Sean Rayment

Sean Rayment served as a Captain in the Parachute Regiment in the late 1980s. As a defence correspondent, he has reported on wars in the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Gulf and Africa

Putin’s depleted army is running out of time

There is a useful military adage often used by generals in times of war: no plan survives contact with the enemy. Vladimir Putin’s plan, it now appears, didn’t even survive contact with his own troops. Russia’s leader has combined a major strategic miscalculation with tactical stupidity on a scale unprecedented in recent times. Four weeks