Putin's overlooked problem: Morale in Ukraine

Clearly, Russia’s war in Ukraine is going horribly bad for President Putin. While some of the reasons for this have to do with very poor military decision-making and overconfidence that Ukraine could be quickly defeated, Moscow has a morale problem that can’t be easily solved …

Moreover, according to the Institute for the Study of War, several reports indicate that the morale of the Russian and pro-Russian forces in the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces in the Donbas is “exceedingly low,” most likely as a result of the seemingly unending stream of defeats that the Russian arms have been suffering lately.

Every day, the Ukrainian military is providing an update on their claimed Russian casualties. These numbers are official figures and haven’t been separately verified.

However, Western intelligence assessments and independent reporting corroborate, to a certain extent, the Ukrainian casualty claims.

[We’ve seen the morale issue almost from the start. Russian troops expected a short war, perhaps no more than a week or two, followed by a long occupation. They — and Putin — had no idea what they were blundering into, and how poorly their military had been built and trained for actual conflict. — Ed]