The war has killed or wounded hundreds of thousands; Russia and Russians are vilified in the West as aggressors; and Putin's army now faces a resilient Ukraine backed by an expanding U.S.-led NATO military alliance.
MOSCOW - Vladimir Putin casts the war in Ukraine as a watershed when Russia finally stood up to the West - but some within the elite fear he has committed his country to a long and fruitless drain on lives and resources.
"Ahead, it will be even more difficult and more costly for both Ukraine and Russia," said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Economic losses on this scale are not worth a few conquered territories." "We are in an absolutely paradoxical situation," said Igor Girkin, who has been convicted by an international court of helping to shoot down a Malaysian airliner over east Ukraine.
Moscow has lost a major chunk of the European gas market that the Soviet Union and Putin spent decades winning. Russian oil production rose in 2022 but Moscow has announced an output cut for March, most likely in response to a Western cap on the price of its refined products. "This war is the most consequential activity Putin has ever undertaken and certainly for Russia it is the most consequential gamble since the fall of the Soviet Union," said Samuel Charap, a Russia specialist at the RAND Corporation who has served in the State Department.
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