Two hundred and thirty days after Vladimir Putin invaded his sovereign, democratic neighbor, the war in Ukraine is looking as successful from Moscow’s perspective as the decade-long Soviet slog in Afghanistan.
Putin knows this, which explains why he’s striking Ukrainian cities. If the war must drag on, he seems to say, it will be punishingly painful for ordinary people in the nation of more than 40 million. Indeed, beyond that, he is eager to make the coming winter a season of misery across Europe, as nations seeking to stand in lockstep against his aggression try to survive the coldest months without Russian gas.
Technically, Putin’s missile attacks on metropolitan centers across Ukraine, hitting mostly civilian targets — and killing, among others, a doctor who specializes in treating children with cancer — were an act of retaliation for Ukraine’s damaging of his treasured Crimea Bridge, connecting Russia with the Ukrainian peninsula it annexed in 2014.
