume a generation is enough for sanity to break out? But yeah, Russia did get aggressive.
UPDATE (Wednesday): Timely analogy:
American estimates of Russian killed and wounded hover now between 200,000 and 250,000, with fatalities at about 60,000. That probably doesn’t include Wagner Group casualties or those of the supposedly independent pro-Russian Donetsk and Luhansk forces. The damage is not just measured in prosthetic limbs, it is psychological, the trauma of battle and intense fear compounded by social indifference about their lot.
If you factor in the convicts who have been pardoned after surviving six months on the meat-grinding front line you get a sense of how the war is coming home. Many are desperate, unemployable, psychotic outcasts. Add to that the grieving families who cannot go public with their sorrow, who have never had the true nature of the war explained to them, and the scope of this looming collective nervous breakdown becomes clear.
Ukraine doesn't need to invade Russia for the war to come home to Russians.
UPDATE (Thursday): Is Putin incapable of adopting a strategic defensive given the bizarre reasons he's given for invading Ukraine?
US National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby stated on March 21 that Russian forces will try to start another offensive, possibly even on multiple different axes, in the coming weeks.Throwing reserves scraped up with great difficulty into piecemeal offensives as fast as they arrive isn't going to win the war for Russia. We'll see if Kirby is right.
UPDATE (Saturday): I keep reading--for the last 6 months--that Ukraine is about to launch a major counteroffensive. And now:
President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Ukraine's counter-offensive against Russia cannot start until Western allies send more military support.
FFS. I hope this is a "when near, appear far" thing.
But if it isn't and Ukraine really isn't going to attack, Ukraine isn't getting much more of its territory back--absent a spectacular implosion in Moscow.
UPDATE (Saturday): What is going on there?
The top commander of Ukraine’s military said Saturday that his forces are pushing back against Russian troops in the long and grinding battle for the town of Bakhmut, and British military intelligence says Russia appears to be moving to a defensive strategy in eastern Ukraine.
As tempting as it may be to counterattack the weakened Wagner troops, I think attacking into the heart of Russia's logistics network in the Donbas plays into what few strengths Russia has right now.
NOTE: ISW coverage of the war continues here.
