Putin tries to frighten Russian civilians

 ISW:

Russian officials are promoting an information operation that falsely frames Russia’s war in Ukraine as existential to the continued existence of the Russian Federation. In an interview with TV channel Rossiya-1 on February 26, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that he does not know if "such an ethnic group as the Russian people can survive in the form in which it exists today" if the West succeeds in "destroying the Russian Federation and establishing control over its fragments."[1] Putin accused the collective West of already having plans "set out on paper" for the destruction of the Russian Federation in its current form.[2] Putin also remarked that Russia had to suspend its participation in the START treaty in order to ensure its strategic stability and security in the face of a concerted Western effort to use START to cripple Russia’s strategic prospects.[3]

Putin began to set conditions for the perpetuation of this information operation in his speech to the Federal Assembly on February 21, where he blamed the collective West for using the war in Ukraine to threaten the existence of the Russian Federation.[4] Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev invoked similarly existential sentiments in an essay entitled "Points of No Return" published on February 27 in which he accused the West of fueling the current situation in Ukraine since the fall of the Soviet Union and concluded that "the calm power of our great country and the authority of its partners are the key to preserving the future of our entire world."[5] Both Putin‘s and Medvedev’s statements engage with an information operation that frames the war in Ukraine as existential to the continued survival of the post-Soviet Russian Federation, which is likely an attempt to present the war as having higher stakes for Russia and the West than it actually does. Putin likely hopes to set informational conditions to accuse Ukraine and the West of threatening the survival of the Russian Federation in response to Russian military failures and Western support for Ukrainian victories. No prominent Western official has called for the dissolution of the Russian Federation, and Western leaders have been very careful to articulate their aims as being to enable Ukraine to liberate all its territory at most. Putin’s language is designed to fuel support for the war in Russia and stoke fears in the West of the instability that would follow the collapse of Russia to deter Western support to Ukraine and persuade the West to coerce Kyiv into accepting Russian demands.
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The only basis for such information operations is that Putin and the Russian leadership fear a lack of support for their war effort among the Russian population.  They are desperately trying to grow support for a war in which they have failed to achieve their major objectives.  Their attack on Ukraine was never about a threat to Russia or its population.  It was always about Putin's imperialistic goals and his desire to reimpose a Russian empire. 

The ISW report also indicates Russia is trying to compensate for its heavy losses in Ukraine by using smaller combat units.  

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... The manual suggests that Russian forces are using T-72 tanks for direct fire support from the rear rather than as integral parts of a combined arms team. The increased reliance on dismounted infantry and the relegation of tanks to fire support from the rear indicates that Russian military leadership is prioritizing protecting main battle tanks over protecting infantry, which is reflective of recent reports of massive equipment losses that Russian armor units sustained over the first year of the war.[15] The manual indicates that the Russian military is resorting to employing a form of simplified combined arms warfare that has likely been pared down to compensate for the overall degradation of Russian manpower and equipment capacity and which is easier for inexperienced and untrained mobilized personnel slotted into such detachments to employ.

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See, also:

 Russia is not ready for long-term war due to limited resources Defence Intelligence Chief

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...   They show in every way possible that they are ready to wage a "war for decades", but in fact their resources are quite limited. Both in time and in scope. And they are perfectly aware of this."

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And:

 China says claims it’s considering sending Russia lethal aid are 'disinformation'

And:

 Ukraine to ‘drive a wedge’ between Crimea and Russia in spring offensive

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Recapturing cities such as Melitopol or Mariupol, and thus cutting Crimea off from Russian-occupied areas in Donetsk, would make it difficult for Russia to bring in supplies and reinforcements to the peninsula.
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And:

 Putin’s Energy Gamble Backfires As Germany Secures Long-Term Gas Supplies

Germany’s reliance on cheap and plentiful supplies of Russian gas was one of three key factors that led President Vladimir Putin to believe that Russia could invade Ukraine and get away with it. A second factor was the Russian president’s belief that the NATO security alliance would use the same ‘Macbeth Response’ (‘full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’) to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as it did to Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 and to Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014. A third factor was that Putin thought that Russia would be in control of Ukraine within three days of the invasion of 24 February 2022 due to its cutting-edge military capabilities and the broadly welcoming embrace of Ukraine’s inhabitants. As it became clear that he had grossly miscalculated factors two and three, Putin still held on to the belief that Germany’s resolve, and in turn Europe’s and NATO’s, to not allow Russia to get away with its Ukraine adventure might crumble – he still partly does, according to sources in the European Union’s (EU) energy security apparatus exclusively spoken to by OilPrice.com. However, given a slew of new gas supply deals into Germany secured for the long-term, Putin’s hope looks increasingly ill-founded.
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If Russia had been able to effect such a victory within a week in Ukraine, or had even managed just to secure the capital, Kiev, within that timeframe, then it is highly likely that events would have run the same course as they had in Russia’s effective invasion of Crimea in 2014. However, within the first week of the invasion, it had become clear that not only was there no support by Ukrainians for the Russian presence in their country but also that the Russian military of 2022 was not of the calibre that had been expected. It appeared to many that the endemic corruption that had grown into the fabric of the new Russia since the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 had also made rotten its fighting machine. In essence, the Russian forces that had been designated to take Kiev quickly had broken down along the key road that would have led them into the capital, stranded by poor quality machinery, dismal logistical planning, and a paralysed command structure. It was obvious to Europe that if Russia had invaded one of the NATO countries – with their air capabilities - then this entire invasion convoy, stretching for over 40 miles, would have been destroyed within two or three hours. It was also obvious to the West that if Ukraine could hold the Russians off with the limited resources it had, then this might be an excellent opportunity to engage Putin in a proxy conflict, albeit delicately done, given Russia’s usable nuclear threat.

The U.S. knew at that point that it was essential to organise new gas supplies into Europe as a whole and into Germany in particular as soon as possible, otherwise this moment of realisation in Europe of Russia’s frailty would be lost a catalysing moment of geopolitical change across the continent. Immediately, moves were made to move more U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe but, in tandem with this, the U.S. brought pressure to bear on other leading global suppliers of LNG (which can be supplied much quicker and easier than pipelined gas) to make supplies available to Germany. A very early example of this was Qatar, which in May 2022 signed a declaration of intent on energy cooperation with Germany aimed at becoming its key supplier of LNG. These plans would run in parallel with, but were likely to be finished significantly sooner than, the plans for Qatar to also make available to Germany sizeable supplies of LNG from the Golden Pass terminal on the Gulf Coast of Texas. The U.S.’s ExxonMobil holds a 30 percent stake in the Golden Pass project, with QatarEnergy holding the rest. The U.S. was also behind the two sales and purchase agreements signed in December 2022 between QatarEnergy and the U.S.’s ConocoPhillips to export LNG to Germany for at least 15 years from 2026.

Since those early deals, new deals with new suppliers for Germany have begun to appear, again in which the U.S.’s hand is present, if one looks closely enough. News emerged towards the end of 2022 that Germany and Oman were in advanced talks to sign a long-term deal for LNG lasting at least 10 years, with the initial amounts touted as being in the 0.5-1 million tonnes per annum level. Last week saw the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. (ADNOC) deliver 137,000 cubic metres of LNG – its first to Germany – for the Elbehafen floating storage regasification unit (FSRU) LNG terminal in Brunsbüttel....
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This looks like another major miscalculation by Putin and his supporters.