Six weeks after he became Russia’s defense minister, General Pavel Grachev addressed a June 1992 NATO meeting in Brussels where he defined Russia’s sphere of interest as encompassing all ‘former USSR republics with which it shared territorial borders,’ and claimed that Russia ‘had every right to intervene’ in those territories unilaterally. Subsequently, Russia deployed troops throughout the Caucasus, ‘signed base treaties with Armenia and Georgia’ and ‘posted border troops along much of the former Soviet perimeter.'”

Lawrence Kohn, “Russia’s Turkish Target”

Russia is bringing her Strategic Rocket Forces up to full readiness. Russia is going to be conscripting doctors in the weeks ahead. Russia has prepared for mass burials in anticipation of a catastrophic number of casualties. What is going on here? Amid all this we have Western observers suggesting Putin has failed. One analyst, citing a TASS source, wrote, “Russian President Putin is extremely disappointed with the progress of the military operation in Ukraine.”