Putin showed some restraint. Why?

Russia’s war against Ukraine has flattened cities, killed thousands of people and forced millions to leave their homes.

But quietly, some Western military analysts and officials are wondering why the aggression did not happen even worse.

Russia may be more aggressively destroying Ukraine’s railways, roads and bridges to try to prevent the flow of Western weapons on the front line.

can be bombed more infrastructurearound the capital, kyiv, to make it difficult for Western leaders to visit the president Volodymyr Zelensky in examples of unity and determination.

And it can do more to cause harm to the West, even through cyberattacks, sabotage or further reduction in exports of energy in Europe.

Part of the reason seems pure incompetence:

the first weeks of the war clearly showed that the Russian army was numerous not so much than believed before the invasion.

But U.S. and European officials have also said that President Vladimir Putin’s tactics in recent weeks seem to be the same. noticeably careful, marked by a slow offensive in eastern Ukraine, a measurable approach to removing Ukrainian infrastructure and avoiding actions that could exacerbate the situation. conflict with NATO.

The apparent ground detention contrasts with the bombing on Russian state television, in which Moscow is described as locked in a existential struggle against the West and where the use of nuclear weapons is openly discussed.

The question is whether, as the war progresses, Putin will change course and intensify the war.

That is a particularly urgent question before the Victory Day in Russia holiday on May 9when Putin traditionally led a grand parade that marked the Soviet victory against Nazi Germany and gave a militaristic speech.

Ben Wallace, the British defense secretary, predicted last week that Putin would use the speech for an official declaration of war and a mass mobilization of Russian citizens.

U.S. and European officials said they did not see any ground movement indicating a larger push in additional troops that will begin on or shortly after May 9.

Those officials are now expecting a slower, more regrettable campaign within Ukraine.

But they do not agree that Putin could use the speech to declare a wider war and a deeper national effort to combat it.

So far, it appears that Putin is in a pattern of military occupation, allowing Ukraine to regroup and stock up on Western weapons.

On Monday, a senior Pentagon official called Russia’s latest offensive in eastern Ukraine “very cautious, very anxious.”

In Russia, there are complaints that the military is fighting a hand tied behind back, without the public understanding the strategy and purpose.

“It’s a strange and special kind of war,” Dmitry Trenin, until recently director of the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank, said in a telephone interview from outside Moscow.

“Russia has a set relatively strict limits, and it is not explained in any way, which raises many questions, first of all, among the citizens of Russia.

Trenin was one of several analysts in his think tank, which was shut down last month by the Russian government, who chose to stay in Russia after the war began.

He said he finds it difficult to explain why the Kremlin is struggling to “less than half of his strength. “

Why isn’t Russia bombing more bridges and railway networks, he asks, if it allows Ukraine’s military to receive more deliveries of increasingly deadly weapons from the West with each passing day?

Why do Western leaders, like the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosion sunday, are they still safe to visit kyiv?

“I find it weird and I can’t explain it,” Trenin said.

To be sure, Russia’s missile strikes targeted infrastructure across Ukraine, including a major bridge in the country’s southwest on Monday and the runway of Odessa airport on Saturday.

But across the Atlantic, officials and analysts are asking questions similar to those on Trenin.

For weeks, officials in Washington discussed why the Russian military has not become more aggressive in trying to destroy the supply lines that send weapons shipments to the West to Ukraine.

Part of the answer, officials say, is air defense The Ukrainian war continues to threaten Russian planes, and as Russian planes end up in Ukraine, the greater the likelihood that they will destroyed.

Russia has also had problems with its precision ammunition:

missiles or rockets with guidance systems.

Many of those weapons does not work properlyand limited Russia’s arms supplies.

Attacks on railway lines or moving convoys must be very precise to be effective.

Other officials argued that Moscow was keen to avoid destroying Ukraine’s infrastructure too much, in the possible false hope that it could still control the country.

Russia will be stuck in a big reconstruction work if it occupies cities destroyed by its own bombing.

A top US defense official says Putin avoided destroying Ukraine’s rail network because he did not want to harm his own ability to move equipment and troops across the country.

The Russians were more committed to destroying the areas of storage of weapons than the railway network.

U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private military and intelligence assessments.

Then there is the question of why Russia did not respond more strongly to the West.

The Kremlin narrative is of a existential war with NATO fighting on Ukrainian soil, but Russia suffers military defeat while the West maintains a safe distance and provides weapons that kill Russian soldiers.

“A lot of people in this city are wondering why they haven’t retaliated yet,” said Samuel Charap, a former U.S. State Department official in Washington and a Russia analyst at Rand Corp.

“It seems unlikely that the U.S. and its allies will not experience any setbacks in putting so many Russian soldiers in their graves.”

Russia has the tools to cause widespread damage to the West.

The gas shortage caused by the cyber attack on the Colonial Pipeline last year showed the disruption that Russia’s hacking of U.S. infrastructure could cause.

Berlin warned that a Russian gas cutoff could send the German economy into a tailspin. recession.

And then there’s Moscow’s world-leading nuclear arsenal, with approx 5977 warheads:

its catastrophic capability is portrayed in increasingly strict terms in the Russian media.

“Do you think you can destroy us with other people’s hands and watch from the side from a safe distance?”

Sergei Mironov, an outspoken hawk in the Russian parliament, said on Saturday that the new intercontinental ballistic missile of his country could destroy Great Britain in one attack.

“It won’t work, gentlemen, you have to pay everything in full!” He added.

Putin also warned against retaliation, but also appreciated the ambiguity.

Last year, he said those who crossed a “red line” would face an “asymmetric, swift and harsh” response, an indication that the response would come at a time and place chosen by Moscow.

“Nobody really knows where the red line is,” said Charap, the analyst.

“I don’t think the Russians know about it, because we’re in unspecified waters.”

U.S. officials and allied officials have debated why Putin has not attempted widespread or more destructive cyberattacks.

Some say Putin has been effectively prevented.

Russia’s military, struggling to profit in Ukraine, cannot cope with a broader war with NATO and does not want to give the alliance any reason to go directly into war.

Others argue that a cyber attacks in a NATO country it is one of the few cards that Putin can play and that he may be waiting for the next stage of his campaign to do so.

Although Putin was not afraid to intensify the rhetoric, his actions suggested that he did not want to do anything that could lead to a wider war.

“The general feeling is that he wants to snatch some kind of victory from this debacle of his,” said the U.S. defense official, suggesting that Putin is not interested in “borrowing more trouble.”

Prior to the attack on February 24, the Carnegie Center Trainer predicted that the Ukrainian military would oppose a intense resistance and that Putin would discover the lack of political support for Russia in Ukraine.

Here, Trenin was right.

What he did wrong, Trenin said, was the information that aides and commanders would give Putin about Russia’s capabilities, which became defective.

Trenin said he still sees Putin as primarily rational, rather than someone willing to engage in nuclear war, with a “maniacal determination to destroy humanity.”

“That wasn’t a mistake, it was a total departure from reason,” Trenin said.

“Hopefully now I didn’t make a mistake.”

c.2022 The New York Times Company