Heard Putin did a annexation ceremony recently annexing Ukraine officially. But is the war over?
Then lost the annexed areas to Ukraine. I think that Putin is potentially leading to a tactical nuke strike on massed Ukrainian armor and troops to end the war. Russian allies of Putin were flabbergasted about why Russia withdrew from the east without any orders at least from what they know. Either there is a masterplan or incompetence / support for Ukrainian since Russians and Ukrainians are Slav brothers. I couldn’t believe that Ukrainians could take out so many jets in Crimea last month without inside help.
Russia has a very different style of fighting wars on its borders and it’s objectives in Ukraine are very different. For example, Russia has not done any strategic bombing in Ukraine despite having world’s second largest air force, so Ukrainian command and control centers are still intact. The chance to use nuclear weapons is always there, even during peace times but Russia is conventionally so much superior to Ukraine that there is little need to do that. These days Russia is repositioning it’s forces for the winters and the following muddy season also known as Rasputitsa. For several upcoming months movement of mechanized units will become extremely challenging so it is best to do all that movements before that. “Losing” some territory here and there is insignificant at this time. The generational damage to Ukraine has been done, and now the winter will do the rest. After Ukraine, EU is the biggest loser of this conflict and this winter will drive home that point, especially in Germany, because Germany became an industrial giant of EU due to cheap Russian gas.
Everything that I’ve said so far about Russian strategy however will change if US supplied long range weapons to Ukraine !