Vladimir Putin seems lastly to have realised that he’s not going to win his warfare in Ukraine.
Nevertheless, in taking important steps final week to make sure that he doesn’t lose it, he has upped the stakes in methods he might not be capable of management.
Paralysed by the dearth of simple selections within the face of Ukraine’s efficient counteroffensive within the northeast and south, Putin had been dithering. The prospect of additional breakthroughs by Kyiv’s forces appears to have been on his thoughts when he went to Uzbekistan on September 15 for a summit of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, a world group often called “the autocrats’ membership”.
In Samarkand, Putin hoped for statements of assist from the leaders of China, India and
