Guy Taylor
Washington Times, Feb. 20, 2023
“The war is not going to end in April 2022, as everyone was expecting last February, [and] it’s extremely likely that it’s not going to end in April 2023.”
More than 7,100 Ukrainian civilians have been killed, nearly 500 of them children.
Some 40,000 homes and apartments, 2,700 school structures and at least 1,200 medical facilities have been reduced to rubble.
Roughly 6.5 million people — mostly women and children — have been driven from their homes, according to Ukrainian and international officials, and nearly 8 million Ukrainians now live across Europe as refugees.
Beyond the hard numbers and ruined lives, the biggest mystery facing Ukraine, the U.S. and the world isn’t quantitative but psychological: What does Russian President Vladimir Putin want, and how far is he prepared to go to get it?
The Russian leader’s health — physical and mental — and his strategic motivations are no less debated today than they were a year ago when he gave the order for his military to invade Ukraine, overthrow the government of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and effectively wipe an “illegitimate” country off the map.
A fierce Ukrainian resistance and a shockingly poor performance by Russian troops quickly dashed the Kremlin’s expectations of a swift and easy victory. …Source