Tuesday 8 March 2022

Is Putin seething with anger or remaining patient?

The war in Ukraine is not going well so far for the Russians, according to all the experts. In fact it's a tactical mess and how on earth the Russian air force doesn't already have air superiority I find difficult to understand. The Ukrainians have been brilliant in contesting the skies, both with their own Soviet-made MiGs and Sukhois and surface-to-air missiles. But the Russians have far more combat aircraft and you would have thought by now they would have eliminated the ground and air defence systems to enable them to rule the skies. But they have failed to do this. So will Vladimir Putin in his Kremlin bunker be seething with fury that so many things seem to have gone wrong or will he be patient, knowing that eventually he still has a good chance of defeating Ukrainian resistance? My only answer to that is that I wouldn't want to be Sergei Shoigu, the Russian defence minister, or General Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff, right now. Surely they must be getting the heavy, glassy stares from their boss by now. "What the hell is going on?" Or in Russian: "Chto chert voz'mi proiskhodit?" He would have wanted the whole "special military action" wrapped up by now. Nearly two weeks have gone by and the Russian troops are making heavy weather of the invasion. They don't seem to know in which direction to go next and now they are resorting to the one thing they know best, launching an artillery bombardment from a long way off at city centres. As nearly the whole world cuts Russia off from trade, financial dealings and cultural/sporting events, Putin will want more than ever to get Kyiv taken and controlled and see what impact that has on resistance elsewhere in the country. But that 40-mile convoy, mostly consisting of petrol, ammo and food supply vehicles, is still stuck about 17 miles north of Kyiv and hasn't moved for days. Meanwhile it's being targeted by Ukrainian armed drones and aircraft when they can get through. Yes I think Putin will be getting angry and worried. If he gets battled into a corner might he turn to the one weapon he knows the whole world will fear and dread? Is he mad enough to launch a nuclear weapon? That will be Shoigu's and Gerasimov's greatest test. They are both in the chain of command for a nuclear strike. Would they dare to say "Nyet"?

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