Putin Hasn’t Already Won the War and He Probably Won’t Win
This is the beginning of the end for Putinism
On February 24, Vladimir Putin took the decision to invade Ukraine and has been reaping the consequences ever since.
His war, or ‘special military operation’ as he’d prefer it to be called, has not gone how he imagined or planned. Putin’s plan was to launch a lightning attack on Ukraine and take the capital, Kyiv, in a matter of days.
Along the way, Russian soldiers would be welcomed as heroes. Flowers thrown at their feet as they liberated the Ukrainian people and brought them together again into a Russian embrace.
It took a few days for Putin’s warped version of history and deluded belief that Ukrainians and Russians are one people, to be dispelled. Three weeks into the war, Russia is bogged down, making little headway and suffering terrible losses as Ukraine fights for its freedom.
By any measure, Putin has miscalculated. Even if he ‘wins’ this war, he’ll have lost in the long run. The damage to his reputation in the west is terminal. There’s no way back for him. If the war was to turn for the worse, then he risks being deposed by those around him. If you don’t think that’s likely, then Russian history begs to differ. Costly military defeats against Japan in 1905 and the unsuccessful ten-year war in Afghanistan led to regime changes. Putin could easily go the same way.
That’s why it was a shock to read an article the other day stating Putin had already won the war. It was an interesting read and one I don’t agree with. Russia is not too big to fail. It’s a common misconception, that’s easily debunked.
Here’s a link to a list of countries by nominal GDP. Russia is 11th on this list, not in the top ten and behind Italy, a country that is mistakenly seen as an economic basket case. The idea that Russia will keep soldiering on despite the war is a fallacy. A study assessing the cost of the war on Ukraine suggests Russia is losing somewhere in the region of $20 billion a day fighting Putin’s ‘special operation.’
That is an unsustainable expenditure, especially when little progress is being made. For all the fighting so far, Russia has only managed to capture one city, Kherson. Captured is a loose term as the residents of Kherson have staged multiple protests highlighting their displeasure towards the Russian occupiers.
The above is not a sustainable situation. This is one city. Ukraine is the second biggest country in Europe, bigger than France. If Putin succeeds, and that’s a big if at this stage, he is going to need a huge force to maintain control of the country. Likely more than the 190,000 troops he amassed on the border prior to the invasion. Even then, the Ukrainians aren’t going to tolerate Russian rule. They will continue to resist.
The idea that Putin is going to control Ukraine in any meaningful form is a fantasy. He simply can’t without a huge expenditure of money, personnel and military hardware. Russia is already asking China for military help. Again, if Putin has already won, why is he asking China for help?
Simple.
He’s asking for help because the Russian military is not the all-conquering beast it appeared to be. Expectations of a swift victory have been replaced with the realisation Ukraine is much stronger than he thought. Another factor is that Russia hasn’t invested in its military as it should have since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Many of the tanks used are from the Soviet era, while soldiers seem to be communicating via conventional walkie-talkies. Why? Because Russia is a corrupt state. Instead of public money being used to improve the military, it’s been funneled to Putin and his cronies. Those yachts and palaces aren’t cheap!
So, is Putin going to win? Simply, no. Any victory would be pyrrhic. He may take Ukraine, but he would limp on as a weakened leader, increasingly reliant on China as the west shuts him off. Below I’m going to highlight three reasons why Putin can’t win and what it might mean going forward.
Ukrainian resistance
The resistance to Putin’s invasion by the Ukrainians has been nothing short of inspirational. They have put up an immense fight for their homeland and shown Putin that any idea of Ukraine and Russia being one country and one people is a fantasy.
It was widely assumed that Ukraine would be overrun should Russia invade. Two days after the invasion started, an article in The Spectator stated, ‘Putin’s forces are currently steamrolling Ukraine’s defences.’ It was a premature declaration of the power of Russia’s military which has been shown to be more of a paper tiger than a snarling one.
