What does Putin intend to do with Ukraine when he's done?

The latest news on the Russian convoy that is 17 or 40 or however many miles long is that it’s stalled about 20 miles north of Kyiv near the town of Zdvyzhivka, the place I last wrote about where the convoy appeared to be setting up some kind of base camp.  Reports are that Ukrainian forces have hit the convoy with RPG’s and other weapons, and vehicles are running out of gas.  As closely as I can determine, the Ukrainians have succeeded in turning the convoy into a very long traffic jam.

I have studied satellite photos of the convoy and photos of trucks that have been hit by Ukrainian forces elsewhere, and at this point, I’m convinced the convoy is a gigantic ammunition resupply effort.  Most of the trucks have short cabs and beds covered with canvas that conceals what they are carrying.  There are hundreds of these trucks in the convoy.  The trucks I’ve seen in videos that have been hit that are similar to the ones in the convoy have had their canvas covers burned off, and you can see boxes of artillery ammunition and rocket warheads in the truck beds which weren’t destroyed by the fires. 

I think the convoy is evidence that it was Putin’s plan to set up artillery and rocket launchers and just shell the hell out of both Kyiv and Kharkiv.  Some of that shelling has already taken place, but the resupply trucks prove there is enough ammunition for a lot more of it.  The Putin “plan,” if it can be called that, has been to destroy the two largest cities in Ukraine.

Now that the Russians have “taken” the port city of Kherson in the south, there is no evidence that they have moved occupation forces into the city.  In the U.S. Army, they are called “Civil Affairs” units, and they exist to move into towns or cities the army has “taken” and reestablish water and sewage services, repair electrical grids, and begin the process of setting up what are called “military governments” of the defeated cities.  Civilian police forces are replaced by U.S. Military Police.  American medical teams move in to either establish field hospitals or use existing civilian hospitals if they weren’t damaged in the fighting. 

But the Russian equivalents of these occupation forces haven’t been seen in Kherson, the first city to fall to the Russian army.  Which raises the question:  What do the Russians intend to do after they have “taken” these cities, which in the context of what is happening means, after they have destroyed the cities and run large percentages of their populations out?  The Russian attack is creating so many refugees – the number is well above a million at this point – and they’ve done so much damage to Kyiv, Kharkiv, Kherson, and Mariupol, you have to wonder what their plan is.

The Russians can’t put the ports on the southern coast back into operation if the people who run them are gone, and there won’t be shipping coming in anyway, because the Russian navy has blockaded the entire Ukrainian coast on the Black Sea and all shipping has been brought to a halt.  The Russians can’t re-start manufacturing plants if they have destroyed them and driven the people who work in them away.  The Russians can’t provide food to the occupied cities if they have destroyed grocery stores and supply chains that served them and driven away the people who owned and worked in the stores.  They haven’t got their civil affairs units moving into Kherson, so they don’t appear to be ready to replace the municipal government that runs the city, or the municipal services like garbage collection and sewer services and waterworks.

In fact, you can’t have cities without stores and businesses and services and goods and local governments, so what do the Russians intend to do with the places they are trying to “take” in Ukraine?

It’s a good question, isn’t it?  And it is one that should be posed ultimately to Vladimir Putin, the man who put the entire war against Ukraine into motion.  He said Ukraine wasn’t really a country, and its citizens were actually Russians, not Ukrainians, and he told the world that he wanted to take back to Russia what belongs to it, namely Ukraine.  But he’s like the kid on the playground who says, if you won’t let me on the team, I’m going to stick a pin in your football so nobody can play.  In other words, he’s a brat, and at this point with all his money and his dachas and his Crimean palace, he’s a very, very spoiled brat.

Here’s what I think.  Putin never had a plan.  He just announced to the world that he was taking Ukraine back – sounds a little bit like “take your country back” doesn’t it? – and he was willing to start a war to do it.  I don’t think he planned anything specific to do with the cities he is bombing to oblivion.  His plan, if there could be said to have been one, was to attack Ukraine and get a complete surrender from its government and then install a puppet administration that would be answerable to him and no one else.  But I don’t think he planned anything beyond that.

I think with Putin it’s always about me-me-me.  It’s about how he looks.  It’s about him being perceived as “strong” and “powerful” and “manly,” like those photos of him with his shirt off fishing and riding horses.  Have you ever met a man who fishes and rides horses with his shirt off?  I haven’t, and I’ve done a lot of fishing and at least some horseback riding over the last six or so decades. 

I don’t think Putin ever cared about “having” Ukraine after he “takes” it.  He never cared about it as a country, he never cared about its people, he never cared about what having Ukraine as a part of Russia could do for him beyond making him look like a man who gets what he wants even if he has to go to war to get it. 

Putin is a weak man’s idea of what a strong man is, and he always has been.  He wouldn’t know real strength if it walked up and shook his hand.  He wouldn’t know real power if someone plugged his fingers into a wall socket.  You know that old saying, “We are a nation of laws, not of men”?  Well, in Russia they are led by a man of needs not of morals.