Ukraine war: Putin raises the stakes in a dangerous game

Putin’s problem is that, pretty much from the word go, his invasion of Ukraine didn’t go according to plan. The Ukrainian military, backed by western weapons, put up far greater resistance than the Kremlin had expected. The Russian military got bogged down: recently it’s even been losing some of the Ukrainian territory it had seized. The Kremlin has concluded that it needs more troops on the battlefield. Hence: “partial mobilisation”.