Irony of ironies. Putin was afraid of being encircled. Paranoids have a way of making their own fears come true...
I would agree. This is pretty big.
The Finns signed a peace treaty in 1944 with Stalin. Finland would be non-aligned, but their military gear had to be compatible with Soviet gear, so if the Soviets had to rush in to "protect" Finland from a Western invasion. That is now by the board.
The Swedes have had a policy of non-alignment since 1815. A significant part of their decision to join NATO is that, being independent and non-aligned, they have to maintain every military capability on their own (e.g. amphibious ops, air defense, anti-submarine warfare, etc.). If they join NATO, they can specialize and economize. NATO calls this "burden-sharing." Russian subs violating Swedish territorial waters did not help Russia's case as to why Sweden should remain non-aligned.
Oh, well, the Kremlin has helped create what they said they wanted to avoid.
So the big question now is, "How will Putin react?"
So far, he's posturing about moving troops closer to the Finnish border. But that's over 800 miles long, and he doesn't have the manpower to handle what he has going on in Ukraine, much less diverting the men necessary to carry out that move.
Back in February, my initial read was that Putin's insane. If that were case, it would be godamighty scary because insane people will do illogical things, often against their own interest, and are really hard to predict. He might still be insane, but I'm not as convinced as I once was. Based on that read, I would have predicted use of tactical nukes by now.
In contrast to my original expectation, he seems to have settled in on a strategy of attrition -- as in, he's betting he can wear the Ukrainians down. I'm not sure he has the manpower to do that, either. I guess we'll see.
As others have pointed out, it's a lot harder to root out an entrenched enemy (which Russia is now) than it is to repel attacks (which the Russians don't seem to be doing a ton of anymore, at least not on the ground). And I saw a poll in yesterday’s WSJ — Thursday the 30th, p. A9 — that showed over 80% of Ukrainians oppose giving up any territory whatsoever to gain peace -- doesn't matter whether the ground in question was under Russian control before February (i.e., the "breakaway republics"), or has been taken since then.
You gotta give those guys credit -- they are tenacious.
This war has not gone anywhere near the way Putin thought it would. He's lost a lot of men and equipment. He didn't have much in the way of expert military leadership to begin with and has lost a lot of that as well. He can't replace the troops, equipment or expertise. Chechens and Syrians aren't proving terribly effective.
He's running out of options.
Which brings me back to the original question: Never mind the fact that it's all entirely self-inflicted, how does Putin react to the circumstances he currently faces?
Not limited to TIDE-HSV or Tidewater: What do you think, and why?