Thanks to the incredible resilience and heroism of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the insane support of the entire society, Russia and its supposedly powerful army have finally mired in the Ukrainian black soil, massively fertilizing them with their soldiers. But Vladimir Putin has never considered human lives, especially Russian ones, so he is trying to continue the offensive.
Blitzkrieg – the capture of Kyiv in three days – completely failed. The Ukrainian army destroyed more than $3 billion worth of Russian military equipment. Human losses already predominate in both Chechen campaigns and have exceeded the 10,000 mark. Russia is in complete isolation, the economy is going to hell and all that remains is to block social networks and the last free media.
But Putin still says that the operation is going well and according to plan, continuing to shell peaceful Ukrainian cities.
Difficult negotiations
In a recent conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron, Putin said the situation would escalate if the Ukrainians did not accept his terms. “President Macron expects the worst to come, given what President Putin has told him,” the Elysee Palace said after the conversation.
Putin's conditions are the recognition of the so-called “LDNR” within the Luhansk and Donetsk regions and the occupation of Crimea. It is clear that Ukraine will never agree to this under any circumstances.
The neutral status and refusal to join NATO, which the Kremlin is talking about, can be discussed. Considering how the alliance is now, as a structure, and the countries that are not members of it, help Ukraine (in fact, in no way), we won’t lose anything in particular. But everything else is red lines for the Ukrainian state, which will repaint all the current heroic resistance to the invader.
In search of pseudo-victories
However, the Ukrainian army is no stranger to breaking the plans of the enemy. Russia has already thrown into battle 90% of the troops gathered around our state, but has not achieved significant results. The possibilities for further escalation of aggression are very limited, especially given the complete lack of motivation for the Russians to fight.
– The entire ground army of the Russian Federation is 280 thousand soldiers. 80 thousand are conscripts and 200 thousand contract soldiers. Regarding the latter, there is a lack of staffing. And that is why the Russian Federation is forced to round up all the ground forces in Ukraine. In addition, they pulled SOBR from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which is very unusual. Officially, the Russians say they can deploy up to 3 million soldiers. Hardly. People won't leave, they will run away. Information comes quickly that the soldiers here are starving. In Kharkiv, they surrender for a loaf of bread, others drain fuel from equipment so as not to go on the offensive, – says military expert Igor Koziy.
Russia's problems with the logistics of the war – the supply of fuel and food – are even more than purely military ones, the aggressor will not stand the game for a long time, so Putin now needs something that can be called a victory and turn the bait.
ReadRussia's losses in ten days of war against Ukraine exceeded 11 thousand people – General Staff
He even began to tell that “the work to destroy the military infrastructure of Ukraine, the air defense system is almost completed.” Moreover, immediately after this statement by Putin, only in Nikolaev they reported on the sale of 4 aggressor helicopters.
What Putin could attribute to victory is the overland route from Donbass to Crimea. Actually, so far he has come closest to fulfilling this task. But Ukraine continues the heroic defense of Mariupol in this direction, and most importantly, Putin will not succeed in creating any new “people's republic” in the south of Ukraine. This is better demonstrated in Melitopol, Berdyansk, Energodar and Kherson, temporarily occupied by the enemy, where local residents go to mass protests against armed invaders, preventing propaganda from creating a myth about the liberators of the “Russian world”. There can be no question of any effective control over the occupied territories under such conditions.
Domestic black swans
And without what can be imagined as a victory for the Russians, Putin could face other problems.
– An interesting question is how long the power of the Russian dope machine will last. In Russia, two factors can overlap one by one. Firstly, it is more than 10,000 dead, who one way or another will return home in coffins. Despite the multi-million population of Russia, this is a challenge. Secondly, the coffins will be accompanied by a deterioration in the economic condition – the inability to pay for goods, a sharp jump in the dollar exchange rate, a lack of opportunity to somehow correct the situation at one’s own discretion, – notes political scientist Yevgeny Magda.
But in addition to the coffins, the surviving military, whom their command openly deceived, will also return to Russia. In Ukraine, no one was waiting for them with flowers; on the contrary, they found themselves in conditions of a virtual guerrilla war and severe opposition from society. We ended up not for three days, without food and normal living conditions. Here, even in the silent Russian society, questions may arise.
Although it is still extremely naive to hope for a popular uprising in Russia against Putin.
– The analysis carried out by numerous researchers shows that political changes in the Russian Federation are impossible due to the “Russian Maidan”, i.e. from below, because Russian society is atomized, dispersed, intimidated, has no experience of resistance, is deceived by propaganda, has no critical mass (especially in relation to the anti-Putin agenda). Political changes in the Russian Federation are possible only from above, as a result of the actions of various powerful subjects, as a result of a palace coup, political expert Valery Pekar believes.
It is said that the keys to victory usually lie in the same place as the keys to war. And it just might be about Russia.
The absence of a blitzkrieg and the crushing sanctions of the West could not but shake the faith of the Russian elite in Putin. The wealth of the richest Russian businessmen has decreased by almost $40 billion during the week of the war. The main beneficiaries of the current Russian system – top-ranking officials, heads of state corporations, the so-called deputies of the Duma and the Federation Council, governors, multi-star generals of the army, the FSB, the GRU are losing villas in Italy, deposits in Switzerland and massively take their families to where they still receive – predominantly in the UAE.
“Now fear and frustration reigns in this elite group. The main word in the offices of the Kremlin, Lubyanka and Staraya Square now is that he deceived us. Putin nullified their entire sweet life with the Russian-Ukrainian war, making their money and their villas in the best places in the world inaccessible to them, and loyalty is required even more, despite the fact that complicity in this war makes many of them war criminals and objects of attention by name the Hague Tribunal. They did not agree with Putin. It will be handed over in the coming days. The masses of Russia are silent, there will be no popular revolution. And there will be, and very soon, an apex intra-elite coup, predicts Russian historian and political scientist Andrei Zubov.
Russia really knows many examples of such palace coups – the removal of Khrushchev in 1964, the death of Emperor Paul I in 1801, or the strange death of Stalin in March 1953. It is not surprising that Putin now hides in a bunker in the Urals, does not hold personal meetings and keeps even the most devoted associates at a distance of 5 meters from the table. But you can't run forever. As President Volodymyr Zelensky says, “death to runners”!
