By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Why Today It Becomes More likely Putin Will Lose This War

The U.S. cheered Ukraine's "significant" battlefield success at Lyman. Russia had used Lyman as a logistics and transport hub for its operations north of the Donetsk region. Its capture is Ukraine's biggest battlefield gain since last month's lightning counteroffensive in the northeastern Kharkiv region.

On Saturday, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin noted that Lyman was positioned across supply lines that Russia has used to push its troops and materiel down to the south and the west as the Kremlin presses its more than seven-month-long invasion of Ukraine. "And without those routes, it will be more difficult. So it presents a dilemma for the Russians going forward," Austin said.

“We’re very encouraged by what we’re seeing right now,” Austin told reporters in Honolulu alongside Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles. Marles said the war has the potential to turn into a “protracted conflict,” requiring support for Ukraine for an extended time.

Russia had used Lyman as a logistics and transport hub for its operations north of the Donetsk region. Its capture is Ukraine's biggest battlefield gain since last month's lightning counteroffensive in the northeastern Kharkiv region.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Putin’s obsession with Russian historical claims and grievances raise a far-reaching question: Is Russia the exception to the rule that all empires eventually disintegrate, with the imperial power moving on and accepting a post-imperial role? After all, that is what the Ottomans, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Great Britain, and France did in the 20th century. In celebrating Russia’s exceptionalism, Putin and his followers insisted that Russkiy mir—the greater Russian world—was perpetual and must be restored. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the new Russia embarked on three transitions: from a communist to a post-communist state, from a state-controlled to a market economy, and from an imperial to a post-imperial state. All three transitions subsequently stalled and went into reverse. Russia was no longer a communist state but an authoritarian state, as was the Soviet Union. Today, the state has recaptured much of the private sector. And under Putin, Russia has no intention of being post-imperial.

With Ukraine’s successful counteroffensive in the country’s east and south in recent weeks and a growing chorus of hawks in the Russian state media criticizing Russia’s military failures, Russian President Vladimir Putin has raised the stakes. He ordered the mobilization of 300,000 additional troops and implied that he would use nuclear weapons if the West continued to support Ukraine. After sham referendums in four Russian-occupied regions, Putin signed a decree to annex them to Russia on Friday. Ukraine’s counteroffensives will be deemed an attack on Russia itself and subject to escalatory retaliation. These actions underscore the miscalculations behind Putin’s decision to invade in February and their determination to remove Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky from power. Seven months after the start of the invasion, Putin hasn’t learned any lessons from the mistakes that doomed it in the first place.

In the invasion’s immediate aftermath, it was clear that Putin had made four significant miscalculations. The first miscalculation was overestimating the Russian military’s strength and effectiveness. No doubt, those in his immediate circle would only tell him what he wanted to hear. Putin had been led to believe that the war would be over after a 72-hour blitzkrieg, Kyiv would fall, and Zelensky would surrender or flee and be replaced by a puppet government controlled by Russian officers were reported to have carried ceremonial uniforms during the expected victory parade. But the Russian military performed much worse than Putin (and the U.S. intelligence agencies) expected. It could not take Kyiv and had to make a humiliating retreat, leaving devastation in its wake, with atrocities committed in Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv, and other areas nearby. Many young Russian recruits were so poorly prepared for the conflict that they did not even know they were invading Ukraine, and Russian morale was low. Tanks and other military equipment needed repair, logistics were haphazard, and the invading army did not bring Russia.

Russian officers were reported to have carried ceremonial uniforms during the expected victory parade. But the Russian military performed much worse than Putin (and the U.S. intelligence agencies) expected. It could not take Kyiv and had to make a humiliating retreat, leaving devastation in its wake, with atrocities committed in Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv, and other areas nearby. Many young Russian recruits were so poorly prepared for the

conflict that they did not even know they were invading Ukraine, and Russian morale was low. Tanks and other military equipment needed repair, logistics were haphazard, and the invading army did not bring enough fuel or food to sustain it for a long war. The corruption that pervades all aspects of Russian society was also rife in the military. Money that should have gone to training and equipment lined people’s pockets instead.

The second major miscalculation was underestimating the Ukrainian people and military. Putin was misinformed about Ukrainians’ national identity and the will to fight. He made a grave error if he expected Ukrainians to greet their Russian “liberators” with flowers. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and launch of the war in the Donbas in 2014 fostered a Ukrainian national identity that Putin failed to grasp. Once the invasion was underway, the United States offered to evacuate Zelensky from Kyiv, but he responded, “I don’t need a ride; I need more ammunition.” The Russians could not find anyone who would form a pro-Russian government. The FSB unit in charge of finding collaborators in Ukraine was severely disciplined, with rumors of high-level arrests.

Zelensky, the comedian-turned-president whose approval rating hovered around 30 percent before the war, surprised the world by rising to the occasion and providing charismatic and inspiring leadership, leading some to liken him to Britain’s wartime prime minister, Winston Churchill. Zelensky proved highly effective at using social media to communicate nightly with his population and the outside world. Although the Ukrainian army had fewer troops than Russia’s and less sophisticated military hardware, its morale was high. It was fighting for a cause: national survival. It had support from the West, particularly the United States, whose weapons and intelligence enabled Ukraine to push the Russians back, and from the Europeans. As Russian brutality escalated, Moscow’s unprovoked aggression significantly united Ukrainians, including Russian-speaking Ukrainians.

