Ukraine

Because most people paying attention not on russia's side aren't surprised this recent surge in russian assaults is failing the same way it has in the past, it is easy to miss the gravity of this for russia in this moment.

The winter terrorism campaign against Ukraine was supposed to break the back of the public's will by subjecting them to freezing nights and no power, then when public support was already broken and shattered russia would launch one last massive spring offensive and scare Ukraine into agreeing to peace terms that heavily advantaged russia. Any worry russians have about the war machine being about to collapse conveniently won't matter then because russia will present itself as powerful right until the end and scare Ukraine into surrendering.

This has clearly been the strategy for awhile now, but now it has become undeniably a failed one. This is a big moment for russia, even though for Ukraine this is just another week, facing down another mass armored assault after mass armored assault.

Also let me extend a personal middle finger to all the journalists and "analysts" that confidently concluded armored manuever warfare was dead because russia had stopped doing it, they stopped doing it because they suck at it and now they are forced to do it again anyways. Everyone has been trying desperately to read into the tea leaves of russia's war machine to try to predict the future of war, and at this point barely anybody in the russian military knows what they are doing, they are drunk, lying, overconfident and completely incapable of making a modern main battle tank or launching a combined arms armored assault with any degree of competency.

Russia is not "returning to an old strategy", this strategy never went away russia is just barely an organized military at this stage of things and more than at any other point in the war this reality has become undeniable now.

There will be no spring offensive for russia, just a large increase in death rate for russian soldiers.