Putin Seeks Ways To Describe Failure In Ukraine. By StrategyPage.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin is trying to explain to the Russian people that Russia has lost its war against Ukraine. …

Putin’s main aim is to avoid exposing the Russian people to the sudden shock of defeat after more than four years of fighting and all the media coverage that followed. Sudden shocks tend to spark popular revolutions. Putin wants the news of the Russian defeat to arrive slowly and smoothly to avoid any sudden realizations that Putin’s war failed and all the losses were for nothing.

Putin is trying to rewrite history as it is being made. … The current defeat generated articles like Amazing Defeats: When Geopolitical Losses Can Be More Useful than Brilliant Victories. …

Russian government media officials counseled that in Russia defeats are quickly forgotten and are often followed by a period of reforms and revitalization of the economy, government and military. As the old saying goes, what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. …

Will the Russian make another attempt at conquering Ukraine?

Ukrainians are uneasy about all this because the primary use of a reformed, rebuilt and revitalized Russian military would be the conquest of Ukraine….

Everyone understands that what follows the Russian defeat is a period of rebuilding the military before another attempt to conquer Ukraine. As long as Putin is alive, he will be seeking a military victory, preferably against his arch-nemesis, Ukraine.