Upgrading to Subscriber+ Status now.Д«ut any attempt to take Odesa would extend the war by months if not years, and would involve the destruction of yet another city.

Subscriber+Members have a higher level of access to Cipher Brief Expert Perspectives on Global Issues. Having already destroyed UkraineвЂ™s main industrial cities, Putin would have turned Ukraine into a costly Western dependency. That would deny Ukraine its Black Sea coast and turn it into a landlocked country dependent on Russia for all its maritime exports. Having taken Kherson and made significant progress toward Mikolaiv, there is only 80 more miles to reach Odesa and a further 40 to get to the Moldovan border. The army, navy and air force will need root-and-branch reform after a campaign which has revealed poor training, inadequate equipment, and tactical and strategic ineptitude.Д«ut there is also a possibility that Putin will not stop until he has captured Odesa. He can then portray his intervention in Ukraine as a success and buy himself a few years to rebuild his battered forces. There is also a chance that Putin will stop his advance if Russian troops take the whole of the Donbas. This is the moment when he could reach into his nuclear arsenal and fire a tactical weapon as a warning to Ukraine and its Western backers not to try (for example) to retake Crimea. Putin would be at his most dangerous in the face of looming defeat. Meanwhile, BerlinвЂ™s much-vaunted foreign policy conversion of late February looks increasingly illusory as deliveries of German weapons fail to arrive at the front.ДЄ possible outcome would be for his army to break under the pressure of casualties and mutiny. There has been speculation that Putin has cancer or that he might be overthrown by a palace coup. He has even spoken of regime change in Moscow. President Joe Biden also seems to have little clarity about his objectives. Whilst it may be satisfying to see the British government standing up against what looks like appeasement from Paris, Berlin and Rome, its ultimate goal is also unclear. The following day, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson made an unexpected trip to Kyiv to strengthen ZelenskyвЂ™s resolve. It would be a surprise if the вЂshow of solidarityвЂ™ visit by Macron to Kyiv last week with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, did not include some further вЂencouragementвЂ™ to settle. Where once the leading news channels had senior presenters reporting on Kyiv rooftops, Ukraine news has already dropped below the related concerns about food and energy prices, not to mention celebrity trials.ДЇrench President Emmanuel Macron was the first to break cover with the suggestion that President Volodymyr Zelensky should sue for peace by ceding Russian President Vladimir Putin some territory. Meanwhile, the West is already demonstrating the lack of вЂњstrategic patienceвЂќ on display last August in Afghanistan.

Russia intends to take the Donbas village by village and town by town using artillery in a war of attrition which Ukraine cannot possibly match. No other country has a record of tolerating such levels of mass casualties whilst enduring and inflicting extreme suffering. This is a reversion to the traditional Russian playbook from World War Two. Over recent weeks, the brilliant Ukrainian success in defeating the Russians to the north of Kyiv has been replaced by gradual and brutal Russian progress in the Donbas. To paraphrase the BBC journalist Quentin Sommerville if you still think Ukraine is winning the war вЂthen you have not been paying attentionвЂ™.

(Ed Note: A UK-version of this piece by Cipher Brief Expert Tim Willasey-WilseyВ was first published by The Scotsman) The Black Sea and Belarus provide two options. And there is no credible deal with Putin that anyone can trust. Neither France and Germany nor the US and UK have coherent ideas for how this war will end.

EXPERT PERSPECTIVE - Russia is gradually beginning to prevail in Ukraine and the West is just starting to lose focus.

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