Ex-US envoy to Russia says Putin will not recover from Ukraine’s blunders

• Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Russia, said Putin had “failed” in his Ukraine goals.
• Six months into the war, he said, Putin had many failures to come back from.
• McFaul also noted that Putin now lacks the forces needed to achieve any substantive goals.

Michael McFallThe former US ambassador to Russia said that Russian President Vladimir Putin faced many failures in the Ukraine war and is unlikely to be able to recover from them.

while appearing on NBC interview with the press On Sunday, McFaul assumed that Putin had “failed” all of his “strategic goals” he set out to invade Moscow.

“Remember, six months ago, he said he was going to unite Ukrainians and Russians because Ukrainians are just Russians with accents. He failed at that,” McFaul said. “I have failed de-Nazification. Failed to disarm. He failed to take the capital of Kyiv. And now he is fighting only in Donetsk and in Kherson. ”

McFaul also noted how Putin was doing it The Russian army ordered the creation of 137,000 new soldiers Last week, he said this was likely an attempt by the Russian leader to break the “stalemate” in the disputed Ukrainian regions.

“So, on a strategic level, I think he failed in this war. I don’t see him recovering,” McFaul said.

He said Putin might now shift his focus to the Donbass region as a “new target” in the conflict, but added that the Russian leader would need more troops to accomplish this. Such an axis would also require a “comprehensive draft,” McFaul said, which Putin may not do for fear of making Russians “unhappy.”

McFaul added that the Russians may believe that “time is on their side” and that the tide may turn in their favor the longer the war drags on – because the Ukrainians may eventually run out of resources.

McFaul is not the first military and foreign policy expert to study how Putin’s war in Ukraine came to a halt. Former NATO commander, James Strafridis, He said this month He thinks Putin knows he made a “fatal mistake” in invading Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Putin bragged about it Russian weapons are “years” and “decades” ahead of the weapons of their competitorsEven when his army was forced to use old Soviet-era armor in Ukraine. On the other side, Ukrainian forces are armed with the HIMARS system Long-range weapons systems sent by the United States, which proved highly effective in the conflict.