Two months of war led to a heavy defeat for Russia in Ukraine/Getty Images
We all made a mistake with this war. Until recently, many did not believe that Putin would dare to start it.
Putin himself, and almost everyone in Russia and in the West, were sure that by starting a war, Russia would solve all military tasks and bring Ukraine to its knees.
The Russian elite was afraid of the tyrant
I did not believe in these two positions and warned tirelessly throughout the last month before the war that there would most likely be a war, and that it would be stubborn and difficult. But I was wrong too.
I was sure that the Russian elite would not tolerate the power of Putin, who plunged them into such a terrible, bloody, hopeless and senseless adventure. Here I was wrong. If I may say so, the Russian elite endured everything. The hand with which she fed for two decades turned out to be both holy and infinitely terrible for her.
The mere thought of speaking out against Putin's decision makes these people tremble, as before an execution. They consider it suicidal to object to Putin. Well, I was wrong here.
The fear of being cursed by the world, of losing all their unrighteous treasures for this “elite” turned out to be insignificant in comparison with the wrath of the tyrant. The Russian “elite” has passed its own final and irrevocable sentence.
Russian oligarchs were afraid of Putin/Photo by Getty Images
The failure of Russia
Two months of war resulted in a heavy Russian defeat in Ukraine. The blitzkrieg was broken. The Russian army, advancing on Kyiv from Belarus, was defeated. Kyiv turned out to be impregnable and the Russian troops, having crashed against its strongholds, rolled back beyond the Ukrainian borders.
Kyiv, whose fall in early March everyone was waiting for from day to day, is now receiving foreign presidents and embassies are returning to it, it was who left for Lvov.
Not a single Russian living soldier remained in the Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy regions. Only thousands of dead – both Ukrainians and Russian soldiers. Terrible massacres in Bucha, Irpin, Gostomel. The world is sure that the killers of thousands of civilians are the Russian military. And this made the world turn its back on Russia even more.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Aleksandrovich Zelensky did not leave the beleaguered city during the worst hours of the siege, and now he freely walks along Bankovaya with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. This second victory over Russia is moral.
- Third victorythat all plans to capture Odessa and Nikolaev were thwarted. Russian naval landings were never landed on the Odessa coast, and to top it all, the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, the heavy cruiser Moskva, was sunk.
- The fourth victory is diplomatic. The strongest countries in the world, which create almost two-thirds of world production, have joined forces in supporting Ukraine, both military and financial. The UN General Assembly overwhelmingly condemned the Russian aggression against Ukraine.
The Ukrainian military is now receiving the latest weapons from the US and the UK, Canada and Australia, Spain and Norway, Japan and Poland, Germany and France, Turkey and Estonia. And at the same time, the heaviest sanctions of the world community fell on the Russian economy and its financial sector.
Russia is weakening under the yoke of these sanctions, and Ukraine is becoming stronger thanks to the generous assistance of almost the entire world. Russia's impending military victory is becoming more and more illusory.
Now the Battle for Donbass is unfolding. In the light of the foregoing, I do not see positive prospects for Putin and this Battle. As a historian, it most of all reminds me of the Kursk Bulge of 1943. Only after the defeat in the north, the Russian army went on the offensive in the Donbass is like the Wehrmacht after the Battle of Moscow and Stalingrad.
This is its last offensive. Then, too, German generals tried to pincer the Red Army group near Kursk, but everything turned out differently and ended in Germany itself a year and a half later. In this war, time flows faster…
