Putin's plan backfiring in Ukraine

by Tom Maertens

Tom Maertens worked on Soviet/Russia issues for many years, including from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, the U.S. Consulate General in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), the U.S. Senate and the White House.

Two months into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it’s not clear how this ends. It has already lasted much longer than most analysts — and likely the Russians — initially thought.

That’s because the Ukrainian military has performed far better than virtually anyone, including probably Vladimir Putin, expected. Casualty figures vary; U.S. intelligence estimates that Russia has suffered 4,000 to 5,000 casualties — other estimates go much higher — and lost hundreds of tanks, aircraft and helicopters. This is due in large part to the extensive military equipment and training supplied by NATO since 2014 but also to the high morale of the Ukrainian people and the military.

The most likely eventual scenario is a "frozen conflict" with Russia holding much of eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainians certainly know that Russia can’t be trusted to observe any putative ceasefire agreement; Ukraine needs to “win” this war to retain their territory, and to do that they need large quantities of military equipment. As the fighting moves to the more open country in the east, Stingers and Javelins are less useful without cover for concealment, so armor and artillery will become more important.

Biden has agreed to another $800 million in assistance and some of the Europeans are stepping up big time.

Russia now appears to be focused on securing a land corridor between Donbas and Crimea; currently, everything from Russia to Crimea goes by sea. They have adopted a scorched earth policy around Mariupol, the largest city in the area, apparently to prevent Ukrainian forces using it as a strong point, and reportedly killed tens of thousands of people, all “Nazis”— the worst word in the Russian lexicon.

Historian Timothy Snyder noted that Russia's "genocide handbook," issued by RIA Novosti on April 3, defines as a Nazi anyone who disputes that Ukraine should be part of Russia, and exempts any Russian from that label, simply because they are Russian. It is a manual justifying the destruction of the Ukrainian people and the occupation of their territory.

Amy Knight, the author of six books on Russia, posed a question in the New York Times: Is a coup against Putin possible? She points to only two coup attempts in Russia since the Bolsheviks took over in 1917 — against Stalin’s hated secret police chief, Lavrenti Beria in 1953, and against Communist Party First Secretary Nikita Krushchev in 1964 — to suggest the likelihood is low. She notes that in both cases, the support of the security services and the Soviet military were crucial to their success.

There is another case that applies: Mikhail Gorbachev was removed from power for three days in August 1991 by hardline communist elements, aided by the military. They placed him under house arrest and demanded he resign his leadership position.

Putin has imprisoned or killed opposition figures and critics both inside Russia and abroad, and transparently plans to stay in office indefinitely.

Despite the anti-coup precautions that leaders take — and Putin has reportedly replaced 1,000 people around him and employs a food taster to prevent poisoning — coups still happen.

Such precautions didn’t save the Shah of Iran, Haile Selassie, Anastasio Somoza (Nicaragua), Nicolae Ceausescu (Romania), Hosni Mubarak (Egypt), Mu'ammar Gaddafi and others.

In Russia, the FSB (successor to the KGB), the military, and the National Guard (which protects Putin), would likely have to participate.

One of the unexpected consequences of the invasion for Putin must be the exodus of so many Russian young and tech savvy people, who are voting with their feet. The Wall Street Journal reported that hundreds of thousands of professional workers have left Russia since its invasion of Ukraine.

This loss and the many military deaths could motivate Russian patriots to take action.

Russian military setbacks in the past — in the Crimean War, the Russo-Japanese War, World War I, Afghanistan and the Cold War — were damaging or even fatal to the regimes that presided over them.

I recall the defeated ‘Afghantsy’ — Russian military veterans of Afghanistan — frequently intoxicated, bewildered and homeless, wandering the streets of Russia. It was not uncommon to find their frozen corpses on the street after a cold night.

Putin’s invasion produced the opposite of what he was aiming to achieve, making him desperate for any success to obscure his failures. Among other things, he has invigorated NATO, which Trump had done his best to kill, and made bitter enemies of Ukrainians.

It also appears that traditional neutrals Sweden and Finland may now join NATO, a bitter setback for Putin; they have said that Russian aggression “completely changed” the situation.