Putin is gambling that the West will lose interest in Ukraine — let’s prove him wrongBy Dalibor Rohac
May 9, 2022
Those who feared, not without reason, that Russian President Vladimir Putin would use the annual Victory Day parade on Red Square as a backdrop for further escalation in his war against Ukraine — perhaps declaring general mobilization — might breathe a sigh of relief.
Instead of grand political gestures, the world witnessed many of the usual displays of military might, with the notable exception of a Z-styled flyover over Moscow — supposedly canceled due to bad weather, though it was a sunny day in Russia’s capital. Absent too was Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s chief of the general staff, reportedly wounded by shrapnel in his leg near Izyum, Ukraine, and almost certainly out of favor with Putin due to the shambolic planning and execution of the “special military operation” in Ukraine.
In his speech, Putin rehashed all the regime’s lies about his war of conquest. Supposedly, Russia was long seeking a “compromise” with an intransigent NATO, which continued to push closer to Russian borders with the aim of destroying the country. Citing campaigns by Russia’s historic military figures as precedents, he claimed that the nation’s defense required a preemptive strike.
If Putin’s speech lacked an explicit doubling down on his plan to destroy Ukraine — given Russia’s massive casualties and troops’ morale problems in Ukraine, calling in all the reservists could be a dangerous political proposition — it also conveyed little information about possible ways out from the corner that Putin has boxed himself into.
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Source:
https://nypost.com/2022/05/09/putin-is-gambling-that-the-west-will-lose-interest-in-ukraine/
