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Mikhail Metzel, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP Many military and Russian analysts are claiming that the rout of Russian forces around Kharkiv is a “pivotal moment” in the war. It very well may be. Pro-Putin Russian bloggers are bitterly denouncing the military and even Putin himself for the sorry state of affairs that has led the Russian military to this low point.
As the Russians were being routed, scores of Russian soldiers were seen stripping off their uniforms and refusing to fight, according to Newsweek . They also reported that “Russian troops were switching to ‘terrorist’ tactics in parts of the Kherson region, where civilians in the settlement of Velyka Oleksandrivka were being used as ‘human shields.’”
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin attended the opening of a new Ferris wheel in a Moscow park, commemorating the 875th anniversary of Moscow’s founding. This is in keeping with Putin’s “business as usual” campaign to placate civilians during the war.
But the reality is beginning to hit home. And the big question for the world is, what next? What will Putin do if he begins to lose the war and is threatened with removal?
One Ukrainian/Russian analyst, Alexander Ziperovich, has been writing about Putin’s options for months. Yet I also implicitly understand a dark truth: the worse Vladimir Putin’s army fares on the battlefield, the more of a threat he becomes to the entire world. It’s a counterintuitive reality, but a very serious one. This offensive is precisely the kind of development I fear might render Putin increasingly desperate, and thus, dangerous. The moment right before his regime collapses will be the most perilous for the world, when Putin could conceivably reach for any one of his many nuclear weapons, to prevent outright military loss in Ukraine, and save himself from being toppled. After all, […]
They’re Trying to Shut Us Down
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