He's panicking

Russian tanks burning 30 gallons of diesel every hour.

Vladimir Putin today put his nuclear forces on “a special regime of combat duty.” In a televised statement, Putin said “Western countries aren’t only taking unfriendly actions against our country in the economic sphere, but top officials from leading NATO members made aggressive statements regarding our country.”

He’s mad because people are saying nasty things about him. He is panicking. This is a clear reference to sanctions imposed by the EU and the U.S. on Friday and Saturday, as well as to other actions taken by Western nations, including other nations like Japan. More countries this morning banned flights from Russia including Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain.

The New York Times is reporting that Russian forces are having more problems than they had anticipated in taking major Ukrainian cities. MSNBC just reported that Ukrainian forces had “retaken” the country’s second largest city, Kharkiv. Ukrainian forces are hitting Russian resupply lines hard.

I’ve been following Tweets by Riho Terras, the former Defense Chief of Estonia, currently a member of the European Parliament. He appears to have good sources not only in Ukraine, but in Russia as well. Yesterday he shared a tweet from a Ukrainian officer saying that Putin is enraged at the slow pace of the invasion: “Intel from a Ukrainian officer about a meeting in Putin’s lair in Urals. Oligarchs convened there so no one would flee. Putin is furious, he thought that the whole war would be easy and everything would be done in 1-4 days. Russians didn’t have a tactical plan. The war costs about $20 bln/day. There are rockets for 3-4 days at most, they use them sparingly. They lack weapons, the Tula and 2 Rotenberg plants can’t physically fulfill the orders for weapons. Rifles and ammo are the most they can do. Russia’s whole plan relies on panic – that the civilians and armed forces surrender and Zelensky flees. They expect Kharkiv to surrender first so the other cities would follow suit to avoid bloodshed. The Russians are in shock of the fierce resistance they have encountered. If Ukraine manages to hold the Russians off for 10 days, then the Russians will have to enter negotiations. Because they have no money, weapons, or resources. Nevertheless, they are indifferent about the sanctions.”

That was yesterday. This morning, three days into the war, President Zelensky of Ukraine announced that he had agreed to talks with Russia “without preconditions.”

“We agreed that the Ukrainian delegation would meet with the Russian delegation without preconditions on the Ukrainian-Belarusian border, near the Pripyat River,” Zelensky announced on his official Telegram channel. He said he had had a phone call Sunday with President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus.

This is significant for the following important reason: until today, it was Russia that had demanded pre-conditions before any meeting between the two countries. Putin had said that Ukraine had to “stop fighting” before he would send a delegation for talks. It hasn’t taken 10 days for Putin to come to the table. It has taken three.

With Ukrainian ground forces hitting Russian resupply lines, attacks on both Kyiv and Kharkiv have stalled. Kharkiv is only 25 miles inside the border with Russia. It is the first city Putin had counted on taking within a day or two. If the former Estonian Defense Minister is correct — and it’s looking like he is — Russian forces are beginning to run out of fuel and ammunition. In other tweets, he has said that his sources are telling him that the Russian army isn’t using its full supply of rockets to shell Ukrainian cities because they don’t have any in reserve. One tweet said they have sent only a couple hundred rockets into Kyiv. I think this is why we’re not seeing images of huge destruction in the capital city or elsewhere but only damage to a few buildings.

The other thing to keep in mind is that these Russian tanks consume huge quantities of diesel fuel just moving down the road — as much as a gallon per mile if my memory is correct. But miles aren’t the measure for fuel consumptions in a battle tank. Hours are. A Russian T-72 battle tank consumes 30 gallons per hour at “tactical idle,” which is the measure of usage in combat situations. The Russian tank carries about 290 gallons of fuel. You do the math. They need to be refueled once every 10 hours, and this war is now in its third day. Unless I miss my guess, some Russian tanks are running out of gas, and you know what a stalled tank is? An easy target.

I think Putin planned on a one to two day war, with the Ukrainian government including Zelensky fleeing the capital in the face of the Russian advance. I think his generals told him invading Ukraine would be a “slam dunk” to use a phrase that was supposed to describe our invasion and occupation of Iraq.

It’s not working out the way he planned. The war isn’t going his way. Russia is becoming more and more isolated as one country after another turns its skies into Russian no-fly zones. The move made by the U.S. and the EU to bar Russian banks from the SWIFT payment system is hurting them. I saw one tweet this morning from a guy in Moscow who said his hotel had made him settle up his bill in advance because they know credit cards are going to stop working.

The resolve of Ukraine and the West is everything now. Putin planned on an early surrender by Ukraine. His forces are too few to conquer and occupy the country, and they are stretched thin in terms of resupply. Putin is panicking.