Well, this is weird. After weeks of the horrible Putin narrative, Newsweek softens the tone, perhaps sees a larger landscape where Russia is working strategically through a plan and says, “Putin’s Bombers Could Devastate Ukraine but He’s Holding Back.” Wait, what?
According to the anonymous Newsweek sources – intelligence officials who fear speaking publicly for fear of severe repercussions – it would be very easy for Vladimir Putin to level the key cities and industries in Ukraine, but he’s not doing it.
The strategy Newsweek is seemingly beginning to admit is the same strategy Col Douglas Macgregor has been speaking about.
(Newsweek) – As destructive as the Ukraine war is, Russia is causing less damage and killing fewer civilians than it could, U.S. intelligence experts say.
Russia’s conduct in the brutal war tells a different story than the widely accepted view that Vladimir Putin is intent on demolishing Ukraine and inflicting maximum civilian damage—and it reveals the Russian leader’s strategic balancing act. […] Understanding the thinking behind Russia’s limited attacks could help map a path towards peace, experts say.
In nearly a month since Russia invaded, dozens of Ukrainian cities and towns have fallen, and the fight over the country’s largest cities continues. United Nations human rights specialists say that some 900 civilians have died in the fighting (U.S. intelligence puts that number at least five times UN estimates). About 6.5 million Ukrainians have also become internally displaced (15 percent of the entire population), half of them leaving the country to find safety.
“The destruction is massive,” a senior analyst working at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) tells Newsweek, “especially when compared with what Europeans and Americans are used to seeing.”
But, the analyst says, the damage associated with a contested ground war involving peer opponents shouldn’t blind people to what is really happening. (The analyst requested anonymity in order to speak about classified matters.) “The heart of Kyiv has barely been touched. And almost all of the long-range strikes have been aimed at military targets.” (read more)
What the article boils down to is an acceptance, albeit couched in the U.S/NATO narrative, that Vladimir Putin is working through a careful and methodical plan to eliminate –with extreme prejudice– one severe faction of the Ukraine military (Azov battalion Nazis), and yet carefully and surgically leave intact the areas of greatest population.
The capture of Ukraine, with as little damage as possible, while eliminating the elements with the connections to western government manipulation, appears to be the process. This, in addition to the removal of the Zelenskyy government, is what Macgregor has been pointing out from the beginning.
Putin seemingly plans to rebuild most of eastern Ukraine (closest to Russia) where a civil war has been ongoing for over a decade. That region is also the location of the most ultranationalist of the Ukraine forces, so the military targeting has been severe in that area.
With the sanctions and western intelligence efforts of the State Dept./CIA, and western economic group appearing to have little impact, perhaps the media is starting to realize the conflict in Ukraine is more complex and thought out than fits the current western media narrative.
