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Russian troops invading Ukraine
The tragedy unfolding in Ukraine has brought some unity to a divided world. There is a collective outrage, a will to act strongly together to show Russian President Vladimir Putin that his brutal actions will not stand.
But the world is stopping short of military intervention. When it comes to the actual fighting, Ukraine is on its own. This leads many to believe that the outcome of Putin’s war is a foregone conclusion: The Russian army is too strong and it’s surely only a matter of time before Ukraine crumbles to its inevitable fate as a puppet state ruled by the Kremlin.
Putin underestimated the will of the Ukrainian people to fight for their country, and he overestimated the strength of his own forces.
But what we are actually seeing on the ground in Ukraine is one of the greatest military misadventures in recent memory, and it is entirely due to one man’s hubris.
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was flawed in its aims, conception, and execution, and it is doomed to failure. If few were able to predict the attack, it’s largely because a full-scale invasion of Ukraine is such an insanely dumb idea because it’s a war that Putin cannot win.
It’s important that we try to understand why Putin felt the need to start a war in Europe at this particular time. Until about a week ago, it was tempting for many to believe that Putin was provoked into action by the eastward expansion of NATO. Russia’s security was threatened. We had “poked the Russian bear.”
This war was never about NATO or the West, but instead about Ukraine, in its current democratic, West-facing form, being simply unacceptable to Putin.
Ukraine represents Putin’s last hope of historic greatness, a goal that has been slipping out of his grasp for the last twenty years. The 2004-2005 Orange Revolution startled him. The idea of a “color revolution” spreading to Moscow terrified Putin and led to him tighten his grip domestically and deepen his interference in Ukrainian politics.
Putin’s favored candidate for Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, gained power as the Orange Revolution fractured and faltered. In turn, Yanukovych’s corrupt, kleptocratic reign came to an abrupt end with the 2014 Maidan Revolution. This was a further shock to the system for Putin, and his reaction was swift. His “little green men” annexed Crimea and then moved in on the Donbas, the industrial East of the country.
While Putin’s first invasion in 2014 was opportunistic, he was actually enacting a plan that had been around for some time. And it’s likely that the blueprint for the current invasion was drawn up some time ago and had been lying around.
But why risk everything on such a foolhardy venture? Unfortunately, we can only guess.
Several people who have known Putin for years have noted a change in him: Allegedly, he is no longer thinking and acting rationally. This is perhaps no surprise when you consider that he has been a virtual dictator for twenty-plus years. He sits alone at the top of a “power vertical.” There is no Politburo to rein him in, no checks and balances on his power. Many of his political opponents have come to grisly ends.
Add to this the extreme COVID-19 restrictions that Putin has placed on himself, rarely appearing in public. Notice the ridiculously long tables at which he entertains visiting world leaders such as French President Emmanuel Macron. This enforced isolation has given Putin time to brood, and his view on Ukraine has hardened as it has become more detached from reality. In a delirious 5,000-word essay on Ukraine he published last July, Putin developed the theme that Ukraine is an artificial construct, and that Russia and Ukraine were “as one.”
Putin’s increasing detachment was no doubt a factor in his decision to invade Ukraine. Either he wasn’t getting accurate intelligence, or he wasn’t listening to it. Putin gambled that the Russian speakers of eastern Ukraine would welcome the Russian army as liberators. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Putin underestimated the will of the Ukrainian people to fight for their country, and he overestimated the strength of his own forces. Despite overwhelming numbers, many Russian soldiers are poorly trained and poorly motivated. Much of their equipment is old and in bad condition. The Ukrainian army, by contrast, is smaller (though still one of the largest in Europe), but its troops are well-trained and battle-hardened.
Putin’s aims are to completely neutralize and demilitarize Ukraine, remove Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and install a pro-Russian puppet government. Even if he could achieve one of these goals by force of arms, he could not hope to make them stick. His invasion force, thought to be around 150,000, may be large enough for a military victory, but this force is pitifully small for the task of subduing a population of forty-four million people.
Each of Putin’s long-term ambitions has failed. He wanted to stop the expansion of NATO, and now Finland and Sweden are considering joining. Germany is increasing its defense spending and has concrete plans to reduce its dependence on Russian oil and gas.
Putin wanted to bring Ukraine back into the Russian fold, but he has accelerated its pathway toward European Union and NATO membership. He wanted to sow division and destabilize the West, particularly the United States, but the West has never been so united. He has destroyed his own economy and made Russia a pariah state.
Now to the invasion itself. It is clear that the Russian military command was as surprised about the war as the rest of the world. Although it had amassed huge forces at Ukraine’s border, it had not planned the logistics for a full invasion. And furthermore, Russia chose a blitzkrieg tactic, attacking on four fronts and aiming to occupy Kyiv within three or four days.
There’s a military axiom that plans never survive the first contact with the enemy. Ukraine’s army has held the invaders off, slowed them down, attacked their supply lines, and inflicted significant damage. It is thought that as many as 9,000 Russian troops were killed in the first eight days of war. Compare this to the 2,500 American servicemen who lost their lives over a twenty-year period in Afghanistan.
Stories abound of Russian divisions running out of food and fuel, and of troops deserting their vehicles or surrendering. It would be wrong to say that this means the Ukrainians are currently winning, but we can say with confidence that the war so far has gone badly for Putin.
So what happens now? Sadly, we cannot hope that Putin will make the strategic choice of backing down; it is not in his nature. There are no obvious challengers to Putin’s throne, and the Russian people seem to be cowed by his tight control on society and the media.
On coming to power at the turn of the millennium, Putin made an unspoken social contract with the Russian people. After the wild Yeltsin years in the 1990s, he promised stability and security. He would bring back the country’s self-respect and with it the power it had lost when the Soviet Union dissolved. In return, he asked everyone to turn a blind eye as he slowly turned Russia into an autocratic police state and a kleptocracy benefiting himself and his cronies.
This social contract has now been shattered. Thousands of Russians have poured into the streets in Moscow and St. Petersburg, risking arrest and worse. The Russian people are being forced to look at the death and destruction their leader has wrought as sanctions crash the country’s economy. Russians are seeing their nation turned into a pariah state, denied financial, sporting, and cultural contact with the rest of the world. And Russian casualties are rising to unprecedented levels.
At some point, there will be a cry of “Enough.” We can only hope for its swift arrival.