Ukraine - strategy, conflate, propagandise

A winter squeeze on gas supplies seems a logical strategy for Russia to take.

Russian politics is masterful at conflating things to serve their narrative - i.e. blaming sanctions for creating delays to receiving parts from Canada to perform needed maintenance on gas pipelines thereby implying that reduced gas supplies to Europe are in fact Europe's own fault.

This is all 'grist for the mill' in a consistent 'propaganda front' maintained by Russia since the beginning of the invasion. And this consistency in strategy, rhetoric, and propaganda over the past 6 months might indicate what some commentators have been speculating - that there's a long way to go, maybe another 12-24 months in this campaign. It's easily to suspect Russia is going to 'dig in' to achieve minimum border concessions in eastern Ukranian. The current map in this article supports this 'apparent direction of travel' for Russian strategy - on the ground military operations are clearly focussed on securing Donetsk, Luhansk, and the southern corridor (Mariupol) to Crimea.

I suspect these are the minimum gains Russia would accept. If they have to retaliate with energy sanctions this winter to bring Ukraine (and their 'European partners') to the table to negotiate these minimum border concessions I don't imagine the Russians would have much compunction about that. And do not under estimate the European and UK wide impacts a Russian 'gas squeeze' would have - Russia has the 'controlling interest' in, maybe, 25-50% of total gas supplies to western Europe.

Russia, whilst certainly not seemingly winning 'in a battles sense', does appear to have 'war strategy' running in the right direction for their objectives (if we're all guessing their objectives correctly)..

It's got a long way to go me thinks..

buggered if I know :-|