But at the same time, he can't afford to be defeated, after all the Russian lives and treasure he has expended. There's no way he can seize control of all of Ukraine anymore. 3: Putin has put himself in a situation where he can't win, can't lose and can't stop. He would then cast his shadow across all of Europe. It's now obvious that he thought he was going to waltz into Kyiv, seize it in a week, install a lackey as president, tuck Ukraine into his pocket and put to an end any further European Union, NATO or Western cultural expansion toward Russia. So Russia will be stopped in Ukraine, whether it's winning or losing, only when Putin decides to stop. That's a real problem because this war emerged entirely from there - with, we now know, almost no input from his cabinet or military commanders - and certainly with no mass urging from the Russian people. Unfortunately, Putin doesn't grant visas to his brain. 1: As I wrote at the outset, when a war of this magnitude begins, the key question you ask yourself as a foreign affairs columnist is very simple: Where should I be? Should I be in Kyiv, the Donbas, Crimea, Moscow, Warsaw, Berlin, Brussels or Washington?Īnd from the start of this war, there has been only one place to be to understand its timing and direction - and that's in Vladimir Putin's head. I have not written much about the war in Ukraine lately because so little has changed strategically since the first few months of this conflict, when three overarching facts pretty much drove everything - and still do.
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