Strategically, the war that continues in Ukraine has changed little since its first months.. The situation then and now is determined by three main facts.

“Fact #1: As I wrote at the very beginning, when a war of this magnitude breaks out, the key question you ask yourself as an observer of international relations is very simple.. Where am I supposed to be? In Kyiv, Donbass, Crimea, Moscow, Warsaw, Berlin, Brussels or Washington? And since the beginning of this war, there was only one place where you can understand it - in the head of Vladimir Putin. Unfortunately, Putin does not give visas to his brain. This is a real problem, because this war originated there and, as we now know, almost without the participation of his cabinet or military command and, of course, without massive appeals from the Russian people.. So Russia will stop in Ukraine, win or lose, only when Putin decides to stop,” writes three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist and author Thomas Friedman in an op-ed for the New York Times..

He adds that the first fact leads to fact #2: Putin never had a plan B.. Now it's obvious: he believed he could waltz to Kiev, take it over in a week, appoint a lackey as president, put Ukraine in his pocket and put an end to any further expansion of the EU, NATO or Western culture towards Russia.. Then he would cast his shadow all over Europe.

Hence Fact #3: Putin has put himself in a situation where he cannot win, cannot lose, and cannot stop.. He can no longer seize control of all of Ukraine. But at the same time, he cannot afford to be defeated after spending so much Russian lives and money.. That's why he can't stop.

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In other words, because Putin never had a plan B, he resorted to punitive, often indiscriminate rocket attacks on Ukrainian cities and civilian infrastructure, turning to a war of attrition in the hope that he could somehow suck enough blood out of Ukrainians and. And he will be able to present this to the Russian people as a great victory.

Putin's 'Plan B' is to mask the fact that Plan 'A' failed. If this military operation had an honest name, it would be called Operation Save My Face.. What makes this war one of the craziest and most senseless wars of modern times is that the leader destroys the civilian infrastructure of another country until it gives him enough cover to hide the fact that he acted like a complete fool, ”writes Friedman.

Putin’s words on the occasion of Victory Day in Moscow on Tuesday show that he is now grasping at any excuse to justify the war he started because of his personal fantasies that Ukraine is not a real country, but only a part of Russia.. He stated that the invasion was provoked by Western “globalists and elites” who “talk about their exclusivity, push people together and split society, provoke bloody conflicts and upheavals, sow hatred, Russophobia, aggressive nationalism and destroy traditional family values”.

\! Putin invaded Ukraine to save Russian family values. Who would have thought? This is a leader trying to explain to his people why he started a war with a neighbor that he says is not even a real country..

One might ask why an autocrat like Putin thinks he needs a disguise? Can't he make his people believe what he wants?

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According to Friedman, it is beyond the power of Putin. The American journalist believes that the behavior of the Russian leader now indicates that he is now very afraid of two things: arithmetic and Russian history..

“One of the greatest lessons I've learned as an international journalist covering autocratic countries is that no matter how tight the control, the cruelty and firmness of the dictator, people still say. People know who steals, who cheats, who lies, who has an affair with whom.. It starts with gossip and often stays that way, but everyone says. Putin obviously knows too. He knows that even if he gets a few more kilometers of eastern Ukraine and holds Crimea, the minute he stops this war, all his people will start doing hard math about his plan B.. And they will start with the operation of subtraction, ”the author believes.

Last week, the White House reported that an estimated 100,000 Russian soldiers had been killed or wounded in Ukraine in the past five months alone.. And roughly 200,000 have been killed or wounded since Putin started this war in February 2022..

That's a lot of sacrifice even for a big country. Putin is concerned about what his people are saying about it. Because, in addition to criminalizing any form of dissent, he hastily passed a new law in April that strengthens the fight against draft evasion.. Now, anyone who doesn't show up will face restrictions on banking, selling property, and even getting a driver's license.. Putin would not have gone to such lengths had he not been afraid that, despite his best efforts, everyone is whispering about how badly the war is going and how to avoid participating in it..

Friedman recommends reading a recent essay by Leon Aron, historian of Putin's Russia and fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. In it, he assessed Putin's March visit to the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city of Mariupol..

“Two days after the International Criminal Court accused Putin of war crimes and issued a warrant for his arrest, the Russian president arrived in Mariupol for several hours. He was filmed when he stopped in the Nevsky microdistrict, examined the new apartment and listened to the grateful residents for several minutes.. As he was leaving, a small voice can be heard in the video, shouting from afar, \! » » – Friedman quotes an essay.

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He adds that Aron told him that the Russian media later removed the screaming episode.. But the fact that it was nevertheless made public may be a diversion by someone in the official Russian media hierarchy.. Everybody's talking. This leads to another thing that Putin knows about..

“The gods of Russian history are extremely inexorable to military defeats,” Aron said..

“In the modern era, when a Russian leader ends a war with a clear defeat – or no victory – there is usually a regime change. This happened after the first Crimean War, after the Russo-Japanese War, after Russia's failures in World War I, after Khrushchev's retreat from Cuba in 1962, and after Brezhnev's Afghan swamp and the company that accelerated Gorbachev's revolution of perestroika and glasnost.. The Russian people, with all their known patience, will forgive a lot, but not a military defeat, ”the historian added..

It is for these reasons that Aron, who has just completed a book on Putin's Russia, argues that the conflict in Ukraine is far from over and could get much worse..

“Now Putin has two ways to end this war, which he cannot win and which he cannot get out of.. One of them is to continue until Ukraine is drained of blood and/or until the West gets tired of Ukraine,” Aron said..

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And the second way, in his opinion, is to “somehow bring the situation to a direct confrontation with the United States, bring us to the limit of an all-out strategic nuclear exchange, and then retreat and offer a frightened West a general settlement, including a neutral, disarmed Ukraine and the preservation of the Russian.

It's impossible to get inside Putin's head and predict his next move.. But Friedman admits that this situation worries him very much.. Because it can be seen from Putin's actions that he knows about the failure of his full " And now he will do everything to develop a plan "