Law, Power, and Justice

Many of the Russian speakers in Ukraine on whose behalf Putin claimed to be acting now prefer to speak Ukrainian, while the Russian-speaking areas of the Donbas have been battered, deindustrialized, and depopulated because of this ruinous war.
— Read on www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/putin-running-out-options-ukraine

excerpts from a very good article:

Before February 2022, Russia could be confident that Ukraine would not be able to challenge the illegal annexation of Crimea, but now even Russia’s hold of the peninsula is no longer certain.

Being stuck with bits and pieces of Ukrainian territory with hostile populations, massive reconstruction bills, and long frontlines with an undefeated Ukraine would not look like a big win—especially when set against the many casualties incurred by Russian forces, the degradation of the Russian army, the sputtering Russian economy, and the knock to Russia’s standing as a great and influential power. 

It is on the frontlines that the extent of the blunder has become inescapable and where there is the most evidence of dissent. The brief mutiny of the Wagner mercenary group had much to do with the desire of its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, to protect his business model from the Defense Ministry. But Prigozhin also tapped into a wider dissatisfaction with Russia’s high command and its unimaginative strategy, wasteful tactics, and corrupt practices.

But loyalty comes first. It is the military officials closely associated with Prigozhin who have been sidelined.

One way out of such a dilemma might be for Putin to get his propagandists to concoct a story to explain why, despite the appearance of loss, Russia has in fact won. The simplest story he can tell is that Russia’s war is not with Ukraine but with NATO. 

Russian victory would be a geopolitical catastrophe for NATO, posing the far greater risk of an all-out war between the alliance and Russia. Better that Russia is pushed back by Ukraine, with its army degraded in the process.

Kyiv can add to the anxieties in Moscow, demonstrating that no part of Russia is secure, punishing Russian forces at the front and opportunistically liberating territory even if it is not quite what military planners intended. This has become a war of endurance.