What's Next?
So Ukraine's counteroffensive seems to be going quite well, especially in the northeast. Russia's suffered another major defeat. I'm not ready to count Russia out yet, but Ukraine's recent successes are worth celebrating.
What's next? I saw one breathless headline today suggesting that Putin's days in power are numbered. That's rather sanguine, and probably naively hopeful.
I'm quite surprised that I haven't seen any dire predictions of what an increasingly humiliated and desperate Putin might do in the coming days and weeks. In the first few weeks of the war, as the Russian drive on Kiev sputtered to a halt, a lot of news outlets presented the possibility that Putin might resort to tactical nukes to regain momentum and achieve his strategic goals. As more Western aid appeared in Ukraine, Putin rattled his nuclear sabre.
At present, it seems like no one's particularly worried about potential use of nuclear weapons anymore. It seems to me that if Putin were ever to authorize/order tactical nuclear strikes, it would be now, with Ukrainian forces at the border in the northeast. Is Putin going to gracefully accept defeat? He missed his opportunity to declare victory a couple of months ago. Any such declaration now would ring hollow, and a strategic withdrawal or peace overture would appear to signal defeat. That doesn't strike me as Putin's style at all.
What do you think the coming weeks will bring?
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