Putin’s third miscalculation was that the West was divided and would not make a common cause against Russia. When Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 and recognized the independence of Russian-occupied South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the West barely reacted. During the Trump administration, U.S.-European relations had sunk to a new low. Europe was split over how to deal with Russia, with Western Europe far more willing to engage than the more skeptical Central European and Baltic countries. All that changed on Feb. 24. The specter of a major war of aggression in Europe—77 years after World War II—shocked most Europeans into reconsidering their ties to Russia and concluding they had misread Putin. The Biden administration worked assiduously to unite its European and Indo-Pacific allies to support Ukraine and punish Russia. Allied unity following the invasion has been impressive.

Indeed, Putin’s fourth miscalculation was his belief that the Europeans were so invested in their economic ties to Russia—especially their energy dependency—that they would not be willing to impose sanctions. In 2014, after the annexation of Crimea and the beginning of the Donbas war, the United States and Europe imposed financial sanctions that Russia easily weathered. Its imposition of countersanctions on European food imports stimulated the development of Russia’s agricultural sector.

Putin’s goal from the outset has been to restore Russia as a great power—a member of the global board of directors. Ukraine’s defeat and subjugation were essential to reestablish Russian domination of its neighborhood and the ability to project power farther West. If Russia prevailed over Ukraine, it would recreate a substantial part of imperial Russia—a Slavic Union with Ukraine, Belarus, and possibly northern Kazakhstan—and then be in a position to force a redefinition of Europe’s security architecture.

This left Putin with precious few choices to turn the tide of war. And just like he did during his widely watched long tirade on 30 September, he declared his ‘Anti-Colonial.’ He again exclaimed the culprit was NATO.

Below are the heads of 4 Ukrainian separatist regions, Vladimir Saldo, Yevgeny Balitsky, Denis Pushilin, Leonid Pasechnik, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, reacting during a ceremony held for 'accession' of Ukraine 4 regions to Russia on Sept. 30

The culprit was NATO, which he faulted for its considerable support to Kyiv.

Below with an Imperialistic decorum are the heads of 4 Ukrainian separatist regions, Vladimir Saldo, Yevgeny Balitsky, Denis Pushilin, Leonid Pasechnik, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, reacting during a ceremony held for 'accession' of Ukraine 4 regions to Russia, 30 Sept.  2022, in Moscow:

But seven months into the war, Putin’s imperial project is foundering. Ukrainian national identity is stronger than ever, and Ukrainians are united against Russia in a way they have never been. The West is more united than it has been for a decade; Finland and Sweden, which adamantly preserved their neutral status during the Cold War, have applied to join NATO; Ukraine is now a candidate for membership in the European Union. Moreover, the United States announced it would permanently station troops in Poland at the Madrid NATO summit in June. Russia’s economy is deglobalizing and becoming cut off from the rest of the world. A new diaspora of perhaps half a million Russians has fled to the West or other post-Soviet states, taking their energies and intellectual capital with them and hoping to return once Putin is no longer in power.

Far from being a master strategist, Putin has accomplished the exact opposite of what he set out to achieve with his invasion of Ukraine. The mishandled mobilization, renewed nuclear threats against the West, and the apparent sabotage of the two Nord Stream pipelines have only reinforced Western unity. Doubts about Russia’s capabilities are now emerging in parts of the global south, which has remained neutral in the conflict. It is difficult to see how Putin will be able to reverse Russia’s fortunes in this senseless war—but so far, he appears to have no intention of ending it.

Andrey Kortunov, a respected foreign policy analyst and adviser to the Kremlin, says he doesn’t know what goes on in the Kremlin but understands the public mood over the enormous costs and loss of life in the war. “Many people would ask, why did we get into this mess? Why, you know, we lost so many people.”

Putin’s logical option, Kortunov says, is to declare victory and get out on his terms. But for this, he needs a significant achievement on the ground. “Russia cannot simply get to where it was, on the 24 February of this year, say, okay, you know, that’s fine. Our mission is accomplished. So we go home… …There should be something that can be presented to the public as a victory.”

And this is the logic Putin appears to be following, rubber-stamping the sham referendums in Ukraine’s Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions and declaring them part of Russia.

He used the same playbook annexing Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and now, like then, threatens potential nuclear strikes should Ukraine, backed by its Western allies, try to take the annexed territories back.

Going forward, we need a strategy ready to deal with several eventualities like, for example

·         A grindingly slow end to the Putin era, or his rapid departure. 

·         A seemingly smooth transfer of power, or a disorderly one. 

·         A desire (however superficial) for rapprochement with the West or intensified enmity.

·         Centrifugal forces tearing Russia apart, or an attempt to re-establish central control by force. 

A key should be humility about our ability to predict or determine developments inside Russia and resolve to defend allies.

 

 

 

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