In Putin's meeting earlier today I thought he had the same smug look on his face that he always does: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JW60sTcp9k
He's already essentially in control of Belarus so from his point of view he might be thinking he's half way there already.
Having the Chechens, Kazakhs (declined), Belarussians, recruits etc involved in the early days kept some of his powder dry when Ukraine were at their most prepared. But as time goes on and the more chaotic it becomes for Ukraine with service outages, degraded intel, multiple fronts etc, then I fear that swarm of Russian troops is going to overwhelm.
There have been around half a million people that left Ukraine so there are still 40+ million civilians in the country. I don't think it's a big enough exodus for Putin to amp it up yet and the population can still cause a nuisance, perhaps helping with getting supplies to the Ukrainian troops. I was surprised to see how effective the molotov cocktails are on tank caterpillar tracks.
Given that the EU are now supplying fighter jets, and whatever missiles that go with it, I'm also hoping there will be more drones on their way, plus a no fly zone west of Kiev. Looks like Ukraine might be a huge money pit for the EU and that might also play into Putin's hands. They will be spending money that they can't recover if Russia succeeds. This could turn into the reverse of the Donbas conflict and go on for years.
He's already essentially in control of Belarus so from his point of view he might be thinking he's half way there already.
Having the Chechens, Kazakhs (declined), Belarussians, recruits etc involved in the early days kept some of his powder dry when Ukraine were at their most prepared. But as time goes on and the more chaotic it becomes for Ukraine with service outages, degraded intel, multiple fronts etc, then I fear that swarm of Russian troops is going to overwhelm.
There have been around half a million people that left Ukraine so there are still 40+ million civilians in the country. I don't think it's a big enough exodus for Putin to amp it up yet and the population can still cause a nuisance, perhaps helping with getting supplies to the Ukrainian troops. I was surprised to see how effective the molotov cocktails are on tank caterpillar tracks.
Given that the EU are now supplying fighter jets, and whatever missiles that go with it, I'm also hoping there will be more drones on their way, plus a no fly zone west of Kiev. Looks like Ukraine might be a huge money pit for the EU and that might also play into Putin's hands. They will be spending money that they can't recover if Russia succeeds. This could turn into the reverse of the Donbas conflict and go on for years.
