By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Russian Elites Might Start To Speak Up

"The truth is on our side, and the truth is strength!" Vladimir Putin boomed into a microphone on Red Square last week after a grand ceremony where he proclaimed four large chunks of Ukrainian territory to be part of Russia. "Victory will be ours!"

But in the real world, things look very different.

On September 30, following a series of sham referendums held in occupied territory in Ukraine, the Russian government declared that four Ukrainian regions are now officially part of Russia. The annexation came amid a “partial” Russian mobilization that is, in fact, rapidly becoming a large-scale one that has left many Russians aghast and anxious. With these moves, the war in Ukraine has entered a new stage in which the stakes have risen drastically.

This is because Putin believed it was Russia’s divine right to rule Ukraine, wipe out the country’s national identity, and integrate its people into Greater Russia. Putin explicitly demonstrates that he will do whatever it takes to win, even at the risk of undermining his regime. Blindly believing in his rectitude, Putin may resort to nuclear weapons if events in Ukraine continue to confound his ambitions. The critical question is whether Russia’s elites and broader society are prepared to accompany their president on this journey to hell or if Putin, doubling down on his disastrous gamble in Ukraine, has only paved the way for his end.

 

A Not-So-Grand Ultimatum

Ukraine’s counterattack, launched at the end of August, has changed Putin’s calculations regarding how Russia should fight. His previous plan, based on the idea that Kyiv would not dare to carry out a full-fledged offensive on Russian positions, presumed that the Kremlin had plenty of time to establish itself in the territory it had occupied while the Ukrainian government, exhausted by the war and with the economy in ruins, would sooner or later have to capitulate.

Putin hasn’t learned any lessons from the mistakes that doomed it in the first place. The strategic part of Putin’s plan remains the same. It envisages that Kyiv will fall since his primary purpose in this war is still to end what he sees as the “anti-Russia” geopolitical project managed by the West and secure a long-term Russian presence on Ukrainian territory. However, the tactics Putin will use to achieve this goal have been fundamentally revised. Based on the Kremlin's miscalculations, the military threats to Russian positions in Ukraine have reached the point where the Kremlin has effectively issued an ultimatum to the world: either Russia wins Ukraine, or it will resort to nuclear escalation.

This ultimatum has three significant parts. The first is declaring stretches of Ukraine to be Russian territory. The annexation of four regions—Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia—means that Russia has artificially transformed its war to destroy Ukraine as an independent state into a war of self-defense against foreign military forces. Annexation is a protest against Western involvement in the Ukrainian conflict. It frames the West’s military aid to Ukraine as counter-aggression against Russia. By annexing these territories, Putin is sending a blunt message: continuing to help Kyiv will inevitably lead the West into a direct conflict with Russia, something he believes Western capitals would like to avoid. This move also reflects another significant shift in the Kremlin’s understanding of the current situation. Before Kyiv’s counteroffensive, Moscow did not believe that Western aid could drastically change the balance of forces and create conditions in which Ukraine would threaten Russia militarily. Now, it does.

 

Nuclear Blackmail

Another plank of Putin’s ultimatum is the nuclear option, which is now back on the table. After cooling his rhetoric over the summer, Putin has returned to invoking this ultimate threat as a way to influence Western policy on Ukraine. In April, when Russian forces retreated from failed offensives against Kyiv and Chernihiv, the Kremlin turned to nuclear blackmail, with Putin suggesting that his government was willing to allow the use of nuclear weapons “if necessary” and effectively blaming the West for Russian failures. By May, however, that language had died down; Putin had concluded that Ukraine was doomed to lose eventually, even with Western assistance.

With the Russian military struggling, commentators and officials are again advocating using nuclear weapons in Ukraine. They have filled TV screens and social media with nuclear saber-rattling. The pro-Kremlin segment of Telegram, a Russian information-sharing app, is buzzing with hundreds of posts justifying Moscow’s legitimate right to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine or trying to convince the world that Putin is seriously ready to resort to nuclear weapons in the event of further escalation. The profusion of posts insisting that “Yes, he can,” “he must,” and “he will” is not only part of a deliberate campaign to intimidate the West but also a demonstration of the growing determination among the most committed, ambitious pro-war elements of Russia’s elite and society that the war must be won no matter what.

Whether or not Putin is bluffing, the threat of using nuclear weapons creates higher expectations among the elites about how far Putin is prepared to go. It dramatically reduces room for maneuvering in a hypothetical future political bargain over Ukraine. To take the nuclear card off the table, Putin would need to see Russian forces' successful military advance combined with Washington's signals that the West will shrink its role in the conflict. If these demands are not met—and it is safe to say they will not be—Russia will resort to the nuclear option: such is a new reality that Putin seeks to shape, taking the world hostage.

Theoretically, Russia could demonstrate its resolve without causing any casualties by launching a strike in an uninhabited area. Several other experts have written about this possibility. Former U.S. Undersecretary of State and NATO Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller considers this the most likely possibility: in her view, “a single strike over the Black Sea, or perhaps a strike at a Ukrainian military facility” would “strike terror not only into the hearts of the Ukrainians," but also Ukraine’s allies.

 

Total War

Putin has also upped the ante further by making ordinary Russians part of the war by raising the stakes through his annexation of Ukrainian regions and his invocations of nuclear war. His mobilization order in September caught Russians off-guard. Over the summer and in the first half of September, polls recorded an uptick in the positive mood among Russian society, growing fatigue with military rhetoric, and declining interest in the war in Ukraine. Although the pro-war part of the establishment, together

with the military, demanded that Putin announce a mobilization as soon as possible, those in the presidential administration who oversees domestic policy had tried to minimize the war in the public's minds. They sought to calm the angry jingoists advocating for Moscow to take Kyiv. Now, mobilization has irretrievably changed the lives of millions. In the latest Levada Center poll of Russians, 47 percent of respondents said that the partial mobilization made them feel “anxiety, fear, and horror,” 23 percent felt “shock,” and 13 percent felt “anger and indignation.” Only 23 percent said they felt “pride in Russia.” Even if the mobilization has not prompted mass protests, it has undermined the public’s trust in the state and state media.

