Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to halt the war in Ukraine with a negotiated ceasefire that recognises the current battlefield lines, four Russian sources told Reuters, saying he is prepared to fight on if Kyiv and the West do not respond.
Three of the sources, familiar with discussions in Putin’s entourage, said the veteran Russian leader had expressed frustration to a small group of advisers about what he views as Western-backed attempts to stymie negotiations and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s decision to rule out talks.
“Putin can fight for as long as it takes, but Putin is also ready for a ceasefire – to freeze the war,” said another of the four, a senior Russian source who has worked with Putin and has knowledge of top level conversations in the Kremlin.
He, like the others cited in this story, spoke on condition of anonymity given the matter’s sensitivity.
Yeah, but the thing is, Ukraine isn’t ready to negotiate, and Biden will be President for at least another 7 months.
Until then perhaps over 100 000 Russian and Ukrainian soldiers will die, thanks to Putin.
This war isn’t helping the demographics of either country.
While there might be a sudden (and long overdue) influx of material heading Ukraine’s way my understanding is that they’ve been attritioned out of a lot of their fighting capability due to the long (fuck you GOP) drought of munitions. Russia has a lot more manpower to throw at the war and has been actively recruiting dumb foreigners (or kidnapping foreigners) along with using prison labor to supplement their fighting force.
Russia has about 3.5x the manpower, and IIUC, Ukraine might start using convicts. Maybe they might use some of that aid to increase pay and maybe get their own foreigners.
This history of Russia shows a willingness to throw bodies into the meatgrinder to achieve military objectives. While there are trained and professional forces fighting on the Russian side of this conflict, the lines have also been populated with conscripts, political dissidents, ethnic minorities, prisoners, and any other “human resources” that Putin doesn’t mind sacrificing. I doubt he is worried about troop strength.
He’s absolutely worried about troop strength. Besides the fact that Russia is already getting screwed by a demographic crunch regardless of this war, Putin’s last mobilization was deeply unpopular.
The problem might not be so much the strength of the troops as much as their morale.
AFAIK, Russian troop strength might have been good in February 1917.