This is an excellent article, and it's something I've also covered (linked below).
I think that the Russians did expect/hope for a swift Blitzkrieg but they will have also had a plan B which involved slowly strangulating Ukraine by attrictional warfare, which is now being implemented.
I think the initial tactical successes enjoyed by Kyiv have lulled alot of people into a false sense of complacency regarding Russian capability and their willingness to drag the war into the winter.
Good article.
Putin has an interest in extending the conflict into the winter where he can exploit Europe's energy dependence, and the globally elevated commodity prices, to force the West to the negotiating table.
I covered this in the article below;
Very interesting persective. The fog of war in Ukraine is making it near impossible to get an accurate summary of the gains on the ground.
I suspect that the conflict will settle into a stalemate, with the Russians embedded in Donbas and the Southern front.
Likely, the Ukrainians will be unable to remove them and Moscow will attempt to use its control of Ukraine's ports and long range attacks against inafrastructure to slowly throttle the Kyiv government and force Zellenskyy to the table.
Unfortunately, this means that Ukraine will be a gaping wound on the edge of Europe, with the expected deleterious effect on global markets and food supply.
My view is that when you remove organised religion, you'll find any number of bizarre pseudospiritualist beliefs take its place, or it will just be replaced by another religion whose adherents are more comitted to their faith, as in Western Europe.
Beyond the West, the idea of the world becoming less religious doesn't hold up. Africa, the Middle East and India are all major religious centres and are becoming a larger share of the world population.
Even inside Europe and North America, birthrates favour religious minorities over the irreligious majority, pointing to a more religious future.
Basically, athiesm was just a moment.
Since Russia's recent invasion in Ukraine, I've been keeping up with it on the news.
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Joseph Jackson
But about the President being isolated from the world is probably true. Most of the information we have suggests that the Russian military genuinely believed that the war would be far easier for them than it has been. This is the problem with stagnant hierarchies like the Russian state, where information from the ground up gradually begins to diminish in quality and accuracy the further up it goes, until it's completely distorted by the time it reaches Putin's ears.
