Originally Posted by
Calgarybaggy
Putin is in deep trouble.
1. He assumed nobody would stand up to his aggression and he could just walk into Ukraine.
2. He assumed Ukraine forces would roll over as soon as his army showed up.
3. He sent in reservists and inexperienced soldiers telling them they were on a training exercise on the assumption it would be an easy victory. The captured Russian soldiers are saying they had no idea they were being sent to shoot at civilians, which is being backed up by the messages they are sending home.
4. He has excellent soldiers he can send in but now the roads are clogged up with the initial wave of soldiers and their equipment so everything is going to get bogged down in a huge way. The morale of his army cannot be good.
5. He did not anticipate the scope of the reaction from western governments so now even the banking system is shut down for them.
6. The reputation of Russia is well and truly destroyed in commerce, sports, politics, etc.
7. The major oil companies are pulling out and taking their skilled personnel and capital with them. That may not sound like a big deal, but when your main source of funding is the oil industry, it needs lots of capital and lots of expertise to keep the oil flowing, and now Russia has neither.
8. The ruble has already been devalued significantly making capital and imports way more expensive, assuming that Russia can even raise capital any more and than anyone will sell anything to them. Russia is going to go into a serious inflationary spiral.
9. There is a lot more domestic discontent over this campaign than he anticipated. In this age of rapid communications, stories of atrocities and high body counts cannot be easily hidden from the masses.
10. The oligarchs are getting upset because now their non-Russian assets are frozen and they can't even use their fancy yachts moored in Monaco and St Tropez any more - not that anyone wants to be seen to be associated with them right now.
11. Even China is seriously re-thinking its approach to Russia.
12. Even if he successfully takes over Ukraine, he is dooming his army of occupation to a long term, well-armed resistance that will make Afghanistan seem like a garden party.
13. His tactic of bombing civilians smacks of absolute desperation because now he can be tried for war crimes so all he is achieving is firming up the resolve to get rid of him somehow.
The end result is that Putin made a huge gamble and lost. He is a spent force. He cannot survive this mess. The only issue now is how long it takes before all these factors bring him down and how many people have to die before it happens. Hopefully its weeks and not years but despots like Putin have a knack of sticking around longer than they otherwise should. The western powers could potentially speed up the process by intervening militarily now, but they run the risk of igniting a far deadlier and more widespread conflict. So I find it hard to condemn the Western leadership for being cautious because Putin's house of cards could easily collapse any day. In the meantime, do they really have make this choice: Do we risk 100,000 lives to save 1,000,000 Ukrainians or do we risk 100,000,000 lives to save 1,000,000 Ukrainians. Try getting any sleep with that decision on your mind.
