We’ll have to disagree. I don’t think that has been an achievable plan since well before the end of the Cold War.
I just wanted to emphasize this. (I actually categorically disagree with the idea that Trump was a Russian puppet - he was an intermittently useful idiot - but that’s a different thread).
This is absolutely spot on. Putin has openly intervened militarily in Russia’s “near abroad” for over a decade. And I’d actually push the timeline back to the Second Chechen War in 1999-2000, when Putin was Boris Yeltsin’s Prime Minister.
Chechnya was a brutal military campaign, but it was an “internal matter”, so the world tut-tutted a bit at the civilian casualties, and then just kind of forgot about it. Georgia in 2008 was an outright military invasion, but the situation in Ossetia was a mess, and Russia (mostly) withdrew and didn’t outright conquer Georgia, so the world tut-tutted again, and imposed a few sanctions, and then just kind of forgot about it. Ukraine in 2014 combined barely covert operations in Donbas (the “little green army men”) and then outright invasion, and the outright conquest and seizure of Crimea. Again, Russia’s war aims seemed limited, the situation in Donbas was a mess, and so the world imposed some slightly harsher sanctions, and then kind of forgot about it.
The Litvenenko murder. The Skripal poisonings. The military intervention in Kazakhstan earlier this year. Cyber attacks Estonia, France, Georgia, Germany, Kyrgyzstan, Poland, South Korea, Ukraine, the U.S…
And every time, the world tut-tutted, and imposed a few sanctions, and then kind of forgot about it. The whole time, Germany was cooperating with Russia to build the Nordstream 2 pipeline. The U.S. was continuing to pay Russia to ferry U.S. astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
And, not at all incidentally, Putin watched as the U.S. invaded countries and enforced regime change militarily. It usually didn’t exactly go well for the U.S., but there also was little external cost to the U.S.
Putin has pushed and pushed and pushed. And each and every time he met little resistance. And so this time he finally, maybe, pushed a bit too far. I don’t think “mental deterioration” has anything to do with it.
The sane reason to do that would be to try and scare Russians into thinking he must have intel that such a threat is there. And that is alarming, because one reason I can think of to claim that other countries are planning to shoot nukes is as a pretext to release his own. You know, like he used faked footage of Ukrainians attacking Russian citizens as a pretext for war in the first place.
I just have to hope that it’s just about trying to get the populace back on his side, trying to make the West seem like the worse aggressors, and him look like the good guy trying to prevent it.
Oh, and I disagree that Putin just went a “bit too far” with this. He had lesser options, like just trying to secure the areas he claimed were being targeted. That said, I could see him thinking that he needed to “go big or go home” with the way things were shaping up—that anything less than taking down Ukraine would be guaranteed failure.
I don’t think he’s crazy, as he’s been preparing for this move for quite a while. I do think he overestimated his ability. But, to be fair, so did a lot of the world. Ironically, better ability might have meant he wouldn’t have done this, as this could very well be an intelligence error.
I agree. Putin is likely to end up with at least some of what he wants.
That was my reaction as well.
If it didn’t work in Afghanistan with Karzai why would it work in Irak?
And concerning Ukraine: They had a puppet collaborationist regime (Yanukovich) that collapsed spectacularly in 2014 during their attempt to set a new world record for corruption. Spoiler: they failed, but not for lack of trying.
Coming back to the OP’s question: If the definition of madness is doing the same and expecting a different outcome, then yes: Putin’s mental health has deteriorated.
Look, don’t even consider this a note, but as the first reply to a long GD post, this comes off like a thread shit. Either refrain from posting, wait a few posts or give some reasons in the future.
If Putin is indeed irrational, he’s taking the entire world to the abyss:
Here’s a thought: an urban environment is the perfect place to use chemical weapons: instead of trying to rout defenders building by building and room by room, you just gas them. My prediction: If Putin is batshit-serious about conquering Ukraine and not giving a damn what the world thinks, if the urban resistance remains too stubborn the Russians will use chemical weapons.
The point is that
a) Putin has suddenly changed in his way of operating, and
b) He has made a hugely misguided, unreasonable, and unforced error
As Andrew Moravcsik, Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton put it:
I got this totally wrong, and almost everybody got it totally wrong. And that’s because the two tools we used to figure out what autocrats are going to do didn’t work.
The first is the historical record. Putin had a 20-year record of being an aggressive, but very risk-averse opportunist. He took maybe 600 casualties in the last decade or two of of warfare compared to the United States that has taken thousands, and in Crimea he took none. Some people claim Ukraine is different, but the first time in Ukraine in 2014, he carefully brought in Russian troops for two weeks and then stopped the war short of his express goals.
So this is a step change in his behavior, and I think it took people by surprise, and that should be worrying.
Now the other way you might want to analyze an autocrat is to get inside information, but we just don’t have that inside information.
What indications are you looking at? There seems to be agreement that Russia has committed 1/2 to 2/3 of its staged forces to the conflict at this point, with nothing to show for it.
I give slightly favoring odds on Russia winning, just out of the pure numbers they’ve mobilized and not yet committed. But this is far from a lock either way, from where I sit.
Your presumption is that because they appear to have suffered some reverses, Putin has miscalculated, his forces are helpless, unmotivated Etc etc.
Now granted a lot of what is happening on the ground is hard to understand (the air mobile operation chief amongst them) but frankly on the face of it, it’s pretty much a battle according to their doctrine.
They don’t do the types of operations western armies do. Deep operations is at (simplyfying immensely) using one (weaker) element to engage and pin the enemy down and then using (perhaps multiple) stronger element to around the enemy positions and encircle them.
