Keiv was supposed to fall in 2-3 days of the invasion and Russia was supposed to win in less than a week. Today is the 17th day of war and this fact in itself is a total catastrophe for Russia and Putin since closure nowhere seems to be in sight.
Before we get to the things that happened on the battlefield, we have to talk about how Russia’s economy is going to collapse even if Putin wins. Russia got disconnected from Swift, Turkey agreed to close the Bosphorus strait to block Russian warships, and sanctions from the world are showing their significance. As of today, the Russian Ruble is worth less than 1 American cent and a virtual video game currency called Robux is worth more than the Russian currency.
A Ukrainian officer’s analysis of the situation tells us what deep trouble Russia is in. Putin’s meeting with his fellow Oligarchs was held in the Ural mountains decided that none of them would flee. Russia didn’t have a tactical plan for the war and it’s taking its toll. The war costs 20 billion dollars per day and this is becoming even worse because the Russian Ruble is becoming worthless day by day and they have to keep spending money on it or the entire currency would collapse. Russia has already run out of Missiles as it only had enough for 4 to 5 days. The next batch of Russian weapons would be produced in the next four months if they somehow manage to make them with wooden sticks because Russia has no raw materials left. They were previously supplied to them by countries like Germany and Slovenia.
The officer also says that if the war continues for long, then Russia would have to come to the negotiating table because they have no money, weapons, resources, or public support. This can be seen through anti-war protests inside Russia. Russia is a hundred times worse democracy than India. Here protesters may get detained and arrested for treason, and then “somehow go missing” or straight upshot.
Regardless of all these issues, the entire Russian plan now relies on Panic, which is their fundamental motive behind the brutal bombings of major cities like Kharkiv that killed more than 350 civilians in a single day. They launched a massive invasion on the city but the only motive seems here is to cause panic through media coverage. They can not take a major city in this way.
In warfare, rolling through the countryside is the easy part whereas urban warfare is always brutal because the invaders have to go through every single block one by one and they are always vulnerable to ambush or straight up getting bombed to hell by their planes. Russia is struggling on the easy part and the resistance inside Ukrainian cities is much stronger than Putin had expected, with armed civilians blocking Russian vehicles from getting in. The countryside is also not easy because, during this season, the ground in Ukraine is wet mud causing tanks to get stuck.
Putin’s puppet Belarus also joined the war and their paratroopers landed near Keiv. Russia has surrounded the major city of Mariupol in the South but getting inside will be difficult. Despite overwhelming airpower, the skies are still not a clear victory for the Russian Air Force.
At this point, Putin is getting desperate. He has put the nuclear forces on alert but it seems like he is just trying to scare NATO from interfering. Russia literally cannot nuke Ukraine because Putin set the narrative that Ukrainians are their comrades but their government is an evil Nazi regime.
Military analysts are of the view that Ukraine will win this war. Experts, who believe otherwise say that Russia is just fighting with conscripts and that the weaponed elite force is yet to be deployed. Their claim rests on the premise that Russia is the largest military and nuclear power.
Well, the elites or the Chechen force have already been deployed and have either been destroyed on the Hostomel Airport or shot down from the sky.
That said, Russia still has a large number of undeployed modern equipment. Deploying them isn’t easy. You need well-functioning, robust logistics chains to get your hardware moving on such a large scale. Judging by the fact that Russian soldiers are running out of fuel and ration for the second day in a row, Russian logistics are a complete catastrophe.
They did start sending in some advanced hardware like T-90 tanks (a column of which a bunch of villagers blocked, forcing them to turn around), but Western countries also started pumping Ukraine with the latest generation weapons. Even Germany is giving them their newest Panzerfaust now, designed to punch through the T-90s reactive armor.
If anything, this war has exposed Russia as a paper tiger. A global superpower with a world-class army, and yet they cannot take a single city in four days of invasion? Also keep in mind, rolling through the countryside is the easy part. The hard part is going inside cities and winning urban battles. Russians are stumbling at the easy part. How well would they fare during the latter?
An interrogation of a captured Russian soldier reveals how bad the situation is for them. He said that he and his comrades hadn’t eaten for three days and knocked on villagers’ homes to beg for food. Russian soldiers were also spotted walking for miles with empty canisters looking for fuel for their vehicles. Another story reveals the lack of information soldiers have about war. A Ukrainian soldier who got hold of a Russian soldier’s phone revealed his chats. The Russian soldier had written in a chat with his mother that he expected the Ukrainians to greet them with honor and joy while in reality, they’re standing in front of their vehicles to block them. This soldier was later killed in the war.
These stories put the media in the dock that shows us casualties as tally counts and war as a game. The media is benefiting a lot from this war in terms of TRP and revenue. They show clips of video games, the 2014 Crimea war and there was this one instance where a news channel showed videos of the World War 2 Italian bombing of a Libyan City, the video was literally in black and white and a British flag could be seen.
The Russians have lost the battle of Kyiv and Kharkiv as the Ukrainian defense forces still hold the perimeter with total domination. The only front that appears to be a problem is the south because the terrain there is not muddy and resistance isn’t the highest.
But again, they’re just barely succeeding in the easy part in some areas of the south whereas Ukraine should’ve already been part of Russia. The situation is still dire for them and sanctions are getting the best of their economy.
Why did Putin even want the war? Well, some say that he wants Ukraine to recreate Soviet borders. If that is the case then we have enough evidence to believe that Putin is smooth-brained. Before the war, there was an east-west divide in Ukraine with the east siding with Russia and the west with Europe and NATO but the hatred for Russians has increased a lot since the war and the east-west divide doesn’t exist anymore.
Before this, around 30 percent of Ukrainians wanted their country to join NATO but that number has increased to more than 70 percent after the war.
There are 2 ways to unite a country, one is through war and violence but then you’re just occupying the land and having the people hate you. The second one is through diplomacy and talking which benefits people. If Russia wanted Ukraine to side with them then why did they aid rebels and invade the nation?
More than a hundred thousand people have volunteered to join the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Ukraine has a numerical advantage in many places. Russia is beating them in the air but that is also contested. because when you compare the air forces of the two nations you’d be certain that Russia would have air superiority from day 1 and that was the plan.
The Russians also captured the largest nuclear plant in Europe and you’d think that they would at least be careful with such a thing but, the entire Russian chain of command is brain dead because they dropped a bomb inside of the plant.
The thing didn’t explode as of now and there were just a few fires, radiation levels are also normal.
I sign off today knowing that Putin and his fellow Oligarchs are in deep trouble.
