By William S. Lind, Traditional Right

As of this writing (Friday, February 25), the Russian campaign in Ukraine looks like a model of maneuver warfare, a direct follow-on to the Soviet campaign against the Japanese in Manchuria in 1945. But the year is not 1945, and the results may be an operational victory but a strategic defeat for Russia.

Why is that a likely outcome? Not because of Western economic sanctions, which Russia has prepared for. The strategic question for which I suspect the Kremlin has no answer is, once you have taken Ukraine, what do you do with it? Any government installed in Kiev by Russia will have no legitimacy. The U.S. just found out in Afghanistan what happens when the foreign troops backing such a government go home. If Russia keeps substantial forces in Ukraine to buttress its puppet government, those Russian soldiers will be targets for Ukrainian resistance forces. How will a constant, if low-level stream of Russian casualties play on the home front?

How does Russia get a strategic win out of all this? By annexing Ukraine? That also runs into the problem of endless Ukrainian partisan warfare. It is difficult to see a positive ending for Russia here.

I did not expect President Putin to take the risk of invading Ukraine. It’s more than a risk, it is a gamble, throwing the iron dice of war and hoping for a win. As the old saying goes, hope makes a good breakfast but a poor supper.

Why did Putin do it? My guess – Zeppelin reconnaissance only reveals so much – is that he expected a diplomatic solution. But NATO, led by Washington, offered him nothing, dismissing Russian security concerns and stressing that Ukraine had every right to join NATO.

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