In other words, classical Russian doctrine would not have the taking of Kyiv as a priority. It would be tye encirclement and destruction of the formations committed to that region.
Putin could be crazy. He could have horribly misjudged the situation on the ground. But nothing of the events of the few days are evidence one way or the other.
The invasion has failed disastrously in its initial aims, and continues to fail, with no available path to ‘success’.
On a larger scale, Russia has become the pariah of the world, isolated and saddled with devastating economic consequences, which will only ramp up with time.
That’s evidence enough.
Clearly you didn’t read my post.
And the enemy is under no obligation to follow what you think what their aims are or should be.
So basically, Cossack warfare - send a whole bunch of bands of light cavalry to rampage behind the enemy lines.
Alternatively could Putin be a fan of Nixon’s Madman theory?
There is a difference between achieving your military objectives and achieving your strategic objectives.
Achieving your military objectives does not guarantee the triumph of strategic objectives.
And ultimately, the only objectives that matter are the strategic ones.
If Putin wants to install a puppet (like the one he has in Belarus) which is in any way stable, he’s got to perform the magic trick of convincing the Ukrainian people that his puppet is their legitimate government. Interpreting his words, this appears to be his aim.
If he wants to annex the east of the country it’s likely to be at huge costs. There will be a civil war there which is unlikely to be ignored by the west. It won’t solve his problem of having a west-leaning Ukraine on his doorstep and has only melded NATO and the western countries in their hostility towards their country.
If he’s trying to diminish NATO, it’s hard to see how this will play out in his favour - but let’s see.
He might be in some luck if he’s trying to undermine the UN - but as a permanent member of the Security Council with power of veto, I can’t see how that helps Russia in any way.
Might he be trying to destabilise Ukraine so much that NATO would never let it join? That might be an effect but see above as to why Russia still ends up as the loser.
In my opinion he sees Ukraine as a threat to Russia because he sees himself as Russia. So therefore, democracy and freedom in Russia’s closest cultural neighbour are a threat to his autocratic reign and his world view. I think his attempt to crush Ukraine is an act of desperation - the act of a man who feels he is playing in the end game. Nothing else he has done in Ukraine has worked and he feels the country is lost to him. When he annexed Crimea he pushed Ukrainian even further west leaning by removing over 1m Russia-sympathising voters and pissing off the rest of the country. This was a strategic error in my opinion.
I agree with @GreenWyvern’s assessment in the OP that this will eventually destroy Putin (not that I have any special knowledge). Leadership changes in Russia come about through either a palace coup or a revolution.
The question is how long will it take and what will the world have to go through before that moment? It might still be years away - but this is the moment the stone has started rolling down the hill.
For the sake of Russia and the rest of the world I hope it’s soon.
First of all I would like to say that I like your analysis, though not the conclusionas much as I agree with it: Russia has maneuvered itself in a funk. So we all have a problem. Damn.
I’d like to recall that the “puppet” in Belarus was not a puppet all along, it is a complicated relation. Lukaschenko started as closely aligned, but independent country, and his system of corruption power was independent from Putin’s/Russia’s (very symplified here, I am aware). But Lukaschenko’s regime has proved to be unstable, he lost the last elections. Putin sees the writing on the wall: the same can happen in Russia, so he helped him out. Thus Lukaschenko could get away with what can only be described as a coup. Incarcerations, torture, the illegal grounding of a plane to kidnapp a political rival, deploying the army for internal repression… he got away with it. He was an international pariah, but not much worse than he and his country have been all along, and he was still in power! That is the script in Putin’s mind, in my opinion, and nobody in his inner circle contradict him.
The difference between Russia and Belarus is that there is no Über-Putin to rescue Putin the way Putin rescued Lukaschenko when the going gets tough. That may, just may have started.
I am rooting for the Ceaucescu moment. I just reckon that it is not going to be televised.
Thanks for the insight. And this is where the magic trick I spoke of might come in. If he can coerce an existing member of the Ukrainian government to take control of the government, it might just appear to be legitimate. But surely that would be too transparent. Will he be brazen enough to make Zalenskyy an offer he can’t refuse?
I think people are getting way ahead of themselves with some of this. Yes, Ukraine didn’t collapse like Afghanistan and they are doing fairly well. But this is still early days, and Russia hasn’t exactly sent in even all the forces it has staged up for this invasion. They haven’t even sent in most of them, nor are they using all of the assets they have at their disposal. Think the second Iraq invasion or Afghanistan where the US basically was trying invasion on a shoestring budget. I think that the Russians had hoped that a minimal force, backed by their breakaway allies would be enough to kick over the rotting structure of Ukraine, that they would collapse and that Russia could swoop in, take some territory directly and install a new puppet in its place. That hasn’t happened, but the Russians are far from no path to success at this point. It’s just a matter of how much they are willing to pay. IF they want it, Ukraine has no chance to win. IF Russia is willing to pay that level of price.
I definitely agree with this, in principle at least. Putin et al badly misread the situation and badly underestimated the wests response. But there are still players out there that haven’t fully weighed in. China and India spring to mind. Either, but especially China could shift the economic and sanction aspect of this for Russia…if they choose to do so.
To answer your rather long OP, myself I think Putin is simply not as smart as people have thought he was or they have given him a lot more credit than he should have gotten. Kind of like Hitler, who everyone seemed to believe was this genius, but really wasn’t in the end. I don’t think he’s mentally deteriorated, though I think that’s a possibility going forward. I just think that he’s got so many people around him telling him how smart he is, as well as western press and idiots like Trump that he started to believe his own press and in his own infallible genius.