The Second World War is lionised in Russia and referred to as the Great Patriotic War. What’s forgotten in the modern retelling of that period of history, is that Ukrainians were an integral part of the Red Army. They were among the finest soldiers and played a key part in defeating the Nazis.
Putin seems to have forgotten this part of history and believed his own propaganda about Ukraine welcoming his soldiers as liberators. Annexing Crimea in 2014 was met with little resistance, but they have been met with a hail of bullets and unimpressed Ukrainian farmers this time around.
The images of President Zelensky defying Putin by staying in Kyiv have galvanised the population. They are fighting for their freedom, under no illusions of what life under Russian rule looks like given their experience during the Soviet Union.
Putin has blundered into an all-out war against a fierce opponent who will not lie down. Against a less competent army in Afghanistan, the Soviets were bogged down for ten years. It’s still early days yet, and wars have a knack for resulting in unexpected outcomes. But given the formidable spirit shown by the Ukrainians so far, Putin is in a war he can’t win in a conventional sense.
Any victory will be pyrrhic and could result in his downfall.
Renewal of the West
Putin’s calculations on invading Ukraine were based on a belief that the West is in decline. Given Brexit, the election of Trump and the referral to NATO as ‘brain dead’ by French President Emmanuel Macron, his assessment was based on somewhat firm ground.
The irony is that what Russia was doing to undermine democracy in the West was working. The Republican party in America is more or a less an anti-democratic party. In President Trump, Putin had someone in office who was unusually sympathetic towards him, almost to the point of admiration. Brexit removed one of the main military powers from the European Union, weakening the bloc and leaving the UK adrift with no clear direction for the future.
His strategy of undermining democracy in Europe had an effect too. Far-right parties were ascendant in Europe. The rise of Salvini and Meloni in Italy, Vox in Spain and Orban in Hungary are testament to this. Putin was counting on his vision of the west as a decaying force and too weak to muster a significant response to his actions, to continue following the invasion.
Again, it wasn’t unreasonable for him to think this. He suffered little condemnation for the atrocities he committed in Chechnya in 2000, Georgia in 2008 and the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Then, there are the two attacks on Russian dissidents, Alexander Litvinenko and Sergi Skripal in the UK in 2006 and 2018, respectively. Litvinenko was poisoned with polonium-210, arguably the deadliest substance on the planet, while a nerve agent, Novichok, was used on Skripal in Salisbury.
On both occasions, Putin and Russia were condemned by the international community, but the sanctions weren’t firm and Europe continued to purchase Russian gas and oil. While London continued to be home to many Russian oligarchs on good terms with the Kremlin. It’s no wonder Putin thought he might get away with it again.
Yet, the west has come together and forcefully condemned his actions. The sanctions have been swift and severe. Oligarchs have had their yachts and property sanctioned, Russian banks have been affected, while the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline taking Russian gas direct to Germany was canceled. A clear sign that tide had turned as Germany has traditionally been the most doveish of western allies towards Russia.
Putin’s actions have reinvigorated NATO and given it a new purpose. All the groundwork Putin put in to destabilise the west was undone with that one television broadcast. The scenes of Salvini being confronted with a t-shirt he wore during a visit to Russia emblazoned with Putin’s face on the front, highlight the mistake he’s made.
The irony is, Putin’s strategy was working before he decided to invade Ukraine. Hubris and the desire to roll back the clock to the great Russian Empire of old have backfired. Again, even if he wins the war, the West is arguably more united than at any time in the last thirty years due to him.
For someone often considered a ‘master strategist’, it’s a catastrophic mistake.
The cost of war
As I mentioned above, estimates of the daily cost of the war to Russia come to $20 billion. This is an insane amount of money to be spending on an unsuccessful war. It’s the equivalent of shovelling money into a furnace, as Putin is seeing almost no return on that money.
He now also has the issue of less money coming in to finance the war. The sanctions have hit Russian banks hard and they have been cut out of the global payment system SWIFT. Russia is still earning money from oil and gas exports, its largest export market, but this will decrease over time as western countries pivot their economies away from Russia and towards renewables.
