Yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin held a meeting via videoconference with Nikolai Patrushev, Valery Gerasimov, Sergei Shoigu, Alexander Bortnikov, Sergei Naryshkin, and at the end of the meeting they connected Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
During the meeting, after discussing the main issues related to the prospects for conducting hostilities in Ukraine, Putin tentatively agreed on the following concept: to increase the concentration of Russian troops and weapons in the Donbass and, preventing the Ukrainian armed forces from bringing reinforcements to the Donbass, inflicting missile strikes on targets, including the civilian infrastructure of Ukraine, to make an attempt with a larger number of troops and weapons, to capture the entire territory of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in three or four days and, if possible, further develop success in the Kharkov direction.
Possible irretrievable military-operational losses of personnel of the RF Armed Forces during the implementation of this plan, the General Staff estimates up to five thousand people. Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, personally vouched for the success of such an operation with his career and, in fact, his head, if Putin gives his final consent to the implementation of these plans. Putin's prior consent means permission to prepare the implementation of this operation as soon as possible.
If these plans are finally approved for action, but when they are implemented, the desired result is not achieved, then Putin will have at least options, the two main of which are a complete rollback of the situation with the withdrawal of troops and weapons to pre-war positions and this is actually Putin's recognition of defeat, or the use of nuclear weapons as a last resort. The rest of the options are just a long way to one of the two listed.