This is what I’m worried about. Russia screwed up and lost the first week of the war. But they have endless capacity to ratchet things up and unleash wave after wave of hell on the people of Ukraine. From Talking Points Memo:
The Russian military is still holding a lot of their capacity in reserve. Even if things are going relatively poorly after a week they have lots of capacity to intensify their assault, lots of ability to make the onslaught much more brutal and effective.
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Actually, it’s not quite clear that they do “have endless capacity to ratchet things up” – by all reports, the economic sanctions are hurting badly. There’s a good chance that they’ll run out of supplies before the Ukrainians. (Can you say THX1138?)
Putin came to power on his way to solving the Chechen problem by utterly destroying Chechnya. He showed that when the chips are down, he was willing to violently destroy broad swaths of the Chechen people as well as the city of Grozny. However…the Chechens were/are a Muslim minority very different in the Russian consciousness than the people of Ukraine. Should he try that tactic in Ukraine the response in Russia could result in his downfall.