China is a willing buyer of Russian oil, gas, and natural resources, but the infrastructure isn’t in place to transport these commodities as it is with Europe. Nor can China make up the shortfall from the drop-off in western money by itself.
The Russian stock market has been closed since the start of the invasion, while the price of Russian-backed companies such as Evraz on the London Stock Exchange has plummeted. As has the ruble, further impacting Russia’s ability to finance the war.
But it’s not just the war Russia has to finance, there’s also a country to run, wages to be paid, livelihoods to be maintained. Should Putin continue with this folly, more and more Russians will fall into destitution as the economy collapses to a point not seen since the unsuccessful shock therapy following the end of the Soviet Union.
This could result in a cost of another kind for Putin. For all his attempts to clamp down on protest and repress the population, he can’t lock up everyone. The 13-year sentence handed out to opposition leader Alexei Navalny shows Putin is afraid of emerging protests as a threat to his reign.
He should be worried.
Russian history is full of revolutions and social discord following unsuccessful wars. Defeat in the Russo-Japanese war in 1905 led to a revolution in the same year, which resulted in the establishment of a Duma and liberalisation of the absolute monarchy of Tsar Nicholas II. He was not so lucky twelve years later, following the troubles on the Eastern Front in World War I, when he was deposed in the February Revolution of 1917. Then he and his family were executed following the Bolshevik’s rise to power following the October Revolution.
The unsuccessful war in Afghanistan, which ended with Soviet withdrawal in 1989, was one of the factors in the downfall of the Soviet Union. It undermined the image of the Red Army as invincible, which spread quickly under Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost (openness).
Already Russian deaths are believed to have exceeded those they suffered in a ten-year war in Afghanistan. It’s also reported they’ve lost more soldiers in three weeks than the Americans lost in 20 years in Afghanistan. That’s not to mention the tanks, aircraft and other military hardware that’s either been captured or destroyed so far.
All of this costs money to replace, and with less and less hard currency coming in, Putin’s ability to fight this war diminishes by the day. Then, there’s the humanitarian aspect of the war dead coming home in body bags. How does Putin explain this to his people? How long can he keep up the facade of a special military operation and denazification in a digital world where information flows freely?
The Belarusian writer, Svetlana Alexievich, in her excellent book, Boys in Zinc, details how Soviet soldiers returning home in sealed zinc coffins fostered disillusionment in the population and helped contribute to the Union’s eventual collapse.
With Russian losses racking up already, Putin is in danger of public opinion turning against him. No matter how much he cracks down on dissent, if his inner circle starts to questions his leadership, he will be in trouble.
The cost of the war might not just be measured in economic terms for Putin, it could be measured in the fall of his leadership.
Winning?
It’s too early to say how this war will play out. Wars are by their nature, dynamic and non-linear. It’s easy to say how they started but much harder to say how they will end.
Claims that Putin has already won the war are premature. The performance of the Russian military has been eye-opening in its mediocrity considering the strength many in the West attributed to it only a month ago.
What is clear is that Putin will not ‘win’ this war in any sense. He may take parts of Ukraine or all of it, but it will likely be a pyrrhic victory, undermined by constant insurgent fighting by determined Ukrainian resistance. This is now his ‘best’ outcome, and it’s one he never considered when he told his troops to cross into Ukraine on February 24.
Considering how he has sold this war to his public and the cultivation of his image as a ruthless and cunning leader, he has dispelled those myths in a mere three weeks. Instead, he has been shown to be a bully and an opportunist.
Putin is being forced to move away from his maximum aim every day. The question now becomes not when he will win or whether he has already won, but what he will convince himself is a ‘victory’ from now on.
Make no mistake, any claimed victory that doesn’t include the total subjugation of Ukraine and its people, is ultimately a failure for a man who believed he would crush them into dust and proclaim himself as the Tsar of a new Russian Empire.
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