IT'S A MONOPOLAR WORLD:

A pattern is becoming very clear. If Russia fails, Putin threatens and doubles down. In a bit over a week, he's running out of threats. He's now threatening to strip Ukraine of statehood, and a wider war if a no-fly zone is imposed.

On the ground, a ceasefire has been broken and evacuees bombed.  Protesters have been shot at. The situation on the ground is no better than ever. The Russian military is humiliating itself quite thoroughly. Any reputation it had as a credible fighting force has already been completely destroyed.

The Russians can't even claim to be "holding back." Shelling everything from city halls to nuclear reactors just doesn't work on any level. So much for the threat to bombard cities into submission. The shelling is having the exact opposite effect. The Russians take ground and simply lose it again. The city of Mariupol has supposedly been taken, yet is still apparently under fire from the Russians.

There have been no real Russian military successes at all. It looks like they have no idea how to win. The casualty list is obviously growing. Ukrainian claims of 10,000 Russian dead are quite possible, given a week of heavy fighting. That number would typically equate to another 20 to 30,000 wounded. Out of 200,000 troops, about half of which are support troops, that's a huge rate of attrition.

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