Hugh Fitzgerald reports on the view of Israeli intellectual Yuval Harari, that Putin has lost his war, whatever happens in the Ukraine. How so? The war is over the existence of the Ukraine people, and Putin has denied, in true communist form, that this ethnic group exists. However, the war has united the Ukrainian people was never before, reaffirming their sense of ethnic identity. “Putin won’t be able to hold it… There is no chance. With every passing day, he sows more and more seeds of hatred between Ukrainians and Russians — who didn’t hate each other before. They were family. This is hatred for generations. By his own hand, he is ensuring there is no chance of them uniting.” That is certainly true, but Putin is not really concerned about niceties like peaceful co-existence, since he intends to conquer the place by force of arms, and presumably maintain order at the barrel of a gun. Just the way the old USSR, which he misses, did.
https://robertspencer.org/2022/03/israeli-historian-yuval-harari-putin-has-already-lost-his-war