Beyond how the mobilization will affect domestic affairs, this drastic political decision reveals much about Putin’s priorities. The president has dared to announce what looks to be the most unpopular political decision in his 22 years of rule, regardless of how mass conscription will stoke anger, resentment, and social tensions and threaten domestic political stability. This decision doubts any further social consolidation between the authorities and ordinary Russians during the war.

Until recently, the majority of Russians accepted the deal offered by the Kremlin: Putin would fight for “historical justice” against Ukrainian “Nazis,” relying on “professionals” and volunteers to avert the strategic threats posed to Russia by the West’s involvement in Ukraine. This goal found significant social support, but on one crucial condition: that Russia fought without the direct involvement of ordinary Russians, who have been living their lives more or less as usual since the invasion began. Mobilization has ripped up this contract. Having chosen mobilization despite the predictable public anger, Putin has shown that if it comes to a choice between achieving his goals in Ukraine and placating Russian society, Putin will opt for the former, sacrificing popular support at home for geopolitical victory in Ukraine. It is an explicit rebuttal to those who have suggested that Putin’s fear of a collapse in his political support among Russians would stop him from making risky decisions. In truth, he is single-mindedly driven to turn his gamble in Ukraine into a victory, whatever the cost.

 

The Poison Pill

Putin’s nuclear ultimatum and mobilization order put significant pressure on both Russian society and the increasingly nervous Russian elites, who must decide which losing scenario is less tragic: to accompany the furious leader until the end of the world, to escape both Putin and the retribution of the West, or to wait for Russia to lose. It puts Putin in an unprecedentedly vulnerable position. His obsession with Ukraine has never been shared to the same extent by most of the Russian elite, and his readiness to sacrifice thousands of Russian lives is not shared by much of his electorate. He appears to be pushing a scenario in which he is the only one who can pay whatever price it takes to fight under the banner of “all or nothing.” The president’s manic course of action carries a distinct and bitter taste of suicidal exasperation.

It would be wrong, however, to think that it cannot get any worse. At this stage, however, cornered Putin may seem, he still believes he can win. In his eyes, the mobilization should help the Russian army drive out Ukrainian forces from the newly annexed territories and convince the West to step back from Ukraine, leaving Kyiv doomed to surrender and opening the opportunity for the Russian government to establish some facsimile of everyday life in the new regions.

The rapid retreat from strategic cities underscores the growing disorder in Russia’s military campaign, even as the Kremlin moves to illegally annex four Ukrainian territories and mobilize hundreds of thousands of new forces. 

Just days after seizing the city of Lyman, a strategic hub in Donetsk, and pushing forward into Luhansk, Ukrainian forces have forced Russia to retreat along the strategic west bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson. The rapid retreat is due in part to overstretched Russian units, according to the Institute for the Study of War. Citing Russian military bloggers, ISW noted that “elements of the 126th Coastal Defense Brigade of the Black Sea Fleet have operated in the area without rotation since March” and that “the frontline is stretched so thin that some villages in this sector have 15 men defending them.”

These advances add to over 2,000 square miles of land in Kharkiv that Kyiv recaptured over the last month. In particular, Russia’s losses in Lyman have provoked stinging criticism from two of Putin’s close allies, who publicly attacked top military officials over their battlefield failures.

The dysfunction on the ground also appears to be ingrained at the top, especially with the Kremlin’s recent admission that it can’t identify the precise borders of its annexed territories amid its struggles to repel advancing Ukrainian forces. 

So what happens when things don’t go to plan once again? When Russian forces failed to defeat the Ukrainians, the West increased its military aid. It ignores Putin’s blackmail, and people in the new territories continue to resist their Russian occupiers, targeting senior officials and administrative buildings in terrorist attacks. Then the pivotal moment will arrive when the only option Putin sees available is the nuclear one. It will also be a decisive moment for the Russian elites who still do not dare to countenance this worst-case scenario, which many today avoid thinking about. Yet on Sunday two October, clearly in agreement with US government sources, former CIA director and retired four-star army general David Petraeus told ABC News: “Just to give you a hypothetical, we would respond by leading a Nato – a collective – effort that would take out every Russian conventional force that we can see and identify on the battlefield in Ukraine and also in Crimea and every ship in the Black Sea.”

Also, on 4 October, various sources reported that more Russians fled than joined Putin’s army. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said more than 200,000 people had been conscripted into the army since Putin’s Sept. 21 order for a partial call-up, Russian news services reported Tuesday, and other data show close to 400,000 Russians went to nearby states. It appears that President Vladimir Putin might have lost touch with reality. He has declared a partial mobilization to reverse his defeats in Ukraine and, signaling his desperation, ratcheted up Russia’s nuclear saber-rattling. Each day the war drags on, his country grows more isolated from the rest of the world. Hence domestic political conditions in Russia may soon be reaching the point where senior officials would dare to disobey, speak out louder, and fight with each other more resolutely. Ukraine may become a poison pill for Putin: in seeking to swallow it, he is dooming himself to defeat. Yet as we earlier argued, there also have been situations when Putin backed down.

But the Kremlin’s power plays rarely involve questions of principle, and successors may break with predecessors' behavior when convenient. That means that Putin’s eventual replacement does not have to be invested in his neo-imperialist agenda. Indeed, were Putin ousted, his successors would likely blame Ukraine for his decisions and try to begin with a clean slate.

 

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