Ukraine’s military success is reshaping Russia as well as the war

“RUSSIA, RUSSIA, Russia,” chanted Vladimir Putin on September 30th, as he announced the annexation of four Ukrainian provinces: Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson. But within hours his newly expanded country began shrinking. The Ukrainian army smashed through Russia’s left and right flanks, at the two extremes of a vast front stretching from the Black Sea in the south to the Donbas region in the east (see map). “Not since the initial part of Operation Barbarossa in the second world war has the Russian army had such a terrible series of reverses on the battlefield,” says Mick Ryan, a retired Australian general.