Russia culminating
I am not a military tactician. I have never even read “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu. But it rings true to me when a tactician tells me that when the enemy is arrayed in a long, 40 mile convoy, as Russia is in Ukraine, it’s a good thing for the good guys. “I believe that we are probably about 10 days away from Russia culminating,” Ben Hodges, a retired United States Army general said. “In other words, [they’re] running out of time, running out of people, and running out of ammunition.”
Hodges isn’t alone in his opinion. Many military experts believe Russia may have overreached itself. It is believed that the Russians don’t have the munitions necessary to keep going, and with their forces stretched out in a long skinny formation, they remain exposed to assault with their cumulative firepower reduced.
The fact that the Russians are also relying more and more on long range missiles to attack civilian targets may also be indicative of their desperation. While these tactics are deplorable and destructive to innocents on the ground they betray Russia’s weakening predicament. While it may be true that Henry V, with outnumbered forces, used the English longbow to defeat the French at Agincourt, French forces were arrayed in plain sight and all in one place. Killing French civilians would have done Henry no tactical good at all.
In fact, what it’s doing for Putin is making it increasingly clear that he’s a war criminal. As such he will remain regarded as a rogue outcast in the world community, a dangerous totalitarian adventurer like Hitler and Mussolini. In time he may even be captured and tried at The Hague.
But those are considerations for other, less dangerous times. In the meantime, if Putin cannot find a way to resupply his troops in Ukraine, the prospect of Russia “culminating,” as General Hodges put it, may be clear and present. With heavy economic sanctions in place and the world against him, Putin’s war machine cannot run forever.
But let’s not break out the champagne just yet. The Chinese can still come to the rescue. And given the duplicitous nature of the current regime in China, anything is possible. Then of course there’s that other one major worry still in view. A desperate psychopath in possession of nuclear weapons remains our greatest threat of all.
Whatever the case, without resources to fight his war, Putin’s juggernaut is quickly being revealed as the paper tiger it was all along. It would appear that we may be coming to some kind of inflection point very soon. Whatever the outcome, no one can deny that we do indeed live in interesting times. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.