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Part of Putin's strategic defeat. He was worried about Ukraine joining NATO? Well, Russia now shares a much longer border with NATO than it did before the invas

Part of Putin's strategic defeat. He was worried about Ukraine joining NATO? Well, Russia now shares a much longer border with NATO than it did before the invasion. The Baltic sea is a NATO lake. Sure, Putin has been able to throw enough troops into the meat grinder to advance a few miles here and there. But it's a tiny percentage of the country. For perspective, they just captured Avdivka. It had a prewar population of 35,000. Russia lost 40,000 casualties to take it.

CamperBob2 3y ago
Putin isn't worried about NATO, any more than he is concerned about Nazis. That was just the usual Russian smoke-and-mirror act, largely for internal consumption.
- ProjectArcturis 3y ago
  What do you think his motivation was, then?
  - arrrg 3y ago
    Simple: expansion. Seems like he can get to that goal since western support for Ukraine is shriveling up pathetically. There will be no peace with Putin but a military defeat may be enough to get rid of him. So I don’t really understand at all why Europe and the US are so hesitant when this is a way to obviously damage Putin.
  - jfengel 3y ago
    As you note above, he was motivated by the thought of an easy win. That would thumb his nose at NATO and be popular at home. It didn't actually need to accomplish anything strategic -- though Ukraine is a bunch of land that's valuable both economically and historically. Having failed to accomplish the easy win, there's no way to back down and say, "Well, never mind". He still desires the emotional goals of owning that land, and having sold it as an existential risk against NATO, he can continue to get support at home. Which will last as long as he can continue to staff it with prisoners and disfavored ethnic groups, and various countries continue to fund it by skirting sanctions.
  - T-A 3y ago
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/10/putin-compares-himself-to-peter-the-great-in-quest-to-take-back-russian-lands https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/10/putin-compares...
  - codersfocus 3y ago
    https://jamestown.org/programs/rd/ https://jamestown.org/programs/rd/ This series was written 8 years ago and predicted another invasion of Ukraine. The tldr is it was a strategy for Putin to remain in power.
csb6 3y ago
Yeah, I really don’t get what the plan was. Unless they are expecting to be able to completely annex Ukraine, I don’t know what Russia hopes to gain that it didn’t already get with the annexation of Crimea and continuing the War in Donbas stalemate conflict. Just maintaining those conflicts indefinitely would prevent Ukraine from joining NATO and would have attracted a lot less international attention to Ukraine. It also would have been a lot cheaper in terms of economic sanctions and military losses.
- ProjectArcturis 3y ago
  I think the plan was to capture Kyiv with paratroopers in the first 24 hours and install a puppet government. After that, plan B was to do it by encircling the capital with armored units. That got bogged down and repelled. Ukraine wouldn't accept a peace deal without recovering Crimea and Donbas, which they are very far from taking by force. So both sides are going to grind it out until one of them has a political rupture a la 1917 or 1991.
  - nojvek 3y ago
    Oh the day when Russia collapses. I doubt it will happen. They have a ton of natural resources. The oil and gas corps alone can hold the entire economy afloat (Gazprom, Lukoil, Rosneft) and fund their tanks and missiles.
- nerdix 3y ago
  It was about creating a land bridge connecting Russia to Crimea and securing Crimea's access to water from the Dnipro river. One of Ukraine's goals with last year's offensive was to sever the land bridge. That objective failed. Ironically, Russia (likely) blew up the Kakhovka dam to slow down that Ukrainian offensive and thus severely restrained water access to Crimea (which they had fully reestablished in the early days of the war).
Log_out_ 3y ago
It was always a lie. Nato borders of Russia are unguarded. He feared wealthy, comparable countries nearby, exposing him as the incompetent chief of thieves he is.

CamperBob2 3y ago

Putin isn't worried about NATO, any more than he is concerned about Nazis. That was just the usual Russian smoke-and-mirror act, largely for internal consumption.

ProjectArcturis 3y ago
What do you think his motivation was, then?
- arrrg 3y ago
  Simple: expansion. Seems like he can get to that goal since western support for Ukraine is shriveling up pathetically. There will be no peace with Putin but a military defeat may be enough to get rid of him. So I don’t really understand at all why Europe and the US are so hesitant when this is a way to obviously damage Putin.
- jfengel 3y ago
  As you note above, he was motivated by the thought of an easy win. That would thumb his nose at NATO and be popular at home. It didn't actually need to accomplish anything strategic -- though Ukraine is a bunch of land that's valuable both economically and historically. Having failed to accomplish the easy win, there's no way to back down and say, "Well, never mind". He still desires the emotional goals of owning that land, and having sold it as an existential risk against NATO, he can continue to get support at home. Which will last as long as he can continue to staff it with prisoners and disfavored ethnic groups, and various countries continue to fund it by skirting sanctions.
- T-A 3y ago
  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/10/putin-compares-himself-to-peter-the-great-in-quest-to-take-back-russian-lands https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/10/putin-compares...
- codersfocus 3y ago
  https://jamestown.org/programs/rd/ https://jamestown.org/programs/rd/ This series was written 8 years ago and predicted another invasion of Ukraine. The tldr is it was a strategy for Putin to remain in power.

csb6 3y ago

Yeah, I really don’t get what the plan was. Unless they are expecting to be able to completely annex Ukraine, I don’t know what Russia hopes to gain that it didn’t already get with the annexation of Crimea and continuing the War in Donbas stalemate conflict. Just maintaining those conflicts indefinitely would prevent Ukraine from joining NATO and would have attracted a lot less international attention to Ukraine. It also would have been a lot cheaper in terms of economic sanctions and military losses.

ProjectArcturis 3y ago
I think the plan was to capture Kyiv with paratroopers in the first 24 hours and install a puppet government. After that, plan B was to do it by encircling the capital with armored units. That got bogged down and repelled. Ukraine wouldn't accept a peace deal without recovering Crimea and Donbas, which they are very far from taking by force. So both sides are going to grind it out until one of them has a political rupture a la 1917 or 1991.
- nojvek 3y ago
  Oh the day when Russia collapses. I doubt it will happen. They have a ton of natural resources. The oil and gas corps alone can hold the entire economy afloat (Gazprom, Lukoil, Rosneft) and fund their tanks and missiles.
nerdix 3y ago
It was about creating a land bridge connecting Russia to Crimea and securing Crimea's access to water from the Dnipro river. One of Ukraine's goals with last year's offensive was to sever the land bridge. That objective failed. Ironically, Russia (likely) blew up the Kakhovka dam to slow down that Ukrainian offensive and thus severely restrained water access to Crimea (which they had fully reestablished in the early days of the war).

Log_out_ 3y ago

It was always a lie. Nato borders of Russia are unguarded. He feared wealthy, comparable countries nearby, exposing him as the incompetent chief of thieves he is.