pcr says that the putin doesn't really want to win in the ukie war; 

 

Russia Under Putin Is an Example of Self-Defeat

Paul Craig Roberts

Since 2014 I have been puzzled by the absence of a Russian foreign policy strategy.  The Kremlin had the carrot–diplomacy–but no stick, the absence of which made the diplomacy ineffective.  If the diplomacy failed, there was no backup plan.

We saw this in 2014 when Washington overthrew without Russian opposition the Russian-friendly government in Ukraine and installed an anti-Russian puppet government.  Russian military intervention could easily have prevented the overthrow as the overthrow was not the product of an internal uprising but was an orchestration by an outside party.

The immediate consequence was that Crimea, the home of Russia’s Black Sea naval base, and Russian Donbas, which previous Soviet regimes had attached to Ukraine, voted overwhelmingly to be reincorporated into Russia.  The Kremlin accepted the Crimean vote to save its naval base, but not the Donbas vote. Instead, Russian President Putin came up with the Minsk Agreement in which Donbas was to remain part of Ukraine but have some autonomy, such as independent police and judicial system to prevent the Russian citizens from being oppressed by the neo-Nazi elements of the US imposed Ukrainian government.

The Response of the Kremlin-deserted Donbas Russians was to declare two independent Republics: Donbas and Luhansk. The independent republics were partly occupied by Ukrainian forces, but their militias were able to mainly fend off the anti-Russian Ukrainian forces that came to stamp out Russian language and culture in Donbas..........more..........