The Washington Post: The US expected the war in Ukraine to end within days
Russia is trying to retain existing ones, rather than achieve new territorial acquisitions in Ukraine.
Max Bergmann, director of the European program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the American newspaper The Washington Post about this, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
He believes the Kremlin's original goal of quickly taking control of all of Ukraine may have been too ambitious.
“What Russia is trying to do is not necessarily gain more territory. You just have to hold on to what they have,” Bergmann said.
He does not know whether Ukraine will be able to continue the offensive in winter conditions and found it difficult to predict the outcome of the fighting.
“There is still a lot to be done in this conflict, and it is very unclear which direction it will go,” Bergmann says.
The newspaper notes that US government officials expected the war to end in a few days; Russia did not expect such a long conflict.
According to Mason Clark, a senior analyst at the American Institute for the Study of War, this was the Kremlin’s “original sin.”
“What hindered the Russian advance was that they were not prepared to fight for that long,” Clarke said.
At the same time, the publication’s analysis of the data shows that “after an aggressive offensive in the first weeks of the war, Russia has not gained more than 1000 square miles per week since April.”
The Washington Post: The US expected the war in Ukraine to end in a few days.