If three-and-a-half years of unremitting conflict in Ukraine has taught us anything, it is that Vladimir Putin is never going to achieve the victory he so desperately seeks.
Far from seizing control of Kyiv, overthrowing the democratically-elected government of Volodymyr Zelensky and subjecting Ukraine to the Kremlin’s yoke – Putin’s original war aims – the Russian leader finds himself stuck in a grinding war of attrition he stands no chance of winning.
The inability of Russian forces to make a decisive breakthrough on the battlefield has been very much in evidence during their latest summer offensive, where they have made marginal territorial gains while sustaining eye watering losses running at around 1,000 battlefield casualties each day.
The Russian military’s failings have most recently been brutally exposed during their assault on the strategically important Sumy oblast, about 200 miles north-east of Kyiv. The latest Ukrainian intelligence reports suggest the Russians lost at least 334 soldiers killed and another 550 wounded when they came under sustained attack from Ukrainian special forces.
If three-and-a-half years of unremitting conflict in Ukraine has taught us anything, it is that Vladimir Putin is never going to achieve the victory he so desperately seeks.
Far from seizing control of Kyiv, overthrowing the democratically-elected government of Volodymyr Zelensky and subjecting Ukraine to the Kremlin’s yoke – Putin’s original war aims – the Russian leader finds himself stuck in a grinding war of attrition he stands no chance of winning.
The inability of Russian forces to make a decisive breakthrough on the battlefield has been very much in evidence during their latest summer offensive, where they have made marginal territorial gains while sustaining eye watering losses running at around 1,000 battlefield casualties each day.
The Russian military’s failings have most recently been brutally exposed during their assault on the strategically important Sumy oblast, about 200 miles north-east of Kyiv. The latest Ukrainian intelligence reports suggest the Russians lost at least 334 soldiers killed and another 550 wounded when they came under sustained attack from Ukrainian special forces.