Russia is paying for its miscalculation in Ukraine: Reports

In the early hours of February 24 2022, standing on the freezing roof of a hotel in Kyiv, the idea that Russia would launch a full-scale assault on Ukraine, despite a troop buildup on the border, still seemed almost impossible to imagine, reports CNN. 

Yes, Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin strongman, had developed a taste for wielding Russia's hard power. Putin's wars in Chechnya, Georgia and Syria, as well as military action in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, had delivered him success at a relatively low cost. 

But invading the second biggest country in Europe, after Russia itself, would be a potentially catastrophic prospect which would, surely, give a cold strategist like Putin pause for thought. 

Apparently not, I remember thinking, as I grappled with my flak jacket while missiles rained down on the Ukrainian capital. 

The past four years of conflict have exposed more than one faulty assumption, not least the previously widespread belief even among Kyiv's allies that Ukraine would be too weak, too disorganized, to resist a full-scale invasion. 

Likewise, the reputation of invincibility surrounding Russia's vast military has also been dented. 

According to research by one think tank, The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), when the Kremlin launched what it dubbed its "Special Military Operation," it expected its forces to take control of Ukraine within just 10 days. 

More than 1450 days later, that timeframe looks hopelessly naïve and has proved to have been a fundamental miscalculation that has taken a devastating toll in pain, destruction and bloodshed. 

The true cost is, of course, carefully suppressed in a Russia where information is under increasingly tight control. Official casualty figures are kept strictly out of the public gaze, although estimates from multiple sources indicate losses that are eye-wateringly high.

Latest research from the US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), for example, puts the number at nearly 1.2 million Russian dead and injured since the full-scale invasion was launched. 

>>Agency