Where does Putin go from here?
It’s been one week since Vladimir Putin unleashed chaos and bloodshed in Ukraine, writes Mattie Brignal.
Some 874,000 Ukrainians have fled the country after Russian troops rolled across the border in the early hours of 24 February. More than 2,000 civilians are reported to have been killed.
And the invasion has intensified in the last 24 hours. Russian forces are stepping up the bombardment of urban centres, including the southern city of Mariupol which has come under hours of sustained shelling. Hundreds are feared dead. Central districts of the second city, Kharkiv, have been razed by Russian airstrikes. Dog fights between Ukrainian MiG-29 fighter jets and Russian Su-35 fighters have taken place in the skies over Kyiv.
Moscow claims to have taken the key strategic Black Sea port of Kherson. If this is true it would be the first major city captured by the Russians and a blow to the defending forces.
But the heroic resistance by defiant Ukrainians has dashed Putin’s hopes of a lightning victory. The 40-mile convoy of military vehicles approaching from the north-west of Kyiv seems to have stalled, reportedly due to food and fuel shortages. Because the routes to the south-west of Kyiv remain clear, Ukrainian authorities say the capital is not in immediate danger of being encircled.
Blasting cities to rubble can only achieve so much. If Putin wants to exert political control over Ukraine, then sooner or later it will mean Russian troops securing cities street by street.
Morale could be a problem. In videos released today by Ukrainian forces, weeping Russian prisoners tell of how they have been used as “cannon fodder” and that they weren’t told they would be attacking “peaceful people defending their territory.” A significant number of the first wave of Russian forces are believed to be young conscripts.
As Lawrence Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at KCL, observes: “It is one thing to kill civilians from afar with artillery and missile strikes, but another to have to look ordinary people in the eye, who could be your relatives, in a street similar to your home town, and start to shoot them out of the way.”
Another round of Russian-Ukrainian talks is set to take place tomorrow morning on the Belarusian border. Kyiv has asked China to mediate ceasefire talks and Beijing has signalled that it would be willing to do so.
As Gerald Warner writes in his column, in the long run, this war is unwinnable for Putin. If this is what the Russian President concludes, then a diplomatic solution could well be on the table, although it would require Putin to step back from at least some of his main objectives in Ukraine: regime change, “demilitarisation”, independence for parts of eastern Ukraine, a commitment not to join NATO and the recognition of Crimea as Russian soil.
Some sort of diplomatic solution along these lines might be the only way out of war without end. But it would take a dose of pragmatism from a man who has so far shown nothing but zealotry.
Twitter: @mattiebrignal