Vladimir Putin’s military forces may be making slower-than-expected progress in their war against Ukraine but are not in any danger of a major defeat.
The sole reason is that Putin is a conscienceless thug who doesn’t care what the rest of the world thinks about him and his regime. He will do whatever it takes to win, as we are likely to see in the next few days.
Kharkiv is a city of 1.5 million people. Putin is firing missiles at residential buildings and hitting the city center with artillery. As Russian forces have done in Syria, hospitals are one of their favorite targets.
Resistance in Kharkiv is crumbling and the city is likely to fall in the next 48-72 hours.
Meanwhile, a massive 40-mile long convoy of heavy armor is heading for the capital of Kyiv. If the only way Vladimir Putin can take Kyiv is by leveling it, that’s what he will do.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the attack on Kharkiv’s main square “frank, undisguised terror,” blaming a Russian missile and calling it a war crime. “Nobody will forgive. Nobody will forget. … This is state terrorism of the Russian Federation.”
As the fighting reached beyond military targets on Day 6 of a Russian invasion that has shaken the 21st century world order, reports emerged that Moscow has used cluster bombs on three populated areas. If confirmed, that would mean the war has reached a worrying new level.
The Kremlin denied Tuesday that it has used such munitions and insisted again that its forces only have struck military targets — despite evidence documented by AP reporters of shelling of homes, schools and hospitals.
It’s a surreal situation. Joe Biden will speak to the nation tonight, condemning Putin for his barbarity and trying to rally the country behind him. In fact, the West is united as it hasn’t been since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
But Putin doesn’t care. He won’t care about criticisms coming from pious blowhards like Joe Biden, or weak-willed Europeans like French President Emmanuel Macron. NATO holds no terror for him. Whatever concerns he had about the delicate sensibilities of the civilized world being offended by bombing civilians are secondary to winning the war.
And this he is likely to do. But winning the war may be a hollow victory. Putin may accomplish everything he set out to do when he invaded Ukraine six days ago — prevent Ukraine from becoming unalterably attached to NATO and ridding his southern flank of a bothersome neighbor — but the cost will be considerably higher than he might have thought before he undertook this adventure.
Related: Ukraine War Took Vladimir Putin From Steely-Eyed KGB Man to Military Bumbler
So it’s in the vital interest of Russia and Putin to end this war as quickly as possible — regardless of the blood that would be spilled.
As the Russian economy teeters under unprecedented global sanctions and his purportedly superior military force appears bogged down, Putin has lashed out in anger at underlings, even as he remains largely isolated from the Kremlin in part because of concerns about Covid, the sources said.
“This is somebody that’s clearly been caught off guard by the size of the Ukrainian resistance,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said on MSNBC. “He has isolated himself. He’s not been in the Kremlin very much. … You’ve got less and less inputs, and these inputs are from sycophants.”
He added: “I do worry that he’s been backed into a corner. I do worry that there is no obvious exit ramp.”
Putin has badly miscalculated the Western response. Perhaps his incursion into Georgia in 2008 lulled him into a false sense of security. And the war in Eastern Ukraine has been simmering for the last eight years with little objection from the west.
Now, Putin will have a devil of a time sloughing off Western sanctions and finding a way back into the good graces of Western Europe. It helps that he has oil and gas to dangle in front of them. But it will take time for the shock of this invasion to wear off before Putin can begin working his way back to respectability.
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