https://gilbertdoctorow.substack.com/p/russia-is-losing-the-war
Russia is losing the war!
Published by gilbertdoctorow
Gilbert Doctorow's latest book, "War Diaries. The Russia-Ukraine War, 2022-2023" is a unique contribution to literature on the war thanks to the author's reports on the Russian home front written during his periodic visits to St Petersburg at a time when Russia no longer issued visas and nearly all Western journalists had left the country. Doctorow's two-volume "Memoirs of a Russianist" published in 2020 also constitutes a category of its own, consisting largely of diary entries rather than reminiscences written decades later.. Volume 2 focuses on the community of 50,000 expatriate managers working and living in Moscow during the 1990s, about which none of his peers has yet to write. Gilbert Doctorow is a professional Russia watcher and actor in Russian affairs going back to 1965. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College (1967), a past Fulbright scholar, and holder of a Ph.D. with honors in history from Columbia University (1975). After completing his studies, Mr. Doctorow pursued a business career focused on the USSR and Eastern Europe. For twenty-five years he worked for US and European multinationals in marketing and general management with regional responsibility. From 1998-2002, Doctorow served as the Chairman of the Russian Booker Literary Prize in Moscow. During the 2010-2011 academic year, he was a Visiting scholar of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University. Mr. Doctorow is a long-time resident of Brussels. View all posts by gilbertdoctorow
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Gilbert Doctorow 
Hard to disagree with the thrust of your argument – except for the conclusion that it means Russia is losing the war. There has to be some major calculation Putin is banking on to happen.
Putin is losing Russia,maybe?
It’s the worst of both worlds in that NATO is given carte blanche by the Russian leader, and the brainless Ukrainian populace now believes that it is “their military technology” causing this damage and that its Zelensky “allowing Putin to stage Victory Day parades on Red Square and other nonsense. It all motivates the enemy.
As vile as the Ukrainian fascist regime is – at least they all sing from the same hymn sheet on what they are planning to do, and the measures they will do it. For the Russians, pathetically, there is nothing at all to suggest that what Lavrov says, or the aggressive statements of Medvedev have any correlation whatsoever with Putin and Gerasimov policy and intention. Remember some deputy commander of one of the military districts at the beginning of the operation said the goal was to link up with Transdniester? I think that was always just some empty talk from someone not in the loop.
The loop is too small, as the lack of, or contradictory communication from up top is going to be the straw that breaks the back of either the electorate or the military rank and file
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Sorry to say, but i am tired and had it with farce played between Russia and the Europeans. If Russia thinks that the EU is an enemy, but pretends that basically nothing happened that is serious enough to respond to their actions, than whatever anyone from Lavrov to Putin says is nothing but utter BS.
If the Russians took those action they whine about seriously, why not consequently destroy one of the EU drone factories supplying Ukraine? NO, instead those”hurt” Russians sell their f’n LNG to the EU, so the EU can happily keep its industries going. Hey , Mr. Putin, why not send to the EU all the metals, oil, diesel, rare earth, the EU needs so urgently? Why not make more of a buck from the dead Russian and Ukrainian soldiers?
Is it not clear to Mr. smooth and cool that any help he lets the EU have will go to kill his people? Maybe he doesn’t give a shit because he is well protected? Maybe the oligarchs will insure a nice retirement package. Doesn’t nobody else clue in what dirty games are being played? Making money behind the populations back but whine about the BAD Europeans?
No, Russia under Putin deserves what it gets, and Putin is only a bit more endurable than Mr. Graham, because he speaks nicely. I observed that charade from the beginning, and never could fathom why Russia kept supplying the EU with energy and raw materials once the SMO started. Now, when Mr. Putin and Lavrov pretend the EU is an enemy and fights Russia directly, but keep selling gas and whatever else necessities for industry to operate to them? Anyone who takes this shitshow seriously is either an idiot or simply lacks the necessary brain cells to suss the game.
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Russia is losing the war, because at every escalation it failed to respond decisively. Every red line has been crossed for years, even Moscow burned under a literal cloud of black smoke, and yet still they do nothing differently. Previously, I used to think the lukewarm Russian response was due to Putin’s softness, or bureaucratic slowness, or a lack of political will to do what is necessary (the Ukrainians are our brothers and Kiev is the mother of all Russian cities as Putin said?).
The lesson we keep re-learning since Vietnam and Afghanistan is that modern wars are simply not winnable by sheer quantity of aerial bombing if the opponent doesn’t give up. Gaza is the size of Kharkov and took more bombings than Dresden in WWII and yet Hamas is still fighting. Kharkov itself took a similar number of Russian bombs and has still not fallen after 5 years of fighting despite being located less than 40 kilometers from the Russian border — and not due to a lack of trying. There is simply nothing more Russia can do. Even if Russia nuked the Ukrainian capital that still wouldn’t end the war — the Ukrainian army is very decentralized over a very large land area. Russia has given this war everything it can muster, but at the end of the day pure military force can only do so much.
Why doesn’t Russia level Kiev to the ground? Because it can’t, just do the math on how many bombs are needed. Kiev is out of the range of artillery and conventional bombs, it gets hit regularly by cruise missiles, but no country on earth could produce the sheer quantity of cruise missiles needed to level a city the size of Kiev to the ground. You would need to produce millions of cruise missiles a month to do that, and that’s not physically possible.
Both countries know very well that their only hope of winning the war is political collapse of the other side. Russia banked on its numerical superiority and industrial size, thinking that by applying continued pressure on Ukraine’s economy and population, it was hoping to force political collapse. And for a very long time that seemed quite possible — there’s been a lot of frustration at conscription and war weariness in Ukraine. But now it seems that Russia is more politically unstable, partly due to frustration at no major gains for Russia in 5 years of war, partly due to increasingly effective Ukrainian strikes on Russian infrastructure. The question now is: who falls first?
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