Oddbean new post about | logout
 in addition, Putin is ALSO not trying to win the war.  he is trying to pressure Ukraine to accept his terms at negotiating table.

your idea that the objective of a war is to "win" comes from watching too much football.

unplug your TV. 
 What Putin is doing is that he's waiting for the collapse of the AFU so that he can walk through Ukraine without bombing the cities. That's the point of attritional warfare. When the Russians talk about "being open for negotiations" they mean unconditional surrender of their counterpart.  
 well i agree with you on one thing - Putin is certainly not willing to take Kiev by force - he had multiple opportunities to do that - but he doesn't want to go down in history for doing to Kiev what Netanyahu is doing to Gaza 

because Netanyahu will simply get his Jews to re-write history, while Putin doesn't quite have the power to do that