It’s amusing seeing people write Russia’s obituary when it’s literally pulling back to deliver the next big blow.
The Kiev push was a feint from the very start. The objective was to pull massive amounts of Ukrainian troops and assets to Kiev and tie them down there while the Russian military focus on the Ukrainian forces in the west.
There was never any attempt made to attack Kiev itself, and I would not be surprised if that infamous 40 mile long Russian column that was parked north of Kiev all these weeks were not just conscripts or even empty trucks parked there to be seen but which didn’t have anything like the combat potential as their numbers would suggest.
The strikes on fuel and maintenance facilities of late were just the final moves to lock the Ukrainians in place. I would expect the Russians would have also secured strategic choke points (not necessarily hold them, they could have zero’d artillery on key crossroads and left small special forces recon teams to watch them and call in the strikes when the Ukrainians try to cross) and are now ready just in case the Ukrainians try to reinforce the west.
Now the Russians are just going to grind away the key cities while also engaging Ukrainians on the move to destroy them in detail.
It will take time, but it should be far less costly for the Russians in terms of casualties.
I would not be surprised if there is even an air of deliberate stalling by the Russians to drag this fight out for as long as possible now that the Ruble is stabilised.
The grand strategic goal is to bleed the EU economically and NATO militarily as EU industry crumbles and NATO empty it’s own armouries to flood Ukraine with arms.
......
Good luck rearming NATO without rare earths.
Bingo! Now we are talking war and strategy. At the beginning, Putin started from a position of weakness, a weak hand in Texas Holdem. So he had to give and take in order to achieve his political goals. China also knew it, hence "no limited" crap. Chinese and "no limit" are usually oxthemoron.
I am not saying the battle field execution has been great. But the situation as is today is not bad at all as far as Putin could calculate and forsee at the get go. Many posts have great analysis on play by play. But Putin's original move was an all-in, while EU was playing as if he was bluffing.
As long as the Russian economy is not crashing, Putin definitely thinks he is going to win the showdown. The current situation is in his favor.
EU, as a larger, richer and more leveraged economic bloc, is definitely bleeding much faster and deeper than Russia, if the current situation doesn't turn to its favor.
Judging the readouts from the EU-China talks, China has no willingness to side with EU.
So EU is losing big time for sure, with a population of no fighting spirit.
Putin is winning.
US is winning.
China is telling everybody "I told you so" and counting its own chips while drinking 龙井.
