Frustrated by a surprisingly competent Ukrainian military, trained and armed by the U.S. and other Western nations, the Russians were rebuffed, first in their attempt to take the capital, Kyiv, and then in their attempt to take eastern Ukraine.
Frustrated at their military impotence and incompetence they settled for artillery and aerial bombardments of Ukrainian cities and multiple atrocities visited upon civilians in the the towns they were able to capture.
In a U.N. report to journalists in Geneva, Switzerland it was stated that the conflict is now in its seventh month and there've been at least 14,059 civilian casualties to date, with 5,767 people killed and 8,292 injured.
These are lower estimates. The U.N. report stressed that the actual numbers are very likely to be considerably higher.
For its part, Russia has suffered approximately 80,000 casualties (killed or wounded), a catastrophic number that's more than half of the 150,000 men Russia deployed on the Ukrainian border in the February runup to the invasion.
Now the Russian army in the east seems to be collapsing under a rapid and withering assault by Kyiv's forces.
The WaPo reports that:
Ukrainian troops reclaimed more territory from Russia on Monday, pushing all the way back to the northeastern border in some places as part of a lightning advance that forced Moscow to make a hasty retreat from occupied land.Russian troop morale is doubtless abysmal, Russian military bloggers are furious at Russia's humiliation and amidst the Ukrainian jubilation at the comeuppance dealt to the Russians are fears of what a desperate and humiliated Vladimir Putin will do.
As blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flags fluttered over newly liberated towns, the Ukrainian military said its troops had freed more than 20 settlements in 24 hours. In recent days, Kyiv’s forces have captured territory at least the size of greater London, according to the British Defense Ministry.
After months of little discernible movement on the battlefield, the momentum has lifted Ukrainian morale and provoked rare public criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war.
While Ukrainian cities began emerging from Russian occupation, a local leader alleged that the Kremlin’s troops had committed atrocities against civilians there similar to those in other places seized by Moscow.
His only options at this point seem to be two: He can cut off all fuel exports to Europe and to try to subject NATO populations to a frigid winter to persuade them to stop helping the Ukrainians or he could resort to chemical and/or nuclear weapons.
If Putin decides to use low-yield tactical nuclear weapons or chemical agents, he will leave portions of Ukraine a devastated wasteland. If he employs an EMP weapon he will effectively destroy most electronic equipment in Ukraine.
The use of nuclear weapons would surely be a high risk gamble. Putin would chance mutiny among his own generals and security officials as well as guarantee that he'd be a pariah everywhere in the civilized world.
Yet, who knows what this man might do. I wrote back in February that I thought the costs of invasion would be so high that he ultimately wouldn't do it, but he did.
I'm thus very reluctant to say that he wouldn't use a nuclear weapon to try to salvage something from this unbelievably ill-conceived war, even if what he salvages is nothing more than revenge against those who have made him look like a fool and destroyed his reputation forever.