Confronted by serious battlefield losses in Ukraine, Russia’s Putin did what he has often done before when facing setbacks: doubled down
territory in days that Moscow had spent months, many lives and significant resources to capture. The advance landed a stinging defeat on Russian troops, some of whom fled back into Russia from northeastern Ukraine.
Strategists said they don’t think Putin’s rhetoric will change western support for Ukraine either. Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, said he didn’t see the West backing down—or ratcheting up—in response. “Ukraine is doing well—so to keep helping Ukraine do what it’s doing seems the most logical thing,” he said.
From the other direction, Mr. Putin lost the support of Russia’s most famous pop icon, Alla Pugacheva, who is adored across Russian society and came out against the war over the weekend. For the first time in months, several thousand people turned out to antiwar protests in cities across Russia on Wednesday evening, despite the threat of detention. Nearly 1,000 people were detained, according to the independent Russian OVD-Info rights monitor.
The Kremlin is also constrained from a broader mobilization of troops, fearing that the broad support for the war could become fragile once average Russians are forced to serve. Russians haven’t been required to fight or even think that much about the conflict. Earlier this month, Russia’s main state-controlled television channel said that it was playing down coverage of the conflict, and returning to entertainment programming from before the war.
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