Vladimir Putin’s forces are losing heavily in Ukraine and he cannot “win the war to achieve a settled outcome,” Britain’s former ambassador to Moscow said on Thursday.
Sir Andrew Wood, the UK’s top diplomat in Russia from 1995 to 2000, stressed that Ukrainians would not forget “what he has done and what his forces have done and the way they have done it”.
He added: “That in itself is a defeat.”
The Russian president’s lightning invasion plan, which included seizing Kyiv within days, failed spectacularly and he has now refocused his military campaign on the Donbas region in the east of the country where there are the Donetsk and Luhansk areas held by Moscow-backed separatists.
Even in the Donbas, though, his forces are making slow progress as they are met by fierce Ukrainian resistance.
Mr Putin is believed to be seeking to achieve some form of victory in Ukraine by May 9.
It is a key date in the Russian military calendar as it marks the Nazis’ surrender in the Second World War and an annual parade is held through Moscow’s Red Square.
This aim could be behind the renewed attempt to fully capture the besieged city of Mariupol, with Russian forces seeking to storm the sprawling Azovstal steel plant, where some 2,000 Ukrainian fighters and 200 civilians, including children, are still believed to be inside an underground complex of rooms and corridors.
With just days to go to May 9 and time running out for Mr Putin to grab a victory in his war in Ukraine which started on February 24, Sir Andrew told Sky News: “He thought he was going to win it a long time before.
“But in fact he is losing heavily and I think we have to realise that he cannot win the war in the sense of achieving a settled outcome.
“Nobody in Ukraine is going to forget what he has done and what his forces have done and the way they have done it.
“That in itself is a defeat.”
He also added: “Secondly, it’s apparently the case that he has already lost more Russian troops to death than they lost during the war in Afghanistan.
“I think he is in a terrible fix in that way but Russian propaganda does not care about the truth any way so presumably he will try to work up some sort of story, probably that it is all our fault.
“But I think he is in an impossible position.”
Around 15,000 Russian troops have already died in Ukraine, according to British estimates, slightly more than were killed during the nine-year Soviet invasion of Afghanistan which ended in 1989.
Mr Putin ordered his forces just over a week ago to seal off the Mariupol steelworks which General Lord Dannatt, former head of the British army, said was a sign that they were struggling to overpower Ukrainian fighters.
He added on Sky News: “They have now come to the conclusion that they have got to have some form of victory to celebrate on Monday (May 9).
“It would appear that they have now resumed a direct attack on the steelworks in order to try to snuff out the remaining part of the resistance there so that they can claim on Monday that they have captured Mariupol and therefore they have completed their land corridor from Crimea through the Donbas into Russia proper.
“This is a tragedy that is unfolding in front of our eyes.”
He also believes that Russia may parade Ukrainians prisoners of war through Moscow on Monday.
