The war is dragging along, slowly, Russia claim that they never wanted to conquer the integrality of Ukraine (Hogwash), Putin may be sick after all, terminally sick, unknown, but clue are piling up, the question is, does his sickness had an influence on why he wanted to conquer Ukraine, that’s the question .
Russia reverted to their scorched earth strategy, i don’t know why people didn’t expect that, it was predictable, Russian doctrine are not sophisticated, they will brute force their way to where they want to go, and that seem to be east now, people forget that Russia also waged many war since the end of the cold war, Georgia, Chechnya, Syria and some operation in Central African Republic.
So we know pretty much their modus operandi, precision strikes are not the norm, indiscriminate shelling is the norm, it’s a disgusting strategy, but a proven one, from their perspective.
They never tried that on a sophisticated opponent, with considerable ressource like Ukraine, at this point i don’t know if Putin believe his own propaganda, or it’s just a symptom of being a dictator for so long, and surround itself with “Yes man”, but he seem to have fucked up bad with Ukraine, to the point where i don’t know what’s the end game here for Russia, and i must say, it’s scary to me .
It scares me because I can’t rule out a tactical nuke, from Russia, to a city in Ukraine, to make a point and save face . After that, we just don’t know what will happen, the path may be too narrow to navigate, without escalation, and with each step of escalation, the risk of total nuclear war grows exponentially.
Let’s be clear here, i don’t lose sleep over it, but the effect of the slight possibility of even a limited nuclear exchange, change perception of some events, and change our reaction to them, it’s really a strange thing, and it bring bad memory of the instability of the end of the U.S.S.R, when the possibility of a coup, or just the instability, made nuclear war more possible (In our head at least).
I’m no specialist on Putin, but those i read are pretty much unanimous, he’s not crazy, but don’t presume he will not use nuke in Ukraine, we often forget about the challenge inside his own country, he got a tight grip, but there’s probably a lot of people that know that something is up, with his “denazification special operations”, and the longer the war last, the higher the risk of major unrest is ….
Propaganda is all around, people in the west are too often complesant about information coming from the Ukrainian/Nato side, it’s understandable, we root for them, so when good news comes, we take it and run with it. A great example is the “Ghost of Kyiv“, great story, lone fighter fighting the superior in number Russian air force, turns out, it was a “Myth” , like the saying says “The first casualty of War is Truth”, this is why i try to be really careful about information, the fog of war is heavy, propaganda machine are working double time on both side.