What went wrong? It is the Putin system that went wrong.

In this Putin system everything is based on actually one factor, which is survival of Putin as president of Russia.

In most of cases, the system Putin has doomed this part of the operation to failure.

Why? Because Putin has assigned his favourites into specific positions within the Russian armed forces.

So nobody is going to challenge him if he's got a bad idea. If he says, you know, that I think this is what happens,

is it very unlikely that the generals are going to be like, hold on a second, because if we do this and X is going to happen?

The problem is this is the way you see it, and this is the way plenty of other people see it.

Putin, in his own position, is constantly seeing himself surrounded by competition, by contrahence, by a position or whatever,

some kind of threat for him. It's different from his point of view, and this is what we have to keep in mind,

that Putin sees the things entirely differently than you do than anybody else does.

Putin is Putin, he's not you, he's not me, he's not somebody else, he's just Putin.

For the best, it's better in the interest of politicians and the economy, it's better to fight a war to profit.

Not to win, because if you fight to win, you know, you send 1,000 artillery pieces to Ukraine,

Ukraine defeats Russia tomorrow in the morning, and the war is over.

Party is over.

Yeah, and what then?

Nobody's earning anything from that, nobody.

Hello and welcome to Trigonometry, I'm Francis Foster.

And this is a show for you, if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

Our brilliant guest today is a military analyst and historian who's been one of the most objective voices covering the conflict in Ukraine.

Tom Cooper, welcome to Trigonometry.

Thank you very much.

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