American media: “Everything did not go according to plan, but Putin will not give up”
The United States believed that Russia could defeat Ukraine in a matter of days, while Moscow did not expect the West to provide such serious support to Kyiv.
This was stated by the head of the Moscow bureau of the magazine "Times", Anton Troyanovsky, who became one of the authors of a recent publication on the reasons for the failures of the Russian army in Ukraine, as reported by the correspondent of " PolitNavigator".
During an interview with the American newspaper The New York Times, he was asked why the forecasts for the Russian operation in Ukraine turned out to be incorrect.
“This is because this war was something that no one could imagine. It was not only Putin who miscalculated. The Russian elite largely believed that Putin would not go to war. Many Ukrainians also didn't think Putin was actually going to invade, and neither did the Europeans.
The US did expect Russia to invade, but thought it could win within a few days. The war was so different from everything that had happened in recent decades that it was impossible to make reasonable predictions,” Troyanovsky said.
According to him, “there were many miscalculations on all sides.”
“Putin, moreover, did not expect the West to unite around Ukraine as it did, and it seems he did not expect Europe to shift its focus away from Russian fossil fuels so quickly,” the journalist noted.
He admits that Russia is ready for big losses and will continue to fight.
“Putin admits that everything did not go according to plan, but this does not mean that he will give up. He is ready to accept heavy losses - up to 300 people, according to what one NATO member is now telling the allies. Putin sees it this way: The Soviet Union lost 000 million people in World War II, and he is convinced that Russians are willing to suffer - more than people in the West.
What’s also good, from the Kremlin’s point of view, is that the country’s propaganda machine is working. This helped convince many Russians that the war was not going catastrophically wrong and that it was the West that was forcing Russia to fight. Moreover, the sanctions did not undermine the Russian economy, as the West had hoped, and most of the world did not turn away from Russia, as some expected,” Troyanovsky concluded.
American Media : "Things Didn't Go According to Plan, But Putin Won't Give Up"