02-17-2026, 09:56 PM
(02-17-2026, 09:41 PM)Papa John Wrote: I don't know about freezing but I think fighting more or less subsided for a while after the second Minsk agreement.The intensity of the conflict went down considerably, but both sides garrisoned the line of contact in the Donbas region where two of the Oblasts were partially occupied by Russian troops. IMO Putin cannot politically or economically "afford" to reduce the level of Russian military commitment in Ukraine. If he does, he will have failed to reach his main war aim, which was and is the destruction of the Ukrainian state. His population will eventually (maybe quickly) realize that, and the ensuing economic downturn accompanying the reduction in military spending will force the public over the edge. The exact reason they kept Putin was to prevent what happened to them in the late 1990s. It will be happening again not in spite of him but because of him. He can weather that storm ONLY if he delivers Ukraine, destroyed though it may be. Russian patriotism goes a long way, but one can't invoke it to explain a "frozen" conflict after killing so many Russians.