WITH the city of Kherson in southern Ukraine now back in Ukrainian hands, there is no longer any hiding place for Putin or his general staff when it comes to the disastrous state of Russia’s military campaign after nine months.

It has revealed the Russian military machine to be substandard on land, at sea and in the air, dispelling the illusion of superpower status when it comes to its conventional armed forces.

Whether the ill-fated attempt to mount a lightning strike and circle Kiev at the outset of the conflict, resulting in significant losses of men and materiel; whether the sinking of the Moskva, flagship of the much-heralded Russian Black Sea Fleet in April; whether the rout suffered by Russian forces in the north-east around Kharkiv in September, losing thousands of square kilometres of territory in a matter of a weeks and leaving behind intact tonnes of equipment in the process; or whether now the grievous (from a Russian perspective) loss of Kherson, the only regional capital to have fallen under Russian control; all of it will haunt the Kremlin for years to come — and justifiably so.

This is a military campaign that has been marked by poor leadership at senior and junior officer level, abject incoordination, ineffective logistics and supply and poor tactics, resulting in a grievous number of casualties, including a staggering number of senior Russian military officers all the way up to the rank of general.

As for Russian air power, which on paper looks formidable, where has it been hiding? That the Ukrainian air force is still flying sorties in Soviet-era aircraft nine months in stands as a remarkable tribute to the courage of the Ukrainian pilots — and a withering indictment of the Russians.

The original force deployed to accomplish the strategic objectives of Putin’s reductively named “special military operation” of 190,000 troops, including police battalions, was way too small for the task, flying in the face of military convention which holds that an attacking force should outnumber its defending counterpart by a ratio of 3:1. Compare and contrast with the US deployment of over half a million troops against Iraqi forces in Kuwait in 1991 and you get the idea.

As for Russian intelligence, this, it seems, has failed at every turn. The Russians overestimated their own forces’ capability while underestimating Ukraine’s. They also underestimated the extent to which the West would unite so quickly and determinedly in coming to the aid of Kiev. Not only out-fought, they have also been out-thought by the Ukrainians, likely with the aid of British and US military planners — this to the point where it is hard to see how Moscow will be able to regain the initiative.

The so-called “partial mobilisation,” hastily undertaken in the wake of the rout suffered by Russian forces around Kharkiv in September, has been poorly organised and conducted, with credible reports of new recruits, lacking proper equipment and training, being thrown into the front lines as cannon fodder.

As of now, this is a military campaign that will be studied and analysed by students of war and conflict for years to come — a case study in poor planning, disorganisation, faulty intelligence, malign leadership, and tactical blunders to the point where the country’s entire military and political leadership, up to and including Putin himself, are deserving of severe criticism from within Russia.

Putin embarked on this military campaign having drawn, it is clear, entirely the wrong conclusions from Russia’s successful military intervention in Syria. Here, in the second largest country by landmass in Europe, Russian forces have been pitted against a large and motivated military, much of it Nato-trained and equipped, backed by the huge resources of the West.

Putin wanted to wage war on the cheap, determined to retain domestic support by avoiding the disruption to normal life for Muscovites and Petersburgians. All he has achieved in doing so is the demoralisation of his own forces and the opposite when it comes to Ukraine’s.

One wonders if Russia’s president has ever taken the time to read William Shakespeare. To wit: “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.”