A brutal winter is coming for Russian forces in Ukraine Commentary by TomRTweets:
"My cavalry is dismounted, and many horses are dying." That was how Napoleon described his situation at the start of his infamous retreat from Moscow in 1812. Far worse was to come for Napoleon and his Grande Armée. By the time it had finally concluded a long and brutal retreat across the vast Russian countryside, only 25% of Napoleon's once 400,000-strong force would still be alive. Winter bit just as hard as Russian forces.
The degree of Russia's vulnerability here is hard to overestimate. President Vladimir Putin is attempting his own winter gambit by throwing his increasingly sparse missile stocks at Ukraine's power grid. But Putin's problem is that Ukraine is if painfully, absorbing these strikes and retaining the will and means to fight. Russian forces in Ukraine will lack the same winter resolution.
Russia's best hope? That Ukraine's far better-supplied forces may restrict their offensive action in order to avoid bloody winter combat. But that's unlikely. Ukraine's special operations and artillery units are well-equipped and highly mobile. They will take advantage of Russia's impulse for static winter defenses.
All of this begs a question: Why on Earth would Ukraine be tempted by the increasingly obvious pressure of France and Germany to begin conciliatory negotiations with Russia? With Putin still insisting on absurd ground rules for prospective negotiations, it should be clear to Ukrainian commanders that their best course of action is to escalate offensive action. That's the way for Ukraine to flip the script on Putin's favorite stratagem: leveraged negotiations.
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