The Endgame in Ukraine

Eugene Robinson suggested today that two hundred thousand troops may be enough to defeat the Ukrainian military but not sufficient to hold the country. That misses the point. Putin will remove Zelenskyy, the elected president, and in his place establish an interim government. He'll run a rigged election and install a Russian puppet in Kyiv. He will maintain that all this will be "in complete accordance with the Ukrainian constitution".  He does not need to hold the country with soldiers on the streets; he needs only a pliant Ukrainian administration, at which point his tanks can return home to Russia.