The "big bear" is very old, exhausted and tired

But Ukrainians are not only successfully withstanding the burden of the current offensive of Russian terrorist troops, but are also simultaneously introducing and mastering numerous new types of weapons and related strategic approaches, adding them to their combat repertoire.

The effective use of these modern military technologies is facilitated by close coordination with the US and our European allies. Equally important is the fact that Russia, attacking in Donbas, is wasting its manpower and material resources in vain. And after the end of the spring mud season, conditions will open up for a Ukrainian spring counteroffensive. And the Ukrainian army will use this chance to the fullest.

Vladimir Putin and his generals suffer from an absolute lack of clear strategic goals. This lack of a well-thought-out strategy on the part of Moscow and its attempts to improvise when everything went wrong from the beginning of its invasion of Ukraine can undermine all of the Kremlin's efforts to play the "Ukrainian game" at least to a draw.

“Vladimir Putin and his generals suffer from an absolute lack of clear strategic goals. This lack of a well-thought-out strategy on the part of Moscow and its attempts to improvise when everything went wrong from the beginning of its invasion of Ukraine can undermine all of the Kremlin's efforts to play the "Ukrainian game" at least to a draw”

But there is a lot at stake. Russia's victory in Ukraine would mean not only the end of Ukraine as an independent state, but also the subjugation of the Ukrainian people by a genocidal dictatorship whose horrific crimes against the Ukrainian people did not end with war and some form of "peaceful occupation." And here we are talking not only about Ukraine's preservation of its territories, cultural and architectural heritage, but also about the very existence of the ancient Ukrainian nation. That is why Ukrainians cannot lose the war with Russia, despite its current material and mobilization advantages.

Putin's kleptocracy is corroded to its rotten core. Putin has had more than two decades to reform, reorganize, and modernize his military with the trillions of dollars Russia has earned from gas, oil, and mineral exports. But much of the hundreds of billions of dollars allegedly spent on military purposes ended up in offshore bank accounts, in palaces purchased, and in the mega-yachts of his oligarchs and friends. The result of all this is that the Russian Federation is unable to win this war and will never win it.

Putin has dramatically deteriorated the situation with the combat readiness of the Russian military, but even the USSR had the same serious problems in its army during the Cold War: corrupt officers, untrained conscripts, and a virtually non-existent professional NCO corps. However, the war of the Russian Federation has another very important dimension that will continue to determine the formation of power fields of influence around the world.

“The war of the Russian Federation has another very important dimension that will continue to determine the formation of power fields of influence around the world”

What Putin is doing in Ukraine is actually testing the resolve of the United States. China, Iran, and other countries like them are watching closely. If America, for whatever reason, refused to support the Ukrainian state, Taiwan would disappear in a few years, and China would control the whole of Asia. And Russia would do in Eastern Europe and the Balkans what it is trying to do in Ukraine.

Putin's political henchmen are trying to impose the idea of the need for "peace" and "negotiations" with the Russian Federation without any preconditions. At the same time, they claim that Moscow insists that it is not going to withdraw from the Ukrainian territories it occupies. So what is this if not a Kremlin’s precondition?

There are three reasons why it is impossible to negotiate with Russia right now: Putin still hopes that he can win the war in Ukraine; it is impossible to negotiate with a Russian dictator because all his proposals ultimately boil down to the fact that Ukrainians must agree to all his demands; and no matter what they talk about in Moscow, Putin will not be able to accept anything that threatens his power.

“Putin still hopes that he can win the war in Ukraine; it is impossible to negotiate with the Russian dictator, because all his proposals ultimately boil down to the fact that Ukrainians must agree to all his demands; and no matter what they talk about in Moscow, Putin will not be able to accept anything that threatens his power”

What Putin would agree to is "negotiations" that could be drawn out to delay Ukraine's counteroffensive on the occupied territories, and during this time, produce more weapons and train more conscripts. Although it is clear that Russians are not going to stop the invasion of Ukraine. They can only stop for a short time, but then their attacks will resume again.

It will be difficult for Russia to change, simply because it cannot. The army of a nation is formed from the people, and it fully reflects the character and values of the society. While the equipment, doctrine, and level of training of the military are important qualities of any army, the essence of the fighting force depends on what the nation is. Thus, Putin's totalitarian kleptocracy is no match for Ukraine's imperfect but flexible democracy.

