Putin's limited military operation in Ukraine confined to clearing Ukrainian Nazi militias and Ukrainian military forces out of Donbas, a Russian speaking province attached to Ukraine by Soviet leaders as was Russian Crimea, was a strategic blunder.

It was a strategic blunder that followed four or five previous strategic blunders within the Ukraine context. There were others outside the Ukraine context.

Donbas formed into two independent republics in response to the anti-Russian coup orchestrated by the United States that overthrew the elected Ukrainian government. Putin's first strategic blunder was in permitting Washington's overthrow of the democratically elected Ukrainian government.

In 2014 after the overthrow of the Ukrainian government the two independent Donbas republics voted overwhelmingly, as did Crimea, to be reincorporated into Russia. Putin accepted Crimea's request, as otherwise Russia would lose its Black Sea naval base, but rejected the request of the Donetsk and Luhansk republics.

This was Putin's second strategic blunder. If Putin or the Kremlin or the Russian government had given equal treatment to Donetsk and Luhansk a decade ago in 2014, there would have been no limited military operation with Ukraine. Neither Ukraine, NATO, nor Washington would dared to have attacked Russian territory in order to "recover Donbass."

If the US persisted in bringing Ukraine into NATO, Putin would have been forced to recognize that he was at war with the West and that he had no alternative but to reestablish Ukraine to its many centuries existence as a part of Russia. Ukraine's "independence" is an American creation 30 years old. Every Western analyst has overlooked, or kept silent about, the fact that the dismemberment of Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union is like the dismemberment of Germany after World War I, the difference being that Hitler was determined to put Germany back together but Putin has no such ambition. If truth be known, Putin is essentially a 20th century Western liberal, and this is why he is failing as a war leader of Russia in the 21st century.