Vladimir Putin could soon be forced to bring to an end his month-long unprovoked assault on Ukraine amid heavy troop losses in a campaign that has lost momentum, says a former US general.
Retired US Army Brig Gen Kevin Ryan, who is also a Russia specialist, says that the Kremlin has “failed to accomplish” its “main military goals” in quickly seizing Kyiv and removing the country’s elected leadership.
And now he says that bringing the conflict to an end quickly is the “most likely scenario” more than a month into the attack.
“Putin will have to halt his war in Ukraine sooner or later and probably in a matter of weeks,” Gen Ryan, who served as US Defence Attaché to Russia, told Insider.
“The reason is not because he wants to halt his military operation, but because he has no choice. He has basically reached the capacity of what his military can do for him in Ukraine.”
Russian troops have faced fierce – and apparently unpredicted – resistance from Ukraine’s military since Mr Putin order the attack on the country on 24 February.
Nato officials have estimated that 40,000 Russian troops have been killed, captured or injured, and up to 15,000 Russian troops have died in the fighting.
And at least six Russian generals are believed to have been killed in the fighting.
Gen Ryan, a senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, said that Russian defence chiefs have “a huge personnel problem.”
“There is no significant military unit left in Russia outside of Ukraine. They are all in the fight,” he said.
“There is almost no part of the Russian military that’s not dedicated, committed to Ukraine, so if [Putin] has to escalate, how does he escalate?”
And he said that at this stage, it was “impossible” for Russia to take control of the whole of Ukraine.
“He does not have the military forces to take all of Ukraine and occupy it,” Ryan said, adding that “Russian leadership overestimated what their military was capable of.”
