The War for Ukraine at Day 50
and 40 plus days of OT for Putin's strategy
If Vladimir Putin had put his plan before the kids at the Valley Forge Military Academy, he’d have been laughed out of the room.
One hundred thousand troops with about 1200 tanks1 plus what now sounds like about a 10 days worth of supplies were used to invade a huge country with a population of over 43 million people.
Wait, that’s not fair. Putin’s plan was to use a largely untested army employing 30 year old military tactics and strategies against a nation that has had access to U.S. military equipment since 2014. And but for Trump’s malfeasance in meting it out in 2019-2020, it’s been fairly carte blanche.
That’s not fair either. Putin, backed by his oligarchy, invaded a country in which his military forces were outnumbered about 9 to 1. And Ukraine, from the get go, was going to be supplied with an endless stream of cutting edge military equipment from the U.S. and others.
Let’s try this again. Putin went into this believing that no nation would oppose him and now, less than two moths later, Russia has lost its financial footing in the world, has had every imaginable economic sanction imposed, and has been cut adrift from the global economy.
The political decision to invade was to stop the NATO-ization of Eastern Europe and to regain one of its western republics. Belarus aside, Putin has been facing stiff resistance from the Soviet Union’s former republics2 to stay within Russia’s sphere of influence. And several heretofore neutral countries have indicated they want to be part of NATO now — there is considerable comeuppance for genocide and war crimes.
Worse still, outside of China amd India, the world has aligned against him and China’s support is tepid at best.
Trump’s assertions that it was a “savvy” and “genius” move to invade Ukraine aside, it seems like a worse and worse decision militarily, economically, and politically.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2022/03/15/how-many-tanks-does-russia-have-in-ukraine-and-how-many-have-they-lost-so-far/?sh=18d8d7ba5682
Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Georgia, Armenia, Moldova, and Azerbaijan