Motivation and military effectiveness
The little or no motivation of Russian soldiers who have been forced to fight in Ukraine will suffer a severe blow if the Kremlin dictatorship allows them to learn about the latest war exploit of Putin's army. Young men and women who are neither in nor out of it, duped at first with a quick and clean campaign to liberate Nazis in Ukraine, and captured among those who had no money to leave Russia to avoid forced conscription. Prisoners taken from the prisons to be taken to the front and older people forced to do so in order to support their families.
None of these thousands of Russian citizens can take the slightest bit of pride in the murder, the new war crime by Putin and his coopted generals, of the new head of Russian troops in Ukraine, the controversial Gerasimov, who has made his debut with a special missile, a Kh-22, designed to destroy aircraft carrier groups at sea, aimed instead at a civilian apartment building in Dnipro, Ukraine's third most populous city.
It is shocking to see how the building has been completely destroyed. Putin's "feat of war" claims more than 40 dead, 40 missing and a hundred wounded. Other Ukrainian civilians in different cities, including the capital Kiev, have been hit by missiles that their anti-aircraft defences have been unable to neutralise, despite the high degree of effectiveness they demonstrate. Herein lies the big question for Western countries, especially Europeans, who support the Ukrainians vis-à-vis the Russians. Avoiding a direct confrontation that could lead to an uncontrolled escalation with the use of nuclear weapons, even if they are short-range tactics. From what has been seen on the ground, this is the meagre but deadly military offensive equipment that the Kremlin chiefs are manipulating because neither their air force, nor their infantry and armoured units, nor their outdated artillery, nor their outdated and ineffective communications, nor their supposed intelligence superiority, work.
The International Criminal Court has a lot of work to do with Putin's criminal actions with massive shelling of Ukrainian civilians to crush their resistance and morale. The effect is the opposite and the capacity to resist and recover lost territory is growing every day. Motivation is a total differentiator. Germany is reluctant to send Leopard battle tanks to Ukraine, as a key element of other Western armour, as President Zelenski is requesting because it would be seen as aggression by Moscow. At this stage of the Russian invasion, what is unacceptable is that Europe continues to finance Putin with billions of euros it pays for Russian oil and gas.