Russia is really in trouble. Screwed.
Maybe someone within Russia will take Putin down.
These are some excerpts from the article. More at the link and is worth reading.
Vladimir Putin has no good options for how to react after a lightning offensive by Ukraine inflicted Russia's most serious and rapid military defeat on the battlefield since the Second World War, a military expert said today.
JUSTIN BRONK, a research fellow at London's Royal United Services Institute, has analysed the latest situation in an article for MailOnline today as Ukrainian troops continued to pile pressure on retreating Russian forces.
Ukraine is now seeking to hold onto its sudden momentum that has produced major territorial gains, with Russian troops surrendering en masse amid hopes that a turning point in the war has finally been reached.
The counter-offensive left the Kremlin struggling for a response to its largest military defeat in Ukraine since Russia pulled back from areas near Kyiv after a botched attempt to capture the capital early in the invasion.
It comes as Russia's state media war correspondent Alexander Sladkov accidentally revealed the scale of their losses in Ukraine, telling the Kremlin-run Rossiya 1 news channel that a 'huge number of people' have died.
Mr Bronk said Ukraine has 'baited Russia into accepting an attritional battle in a very militarily disadvantageous position', adding that Russia 'will be hard pressed simply to avoid any more disasters before winter'.
The expert, who also gave his analysis to MailOnline in a video, said it had been 'one of the most successful counter-offensives we've seen in modern history in terms of territory gained over a given speed of advance'.
In less than a week, more than 3,000 square kilometres of Ukrainian territory had been liberated, massive stockpiles of ammunition, weapons and armoured vehicles captured for use by Ukrainian forces, and the entire Russian position in North-Eastern Ukraine completely destabilised.
Russian forces have not suffered such a serious and rapid military defeat on the battlefield since the Second World War.
Worse still for Putin is that fact that he has no good options for how to react now.
The majority of his potentially mobile and elite units in Ukraine are still concentrated in Kherson to the south, and are facing a serious and ongoing Ukrainian counter-offensive operation that cannot be ignored.
Furthermore, by signalling for so long that Kherson was target for liberation, Ukraine has baited Russia into accepting an attritional battle in a very militarily disadvantageous position.
The region of Kherson Oblast that Russia is trying to hold onto is on the Western bank of the wide Dnipro river.
The US-supplied long range HIMARS rocket artillery system has allowed Ukraine to effectively destroy the only two crossing points – the Antonovsky Bridge and the bridge at Nova Kahkovka – and regularly destroy the temporary pontoon bridges and ferry crossings that the Russian Army has tried to build instead.
As such, the large concentration of Russian forces defending Kherson are dependent on highly disrupted and bottlenecked supply lines, meaning that they are rapidly running low on medical supplies, food and above all ammunition.
This is an attritional battle that favours Ukraine due to the territory involved but for Putin, Kherson has to be defended politically due to its status as the one major Ukrainian city taken roughly intact during this invasion.
Now with his northern flank collapsing, Putin cannot easily withdraw elite units from Kherson, since it would risk a second major rout in the face of the ongoing Ukrainian counter-offensive operations there.
