Punditry StaffIt’s to the best interests of the United States for Russia’s Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov to remain in their positions. After all, they were the ones who executed the faulty military strategy to invade Ukraine, causing hundreds of thousands of death and not achieving even close to their original goal of installing a puppet in Kyiv. With those two generals surviving, when Yevgeny Prighozin and Sergey Surovikin, two proven generals on the battlefields, have died or been sacked by Putin is one more sign Russia will lose Ukraine in the long-term. It bodes well for the U.S. to see the Russian military mediocrity remain in control of the Russian army.
In today’s Russian autocracy, or in any other for a fact, loyalty is more precious than competence. Putin would rather have a loyal staff, even if mediocre, than a competent staff winning the war for him and who may turn on him one day. It’s the nature of all authoritarian regimes. Loyalty trumps all.
This supposedly superpower nation cannot maintain the lands it conquered without aid coming from China, Belarus, and Iran.
DEFENSIVE POSTURES ARE SIGNS OF MEDIOCRITY
Defense does not conquer nations. But its potency lies in buying time by maintaining a hold on the spoils of war, which is where the Russians find themselves today in almost a standstill. And since Putin conquered the two Oblast in Eastern Ukraine before the West armed Ukraine, the situation on the ground remains fluid, but hopeful. What is clear is the mediocrity we witnessed of the Russian armed forces as opposed to the competence of the Wagner mercenaries when they conquered Bakhmut despite U.S. support.
When the Russian army pours all of its resources to defend lands it conquered without the ability to defeat the advancing Ukrainians, there is no clearer sign as to the mediocrity of the Russian armed forces. Eventually, Ukraine will prevail, and the Russian army will run back home because it has demonstrated its inferiority amply the last 18 months.
Today, the supposedly great Russia that Vladimir Putin believers he is its modern Peter the Great is but a shadow of a fake superpower. If it was not for its nuclear arsenal and its U.N. veto, Russia would be another vastness of nothing of peasants and their pitchforks.
This supposedly superpower nation cannot maintain the lands it conquered without aid coming from China, Belarus, and Iran. To call such a country a “superpower” is a stretch of the imagination, as the world witnesses the Russian military mediocrity in plain sight.
Meanwhile, Ukraine could have avoided the tragic lives it lost had the United States acted quicker and ballsier.
THE SPIGOT IS TRICKLING
There is one fact we must consider, which has delayed Ukraine from dislodging Russia, and his name is Joseph Biden. The President has been both reluctant and late in taking the bold steps to assist Ukraine. Ukraine has asked for the F-16’s almost a year ago, yet Biden made that decision just recently. Without them, the Ukrainian loss of life is becoming untenable.
That fear of starting something he cannot control has built a bunker mentality at the White House. Biden, unfortunately, cannot fathom a quick win by Ukraine because he still believes in the Russia that no country can defeat. The old school mindset he embraced during his Senate years.
So, the weapons’ spigot is trickling, and it seems the United States is always two steps behind Russia because of Biden’s fear. Eventually, though, the U.S. President may turn bolder as he realizes Putin is not Peter the Great, and today’s Russia is not the one Brezhnev built, fearless and imposing. When he does is when Ukraine will uproot the Russian army for good.
Meanwhile, Ukraine could have avoided the tragic lives it lost had the United States acted quicker and ballsier.
The Russian Military Mediocrity In Plain Sight
Punditry Staff
