The current balance sheet, and “plan” at this stage, of Russia’s war

“On the Barricades” s05e08

In this second installment of this week’s release of “On the Barricades,” hosts Boyan Stanislavski and Maria Cernat are speaking again with Stanislav Byshok, a Russian political scientist. Stanislav earned a PhD after graduating from Moscow State University, and he is frequently described as a scholar deconstructing nationalism and populism in international researcher databases. He’s written a number of books and reports on current Russian, Ukrainian, and European politics.

Here we turn to making some assessments and a balance sheet of the war in Ukraine– economically, morally and militarily. Have the last four months of military operation in Ukraine meaningfully achieved the stated objectives of demilitarization and deNazification of Ukraine? It appears not. But the Russian government line on the war, on repeat, is that “everything goes according to plan,” as they claim victories on isolated incidents of military advance.

Overall, though, what has been the “plan”, and what has been achieved for Russia, to justify both the loss of life of soldiers on the front and the chipping away at the quality of life imposed by sanctions? The Russian populace isn’t privy to such a plan. When it comes to explaining why there is a basis of support for continuation of the war, Stanislav identifies some psychological factors and rationalizations that are at work, as well as how the current situation demonstrates a classic military-strategic fallacy from a political science point of view.