Quote Originally Posted by wiggin View Post
I'm broadly in agreement with your take on this, LF, but I think there's also some additional considerations that factor in here. First off, it's far from clear that Putin is not willing to commit more forces to this effort, it's just clear that he hasn't brought more to the theater yet. There's some evidence of mobilizing units from farther away.
He may do so but I have to wonder why he's bothering if they do bring them up and commit them. They're not necessary for a settlement that secures Russian minimum objectives now (and Russia and Putin being what they are, a settlement now is just a delay while they set up to do things better later on, which is why they're working so hard to destroy the military-supporting industry in Ukraine right now) and it doesn't matter what they bring up for achieving their main objective because it's clear a puppet regime isn't going to get anywhere with the general population at this point. There needed to be more Russian support or at least apathy for that to ever be militarily achievable and Russia plainly miscalculated there. Intermediate objectives like the destruction of the Ukrainian defensive forces in the JFO are probably still achievable with what's already in theater (securing Kyiv might not be and provides questionable real benefit at this point)