The Russian situation once again proves the ineffectiveness of totalitarian regimes. They are able to control a passive civilian population through propaganda and bloated security forces, but they will always have problems when they are resisted. Putin's problem is that no one in his circle will risk providing him with information that contradicts his thoughts and attitudes, which shape his behavior. Therefore, the decisions made by the tyrant will always lag behind the problems dictated by the current situation. But he will still seek to control everything.

“The Russian situation once again proves the ineffectiveness of totalitarian regimes. They are able to control a passive civilian population through propaganda and bloated security forces, but they will always have problems when they are resisted”

Although many qualified experts, in making their predictions about the Russian-Ukrainian war, emphasize that it could last for years, its course can be quickly changed only by a sharp increase in military aid to Ukraine. If the US were to quickly expand its production capacity and manage to supply Ukraine with modern aircraft, tanks, heavy artillery, machine guns, and ammunition in the quantities that the Ukrainian military currently needs on the war fronts, Ukrainians could drive the Moscow invaders off our land in less than a year. After all, Ukrainians are fighting for their country, while Russians are waging war for no clear reason. There is a big difference in this.

In this war, Putin has no chance of winning, no matter what the tyrant tries to do next. And when he began to realize this, he began to accuse the West of provoking Russia to attack Ukraine. It seems that the Kremlin chief has not learned any lessons from the former Soviet Union's defeat in Afghanistan, so his troops have to learn this lesson again on the battlefields of Ukraine. At some point, however, the black bags of corpses returning to the Russian Federation will turn the population against it.

“Russia's war in Ukraine has highlighted another very negative fact for Moscow - it has shown the US, the West and China that Russia's military potential has sharply declined and that the "big bear" is very old, exhausted and tired”

Russia's war in Ukraine has highlighted another very negative fact for Moscow - it has shown the US, the West, and China that Russia's military potential has sharply declined and that the "big bear" is very old, exhausted, and tired. And although Putin can attribute to the USSR's single-handed victory in World War II as much as he wants, without massive military assistance from America - planes, tanks, trucks, artillery, shells and other munitions delivered under the Lend-Lease program - no one knowns how the war with Germany could have ended.

According to Western reports, Russia has already suffered military losses of 200,000 killed and wounded. But Russian journalists cannot call it a "war." And although Putin often repeats that one of the reasons for invading our territories was the danger to Russia that Ukraine might join NATO, he did so because in 25 years of talking about NATO's doors being open to Ukraine, it has not been accepted into the North Atlantic Alliance.

NATO should correct this strategic mistake and accept Ukraine into the alliance - if not now, then immediately after the victory over Russia. Instead of repeating the same old line "We would like to accept you, but you are not ready yet.” After all, on the battlefields of the Moscow invasion, Ukraine has clearly demonstrated that it is now many NATO countries that do not reach the level of professionalism and ability to conduct combat operations that the Ukrainian army demonstrates on a daily basis.

“Russia is currently waging war against an "undermanned version of NATO," which Ukraine is today, and it is losing. However, for greater strategic success and victory, Ukrainians do not yet have the necessary weapons to destroy military and strategic targets deep in the Russian Federation”

By and large, Russia is currently waging war against an "undermanned version of NATO," which Ukraine is today, and it is losing. However, for greater strategic success and victory, Ukrainians do not yet have the necessary weapons to destroy military and strategic targets deep in the Russian Federation. The Russian population must experience all the consequences of Putin's war in Ukraine, and not believe the pseudo-patriotic lies they are constantly fed on TV.

Despite its best efforts, Moscow has failed in all of its military and political plans that it hoped to achieve in the Russian-Ukrainian war. Russians have shown that they have neither the strength nor the effective means to occupy Ukraine and then keep Ukrainian territories under their control by force.

Putin's fundamental mistake was that he really believed that Ukraine would not last long. Because of this, he never really planned a full-scale war, only a three-day defeat and the seizure of Ukrainian land. For this reason, the troops were underprepared, logistics were ignored, and Russia failed to gain air superiority at the beginning of the war. Whatever the reason, whether it was over-reliance on its agents in Ukraine or corruption in the intelligence services and army, the Ukrainian state was able to capitalize on these mistakes by Putin.

Ukraine is on the eve of a decisive battle for its independence. In fact, the question remains: when will Ukraine emerge victorious in this bloody war? This is a difficult question to answer, but it is a very important one. After all, the sooner the war with Russia ends, the sooner we can start rebuilding our country.

Source

About the author. Viktor Kaspruk, journalist.

The editorial staff do not always share the opinions expressed by the blog authors.