Putin has long wanted to rebuild the Russian empire. Ukraine was supposed to be an easy big bite that demoralized and broke NATO. The massive casualties and failure to overrun Ukraine in three years let alone three days in those early optimistic days in the Kremlin bunker may be forcing Putin to emphasis the bigger NATO objective to justify the massive costs.
Russia continues to attack Ukraine with every crippled soldier, Mad Max car, and North Korean rocket it can scrape together. A new invasion in the Sumy area of northeast Ukraine is the latest Big Push.
For Russia, this war has never been about conquering this or that piece of Ukrainian territory, about the language rights of the Russian minority living in Ukraine, or—as many critics of the war seem to believe—about keeping Ukraine out of NATO. Nor has the US policy of NATO enlargement into post-communist Eastern Europe and the Baltic States after the Cold War been the true casus belli for Moscow. From the start, for Vladimir Putin and his inner circle in the Kremlin, this has been a war for the restoration of the Russian empire, one that Putin, in effect, declared at the Munich Security Conference in 2007 when he rejected the security order the West has built, and when he later opined that the disintegration of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century.
It disturbs me that the "Blame America" crowd that used to be exclusively a left-wing phenomenon has found a home in part of the right. I can't catch a break. Somebody is always available to call me a war monger for wanting to resist Russia (or their Soviet predecessors).
But I digress.
The Russians are bastards. But I'd put business before pleasure if they'd pull their head out of their Putin to face the real threat common to Russia and America--China under Xi whose China Dream is a nightmare for both the West and Russia's territorial integrity and claims to great power status.
NOTE: ISW updates continue here. Also, I put war-related links and commentary in the Weekend Data Dump.
NOTE: You may also read my posts on Substack, at The Dignified Rant: Evolved.
NOTE: The map is from ISW.
