The whole world's watching--fallout in the German press was quick

[DFW]

48. The Germans I know think not.

This includes a Russian-speaking German friend who spent five tears there as a German Radio News correspondent.

They see the Ukrainian invasion as a total miscalculation (see Bush Jr./Rumsfeld+Iraq) that Putin will never admit was a total miscalculation. He thought he could start re-assembling the Russian Empire in a cakewalk, running roughshod over a pushover people only too willing to rejoin the Rodina. For someone supposedly aware of history, he seems to have forgotten that Hitler’s Wehrmacht was initially welcomed by the Ukrainians as a liberating force, freeing them from Stalin’s socialist yoke. Only when the Nazis started acting like Nazis did the Ukrainians realize that their “liberators” were no improvement.

Where Rumsfeld, at the start of the Iraq invasion, foresaw a duration of “maybe six days, maybe six weeks, certainly not six months” Putin reportedly saw his forces wrapping up the conquest of a passive Ukraine within two weeks of the start of the invasion. Maybe he’s slow to get the hint that the Ukrainians are not interested in rejoining the Russian Empire, but the loss of a quarter million Russian troops has to have him scratching his head at some point. It took Cheney and Rumsfeld a while to say “oops,” too, but they eventually did. Cheney (dba Bush Lite) was term limited, and thus so was Iraq. Putin is there for as long as his health and the loyalty of his bodyguards will allow. Whether he’s facing scrutiny from Merkel, Scholz, Merz, Söder, or even Biden or Harris, it’s a safe bet that the support of friendly local money and a tight FSB is of far more importance to him than who is in the Bundeskanzleramt or (unless it’s Trump), the White House.