He absolutely and categorically is not winning.
Why?
If I was one of his generals, or oligarchs, I’d be glad to see an end to this war where Russia loses. If Putin was replaced by someone else, I’d be afraid they would be a Putin critic, purging people like me, and then coming up with some sort of stab in the back excuse to restart fighting.
I today finished reading this book which makes the claim that dictators usually survive losing wars (and that democratic leaders often fail to survive, in office, when they win a war, much less when they lose one):
It depends on how you define win.
To me, it looks like Putin thinks he is winning.
Putin has proudly restored Russia as a major player on the world stage, and is making the world respect Russian power…after the West previously dismissed Russia as irrelevant. (Remember the book “the End of history”?)
Russia has succeeded in making all of Europe quake in their boots, afraid of being the next place to get conquered. The Baltics and Finland are seriously worried about their survival. Just a few hours ago, Poland and Romania scrambled their jets to fight off attacks from Russian air force drones.
Putin has managed to conquer almost every piece of territory he chooses to attack. It’s taking a lot longer than he expected, but he is relentlessly continuing, and succeeding.
People often claim that Russia is actually not strong at all, because its economy is weak, its population declining, its future uncertain, etc. But those are problems which will not affect Russia until maybe 20 years from now.
Putin cares about the present.
He is demonstrating his country’s power right now, and expanding the physical territory of Russia right now..
And that’s a win for him, right now.
Blows my mind how people hold Russia to the lowest of standards but the West to the highest of standards.
Russia gets bogged down in Ukraine, suffers 1 million casualties, can’t reach Kyiv in even three years, gets sanctioned, becomes an international pariah, and people claim it’s a Russian victory. The United States suffers just a few thousand deaths in Iraq, captures Baghdad in three weeks, and it’s a “quagmire.”
I don’t understand why Russia’s D+ gets to be valedictorian while America’s A- is a failing grade.
Because Russia is perfectly satisfied to get a grade which you call D+., but they don’t.
They don’t care about losing a million casualties (most of whom are not “real” Russians, anyway (i.e residents of Moscow).They don’t care about economic sanctions (the lifestyle in Moscow isn’t suffering much after 3 years of war). They don’t care about some westerners calling them an international pariah, while Russia feels strong enough to threaten sending its tanks, drones and artillery and soldiers across any border it chooses, while the country on the other side is too weak to stop them.
Except they can’t. Other than the small gains in the first few weeks of the war, Russia has bogged down. The entire might of the Russian army is being held back by Ukraine going on 3+ years now. If Ukraine can do that, then Russia has no chance at all against the rest of Europe. Given the capabilities Russia has shown so far, it’s likely that Poland, on it’s own and if they really wanted to, could probably conquer Belarus fairly quickly and then present a real threat to invade Russia. Add in Germany, France, the UK, and the rest of Europe, and even without US help (and barring nukes and Chinese intervention on Russia’s behalf), Russia wouldn’t stand a chance. My money would be on Moscow falling within a year. Should Turkey go in as well, probably even less than 6 months.
The idea that Russia is somehow in a better geopolitical or economic position now as a result of its failed attempt to invade Ukraine is laughable. Just as a small example, look at what happened in Syria. Putin lost a key ally because Russia was unable to aid his friend Bashar al-Assad.
Russia looks weak as hell. They’ve been, at best for them, stalemated by a much, much smaller neighbor they invaded.
The only saving grace for Russia is the pathetic response of the combined West. But the West still has plenty of economic, logistical, and industrial capacity remaining, while Russia’s has been teetering on the brink for at least a year.
War, as always, is logistics and morale, and even with the West’s weak assistance, Ukraine still has an advantage in both. It just may take years longer to bear out if the assistance doesn’t improve.
That’s the exact opposite of what he has done. People used to fear and respect Russia, before this invasion. But the Russia that people were fearing and respecting would have conquered Kyiv within the week. The fact that they failed to do that is exactly what has revealed to the world that Russia is not, in fact, a major player on the world stage any more. No matter what happens, Russia has already lost the war. All that remains to be seen at this point is whether Ukraine will also lose it.
Putin is winning in Trump’s head. Remember Helsinki 2018, and Alaska last month? For Putin, that counts a lot.
We legitimately know people in Moscow and they would think this post is bonkers. This is not how actual Muscovites view the situation at all.
Thanks, I didnt know that.
What is the mood in Moscow?And how can it be measured? Obviously in a country with no freedom of speech there won’t be open demonstrations against the war. Is the economic effect of the war significantly affecting civilian life?
I work with a handful of designers who live in Russia (none in Moscow) and they are just resigned to the fact that their leaders are making horrible decisions that the ordinary Russian can’t do anything about. As an American, I can relate.
To hear what some ordinary folks in Russia have to say about the Ukraine war and other political issues, check out this fascinating series of person-on-the-street interviews on Youtube:
(Spoiler alert: Their views are all over the map!)
The way things are going, I expect Poland to organize a “coalition of the willing” from among European NATO countries and have a go at Russia. There is a long history of Russia beating up on Poland, but Poland did score a win against Russia in 1618 and that’s enough to serve as inspiration. I very much doubt they’d mess with Belarus unless Russia brought it into the conflict. I can’t see Poland starting trouble with Belarus. They’d go right into Ukraine, push the Russians out, and end this damn thing.
“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” — attributed to Napoleon
Putin is sinking Russia—which was already in dire economic straits and in the midst of demographic collapse—into a morass that it cannot shoot its way out of. The best thing Poland and the other European NATO members could do is provide the arms, materiel, and intelligence to Ukraine to keep it fighting while containing Russia on all other fronts. Invading Russia would overextend even Poland and get it mired in protracted action with little expectation of actually being able to depose Putin without high risk of instigating a nuclear conflict.
Stranger
Yeah. In a conventional only hypothetical war, I’d bet on Poland plus Ukraine being able to reach Moscow on their own. But as you say, in the real world there’s nukes to worry about, and probably China entering the war on Russia’s side if Poland were to make any significant progress into Russian territory. That such things even need to be mentioned shows how far Russia has fallen. They are no longer a serious world power.
I question even that premise. Poland has a pretty decent military for its GDP and population size, and has been progressively modernizing but it isn’t even in the same class as Britain or France, and moreover is built for defense, not invasion over a thousand kilometers distant. Unless it was limiting military action to occupying Kaliningrad it would either have to invade Belarus or get permission to transit through Lithuania and Latvia, putting these countries directly in the line of fire for response. Russia is pretty weak, but it is historically also a really problematic country to directly attack as various overconfident military leaders have discovered to their peril.
Stranger
Do they even have the logistics capability to go all the way (1200 KMs) to Moscow?
I wa considering a scenario where they join up with Ukraine so that they only have to fight through the last 1/3 or so of the distance, with the first 2/3 being through Ukrainian held territory.