Why the continual bombardment while having the peace talk?

Since the war started, Ukraine and Russia have gone through 2 rounds of negotiation, and I believe that the third round was done during the weekend. 

 Under normal circumstances, both sides requires a cease fire before talk can begin as a sign of good gesture. In the Ukraine-Russia talk however, the war rages on and even intensified in many cities after the talk, the only agreement made in the peace talk, the humanitarian path for civilians , was immediately violated by Russia. 

 Further more, Russian troops bombarded the largest nuclear plant in Ukraine, risking a potential radiation contamination of the region. 

Putin at the same time warning all other countries from involving themselves with the war, his air force violating the airspace of both Sweden and Japan. 

 If Russia is doing well in this invasion, does it need to branch out unnecessarily to instigate others? 

 If Russia already have the upper hand in the war, it would have ceased fire while the talk was on going, because it is not in a hurry to ask for peace. Putin would not be warning other countries from intervening and threaten to pull them into the conflict if he is confident of the situation. 

 I believe Putin under estimated his opponent, he expected the war to last only a few days and his opponent, being a "clown president" would have cowardly run into the safety of USA while he easily scoop Ukraine up. 

It never crosses his mind that this "clown president" managed to unit the country to fight the invasion and united the European Union to provide weapon support, strengthening Ukrainian's defense. He under estimated Ukrainian resilient against falling back into Soviet rule, so even when their country is weak and poor, they refuse to bow to the mighty Russia. 

 The Russian troop is ill prepared, they have not anticipated a prolong warfare and failed to ready sufficient resources. The financial sanction from the world also making it difficult for Russia support its troop with replenishment, considering the size of the troop that need to be fed. 

 What amazes me however is the shortage of fuel, considering Russia to be an oil producing country. Shouldn't this be one resource that Russia is not lacking, unless of course they do not have the refinery know how? 

What happen if Russia loses this war? 

 Dictatorship suppresses people's will by force, up-rising are normally dealt with using violence and brutality. This happens when the dictator maintain the support of his army and his support. Robert Mugabe is one such person. 

 What if a huge loss resulted in his army couple with the financial difficulty to the people as a result of this war? 

Nothing will happen, a weaker Putin will still be ruling Russia as long as people still have fear of further losses. There is however a threshold to this and if breached, making it no better between submitting and rebelling, over throwing the regime may be a reality. 

 Putin is fear of what will happen to him if Russia loses the war. The continuous escalation of attacks on Ukraine is a clear sign that he has no leverage so far to demand Ukraine to agree to some of his terms, let alone Ukraine's surrender. He wants very much at least some of his objectives to be met so that he can claim victory to his own people, so that even when the military strength of Russia is seen weaker in the future, he is still a strong and successful ruler of Russia in the eyes of his people. 

 The escalation of violence in Ukraine is in fact trying to apply pressure to Zelenskyy to bow to him, at least partially so to give him reason to retreat gloriously. He is  worried that the west will join in the war physically, this will cause the war to drag on and the longer it drags the more unfavorable to Putin's position in the country. 

 At this moment, the one person who wishes the war to be over the soonest is Putin, and he needs to be seen victorious.

The strange decision of Putin

I have not been writing on this blog for quite a while as was focusing my entry on my other blog. But my thoughts on the war cloud my mind for analysis of the market. 

As a result, I need to separate my thoughts, and this blog will help me to do so. Strategic management is one of my favorite subject, While my earlier course did not bring me deep into strategic management, I nevertheless attracted the subject, my lecturer's praise of the Sun Zi Art Of War at the time led me to going deeper into this ancient book on strategy. 

 While it is labelled as the "Art of war", most of the topics involves situational management. Many companies more or less adopted some philosophy of this book but failed to have thorough understanding leading to the failure of the companies themselves. 

 In the first topic of the book for instance, it mentioned the path as the first of the 5 element, this is equivalent to the mission statement of a company. What most companies fail to understand is what they are required to do with the path. The book stated that "the path, requires the agreement from the people, and people are willing to live and die with it". Many companies set their mission statement but instead of following it whole heartedly, only used it to show off to others. As such the companies lack clarity of its direction and employees most of the time have the mission on their mouth and not in their heart, they follow their own interest and place company's interest as secondary, leading to companies' failure. 

The topic of the day is strange decision of Putin, then why I started of with mission statement? I mentioned in the other blog of mine my discussion with my friend, I continued to claim that there is no justification for Putin to attack Ukraine. It is not that I condemn Putin for starting a war which many think is an evil event. big countries start war with smaller countries all the time, USA for instance started at least 2 during my lifetime, Iraq and Afghanistan. Do they have justification for doing so?

 Compare to Russia, USA and its ally UK at least put much effort to "justify" their stand and make it seemingly a plausible reason to attack Iraq, everyone however knows it is about oil. They are "justified" with attack on Afghanistan due to 911. 

 Putin on the other hand has really little justification, by claiming that his purpose is to topple a Nazi regime, which is the government of Ukraine. He really spent very little effort justifying his stand, it is in fact very weak and even his own citizens do not believe leading to strong opposition from many of Russia's cities, very rare sight of a dictator country. 

The question is: why does Putin wants to attack Ukraine at this point of time? Is it due to the threat of Nato shift eastward threatening the sovereignty of Russia? 

 It does not seem so to me. I would certainly not fear of the western Nato considering the strong reputation of my army, if I am Putin of course. 

 Putin in my opinion is calculative and highly strategic, he maintain a low profile all the time to avoid the world's radar. He is very diplomatic and has throughout the years built up good relationship with many countries, therefore it is very unlike him that he would suddenly decide to invade another country. 

I feel that it is more of constant push of western propaganda labelling Russia as an evil entity that finally making Putin loses his cool, and his original intention was to use Ukraine to teach the west a lesson, " I have a strong army, I can do whatever I want and you won't dare to stop me". 

 Considering that Biden is a weak president while European union in a state of dis-unity, plus the president of Ukraine with little support from the people, it would be a quick and easy battle. He in fact despises the Ukrainian president as Zelenskyy was a standup comedian and an comedy actor before becoming the president of Ukraine. 

 I believe that after being a dictator for so many years, he under-estimated his opponent as well as the state of unity in his country and the true strength of his army. 

As a dictator, he is very isolated, and those around him will not dare to say anything that he does not like to hear. Many of the videos about his meeting with his generals and advisors are seen with a great physical distance set between him and them, and most of the time, he is the one giving instruction while those in the meeting listen. 

At this point of time, the disguise of being a humane invasion is removed, Ukrainians are being bombarded daily indiscriminaently. 

Yet, it seems that not only Russia is failing in its objective, it has sunk deep into a much longer term warfare. At this point of time, the one person who wishes the war ends soon is actually Putin himself.