Unprecedented Failure of Russian Leadership

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
Global Research

Why has Putin maximized Russian casualties, provocations and humiliations of Russia, and disregard of Russian red lines by keeping a war going for four years that should have been won in one week?

The mindless restrictions Putin has imposed on the Russian military are inexplicable in the context of war. Why have the Russian General Staff and the Russian people tolerated them?

Rumblings are starting to appear. Here is one reported by John Helmer:

A source in a position to know says the restrictions on the electric war have been political, not military, and for the time being Putin appears to have lifted them.

“I have a tough time believing that the General Staff did not have the intelligence, let alone the weapons accuracy and survivability necessary to prosecute the electric war from the start,” the source comments. “First, as the vast majority of the Ukrainian electrical grid, especially the 750kV backbone, was, and still is, more than fifty years old, Soviet-era equipment. Information on the Ukrainian electrical generation, transmission, and distribution network was, and still is, widely available in open source. There is no way that the electrical or civil engineers employed by the General Staff could not know what to target and what firepower was necessary. In terms of weapons, the Russian forces had then, as they do now, stocks of cruise, ballistic, and other air-dropped weapons, not to mention sabotage capabilities, to destroy the critical Ukrainian electrical nodes. There are approximately 35 major Ukrainian substations — so again, the available information for targeting is open source.  Looking at the data provided in these sources, the General Staff have had more than enough ordnance to take them all out. They didn’t. Moving forward from this line of thinking, I am curious to know why Ukrainian electrical laydowns [storage areas] and service vehicles have not been targeted. Are we to assume these could not be seen? This defies  rudimentary understanding of enemy logistic and repair capabilities. Quite obviously, the delay to date in achieving the complete collapse of the Ukrainian grid was and is the product of political decision-making, not any lack of capability on the Russian military’s part.”

Here is a Russian comment on a recent Gilbert Doctorow podcast:

Russia is tired of the war, that is the Truth! Tired of such a lingering and sticky Strange Military Operation, when strategic military aviation sleeps on airfields or bombs firing ranges. Yes, of course, Russia is tired of Putin’s strange inadequacy (or treachery!??) in this…. Strange Military Operation. Even the actions in Syria were more decisive and effective…. Russia is tired of the small-minded Belousovs, Nabibulins, Gerasimovs, Shoigunutsy, Lavrovs and a number of other weak-willed supporters of its commander-in-chief, whom they will renounce and sell at the first opportunity (the price is the issue) Russia is tired not of the War, the War for itself – but of the strange and slow-moving and some kind of waiting “war.”

What explains Putin’s strange reluctance to win the conflict and get it over with before it spins out of control? It seems that Putin intends to keep the conflict going until the West can widen it into a major conflict that could doom us all.

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Paul Craig Roberts is a renowned author and academic, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy where this article was originally published. Dr. Roberts was previously associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during the Reagan Administration. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Off Guardian

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https://www.globalresearch.ca/unprecedented-failure-russian-leadership/5905279