According to Lee, the Russian army is able to win some small battles, but it lacks the strength to break through the Ukrainian lines. Therefore, Lee sees that the Russian army is preparing for a long war. In this, Putin is counting on Russia’s supply of raw materials and equipment to last long enough until “the West is tired of helping Kiev.”
While Putin initially formulated goals like “liberating Donbas from neo-Nazis”, his rhetoric has changed due to the lack of victories on the battlefield. “He almost stopped naming concrete goals of the war,” says political analyst Maxim Trudolyubov. “He does not share a vision of what a possible profit could look like. The war did not have a clear beginning, nor an expected end.”
“The war had no clear beginning, nor an expected end.”
Analysts even note that Putin mentions the topic of Ukraine less. “It’s easier not to talk about a war when your military isn’t making any progress,” says Vladimir Gelman, a professor of Russian studies at the University of Helsinki. “But downsizing is not an option for Putin: it would be tantamount to admitting loss.”
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Despite this, there is still no serious uprising or resistance in Russia. “Many in the country have fully accepted that this war is not going to go away and that they have to learn to live with this reality,” said Andrei Kolesnikov researcher for the Carnegie Endowment.
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