YESTERDAY I outlined the view of Western governments and media that Russia is on the back foot and that this is evident from the retreat at Kherson. In this second article I suggest that there is an alternative which could define what winning and losing might look like. The Russians, as I have already noted, are calling up their large pool of trained manpower. While they do this, they are making a calculated exchange of space in return for the time needed to do this. Why? Because once the wet weather of autumn and early winter is replaced any time now by a hard freeze, a winter offensive is entirely possible once the Ukrainians have lost momentum and used up their resources. The Russian Army is quite capable of this.
