"The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) is also falling apart. Initially founded as a counterweight to NATO, it has long been exposed as an attempted revanche to return control of former SSRs to Moscow. Uzbekistan left the alliance 12 years ago, and this year, Armenia announced its plans to leave. The loss of Armenia will force Moscow to abandon two more vital military bases and diminish its position in the South Caucasus." - Vladimir Putin Is Digging His Own Grave in Ukraine December 11, 2024
"When Russia concentrates most of its force on a singular target, as they have now for years in Ukraine, we see that it does not spell-out a quick Russian victory. Now with Russia's global projects - including Ukraine, Syria, Georgia, Moldova, and in Africa – receiving heavy pushback, Moscow simply does not have the capacity to respond to all of the five alarm fires at the same time." - Why Russia is Losing Everywhere: Ukraine, Syria, and Beyond, Kyiv Post, December 4, 2024
It's a pity that Vladimir Putin apparently didn't see the 1973 movie Magnum Force. If he had, he might have heeded these words of Inspector Harry Callahan: "A man's got to know his limitations." Putin is clearly spinning too many overseas plates and some of the plates are falling. It's a classic case of imperial overreach.
"Russia is a declining power, and it will only get weaker with time." - International relations scholar John Mearsheimer.
Britannica on the bad consequences of the Russia-Ukraine War on Russia:
"Putin’s “special military operation” against Ukraine had seen the failure of Russia’s main thrust toward Kyiv, the deaths of at least a dozen Russian generals, and the sinking of the Moskva, the largest ship to be lost to enemy action since the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano was torpedoed during the Falkland Islands War in 1982. Russia had become the most heavily sanctioned country in history; it was isolated from the international banking system, and the EU, the U.S., the U.K., and Canada had all closed their airspace to Russian traffic. Ukraine, conversely, was embraced by the West as a developing democracy defending itself against the depredations of an autocratic neighbor. Western leaders flocked to Kyiv to demonstrate solidarity with Ukraine and to pledge their continued support...
NATO, decried by some as irrelevant in the 21st century, found a renewed purpose and sense of solidarity in the wake of the Russian invasion. Finland and Sweden, two countries with a long history of neutrality, each signaled their intention to join the alliance shortly after the war began. On July 5 both countries signed accession protocols. Instead of shattering the alliance’s will, Putin had, in effect, turned the Baltic Sea into a NATO lake...
In September 2022, in the Russian government’s only official statement on losses suffered during the “special military operation,” Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed that 5,937 Russian troops had been killed in action. Just before the two-year anniversary of the invasion, Western intelligence officials estimated that Russian military casualties had topped 320,000 killed and wounded; this represented nearly 90 percent of Russia’s total mobilized force prior to the war. In addition, some 40,000 Wagner Group mercenaries were wounded, and 20,000 were killed. Western analysts also estimated that Ukraine had suffered perhaps 200,000 military casualties. Roughly two years into the war, Ukraine was visually confirmed to have lost nearly 3,000 armored vehicles, including some 740 tanks. Russia’s visually confirmed losses amounted to more than 8,000 armored vehicles, including some 2,700 tanks. Perhaps implausibly, in the first year of the war, Ukraine managed to recoup nearly all of its documented armored losses with captured Russian equipment; this included a net gain of more than 90 tanks. In less than a year of war, it was estimated that Russia’s conventional military capability had been degraded by half; by 2024, Western intelligence officials estimated that the war had set back Russia’s attempts at military modernization by nearly two full decades." - Source: Russia-Ukraine War
Despite advantages of a larger recruitment base and defense industrial capacity, the Russian military has been unable to decisively defeat the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The Russian military has suffered significant losses in personnel and equipment. Its performance arguably has been hindered by a rigid command and control structure, a weakened corps of trained and professional units, and a reliance on tactics with high casualty rates.
