Comments by "Ash Roskell" (@ashroskell) on "William Spaniel"
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The difference between Putin and Zelensky:
When hostile Russian troops breached the borders of Zelensky’s capitol, Zelensky refused a lift into exile offered by the Americans and asked for ammunition instead, deciding he would face the same fate as the rest of his fellow citizens, despite knowing he would never be allowed to survive as a prisoner.
When hostile Russian troops didn’t even get to the borders of Putin’s capitol, Putin fled to St Petersburg, leaving the citizens to fend for themselves. Now, every day that Prigozhin jets around Russia and Belarus, whilst Wagner only strengthens itself and recruits from Belarusian jails, openly defying Putin’s edict to fold them into the official armed forces, Putin looks clearly, palpably, visibly weakened.
The comparison between Putin’s cowardice and Zelensky’s heroism has never been starker in the west. Whilst Muscovites are watching their standards of living continue to slip, and losing relatives to a war they cannot understand, for a guy who ran out on them at the first hint of trouble that didn’t even come for him! You cannot save face while you still have a bloody nose that simply will not stop bleeding so long as Prigozhin shows he has more power than Putin in real terms.
If Russians aren’t wondering whether all their sacrifices are pointless now, they never will.
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Thanks for this analysis. But, are we at risk of misunderstanding the mindset at play here? The west is seeing both sides of the battle lines from the perspective of geo-politics, long term objectives and strategic outcomes (as reflected so eloquently in your video) whilst Zelensky and his government all have their heads in the trenches.
The CIA advised Zelensky to pull out of Bakhmut, weeks ago. Yet he hasn’t. Have you accounted for Zelensky’s reasoning for that?
Might it be something as plain for them that they simply want to make the Russian army understand that every inch of territory they take will cost them too much blood and treasure to be worth it? What may be lost on Putin will not be lost on an already demoralised Russian army? And if any breakdown in Russia’s political stability occurs, it will begin in the armed forces.
While the west’s leaders view the entire conflict from their geo-centric point of view, Ukrainians are concentrating on breaking the will of their enemy’s armed forces. After all, if you’re a Russian commander who knows that even a strategically worthless piece of real estate is going to cost you far more blood and treasure than your opponent, how reluctant would you feel about ordering your troops to attack an actually valuable, already well guarded target? Especially if those troops are under resourced, under nourished and surely to begin with? Making videos that they hope Putin will see so he’ll get resources to them, not knowing that he already knows and is more likely to have them killed for it, does not make for a successful army.
The will of your armed forces is a key component to winning a war, or so the generals and historians tell me. And, a country at Total War has a psychology unlike others. In my own country’s history, 1939 to 1940 were bleak years where Britain stood alone in Europe, facing Nazi tyranny, which they struggled to convey to their counterparts in the US until the Lend Lease program began to very slowly turn things around. Had it not been for Pearl Harbor, Britain might well have lost that war.
I think you should commit some of your analysis to the psychology, stresses and strains of wartime leadership, and how very different the world looks from Zelensky’s perspective, than to Putin’s or the west’s?
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The west has stopped short of saying, out loud, that NATO intends to see Russia expelled from all of Ukraine. And that is Putin’s main reason for fighting now. He hears all the key leaders of the west, saying, “whatever it takes, for as long as it takes,” and hears messaging about Ukraine’s defence from further encroachment, NOT his inevitable defeat. NATO’s, “fear of escalation,” is ironically the cause of Russia’s escalation.
It’s time NATO put it up. As soon as NATO and Biden state, “We will see Ukraine’s total victory,” Putin will start looking for his off ramp and reshaping the narrative at home.
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