To see how Russian troops in Ukraine hastily retreat is a stunning thing – and yet it should not be surprising, writes the Financial Times, citing Rador.

The war went badly for Russia from the very beginning. Vladimir Putin failed to achieve the lightning victory he sought on February 24. In April, the Russians were already forced into a humiliating retreat after several incursions into Kyiv.

The limited progress Russia has made in the past six months has come at a terrible cost. The initial invasion force prepared by the Kremlin numbered about 200,000 troops. According to US estimates, 70-80,000 of them were killed or wounded in the meantime.

Unwilling to admit that Russia is at war, Putin refused to introduce the mobilization of the population to arms. Ukraine, on the contrary, mobilized the entire adult male population. So, at the moment, Ukraine will most likely have more soldiers on the battlefield than Russia.

Ukrainians also have an advantage in morale and ammunition. They are fighting to protect their own country. Their supply of advanced weapons from the US and Europe, including long-range precision missiles, means they are now even better equipped than the Russians.

The prospect of Russia’s defeat is real and gratifying. But the advancement of Ukraine also opens a new dangerous phase of the conflict.

Photos of tearful civilians hugging Ukrainian soldiers liberating towns and villages from Russian occupation show what this war is all about. Permanent Russian occupation would eliminate political freedom and would be imposed at the cost of murder, torture and deportation.

An easy victory for Russia would open the way for further aggression against its neighbors – including Moldova and possibly NATO members Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. This prospect proved alarming enough to persuade Finland and Sweden to seek NATO membership.

If Russia is defeated, the threat of invasion hanging over the rest of Europe will also disappear. And the global political atmosphere will change.

Russia’s defeat will not be accepted in Beijing and Mar-a-Lago. A few weeks before the invasion, China proclaimed its “boundless” friendship with Russia. Donald Trump gloats that Vladimir Putin is a “genius”. This statement now looks not only immoral, but also stupid.

But a little caution won’t hurt either. Almost a fifth of Ukraine is still occupied. The Russians will try to regroup, and the Ukrainians risk stretching themselves further than they can afford.

The really difficult question is what happens if Russia suffers a humiliating defeat – such as one that includes the loss of Crimea, whose occupation in 2014 caused great consternation in Moscow?

Rather than admit defeat, Putin may try to escalate. But his options also seem few.

The rejection of the decree on general mobilization is probably due to the opposition’s fear of what such a gesture might cause in Russian society. Integrating, training, and equipping soldiers will take many weeks, and the war moves quickly.

Putin hinted from the beginning of the conflict that he might use nuclear weapons. The White House has always taken such a case seriously. As the war dragged on and took a turn for the worse for Russia, the fear that Putin might resort to nuclear weapons diminished somewhat, but did not disappear entirely.

As one Western official told me last week, “We have to remember that almost all of the Russian military exercises we’ve observed have also involved the use of nuclear weapons.”

However, the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine would entail the obvious risk that Russia itself would suffer from its effects. The world political reaction would be extremely negative, and a military response from the West – probably non-nuclear – would be virtually inevitable.

Like other Russian leaders throughout history, Putin hopes that winter will come to his rescue. Russia’s recent announcement to cut off almost all gas supplies to Europe is clearly intended to make Western supporters of Ukraine shiver in fear of the cold in their homes.

But Putin needs a lot of other things for this gas gambit to succeed. A very cold winter or a flurry of political protests in the West will help him. But no opportunity is guaranteed. Germany has already reached 85% of the gas reserves needed to survive the winter. Energy prices have been subsidized throughout Europe.

So Putin’s position looks shaky. From the beginning, some Western leaders quietly hoped that Putin would lose power through war. President Joe Biden will also get away with a pigeon in his mouth.

But if Putin were to be ousted, perhaps in a coup d’état, his replacement would be more likely to be a radical nationalist than a liberal. Currently, the loudest dissidents in Russia are militarists and nationalists who call for an escalation of the war.

There is a theory in Western intelligence circles that the assassination of Daria Dugina, a nationalist journalist, was orchestrated by Russian intelligence as a warning to Putin’s far-right opponents.

And defeated Russia will not disappear from the map. And it will still have a large stockpile of nuclear weapons, as well as a fresh supply of insults.

So it is clear that many dangers await us. But sometimes good news should be taken as such. And in another depressed year, the victories of the Ukrainian military in the last week are certainly good news.