By the time you read this, the fast-moving events in Russia may have outpaced this column . . . and Vladimir Putin. The latest reports say that the Wagner Group’s charismatic chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin has announced he is “turning his columns around.” This after his forces came within 100-to-150 miles of Moscow without resistance, indicating Putin’s weakness. Yet something has changed.
Perhaps some in the Russian command had given Prigozhin mixed messages and then chose not to support Prigozhin, i.e., he counted on support that did not materialize. Why else would he begin a military move toward Moscow, triggering the city to mobilize against a coup? You can bet that Putin will purge any military generals he suspects of questionable loyalties, and he will err on the side of caution, so anyone remotely suspected will be demoted, or in some cases imprisoned or even liquidated as an example to others.
We have a game of chicken. Many in the military high command waited for the first domino to fall, but no one wanted to be first, or even in the initial group. Remember, if you start a coup, especially in Russia and against Putin, you must succeed, or you are dead. Meanwhile, Prigozhin anticipated greater support, because he knew of dissatisfaction among some in the Putin military high command, increasingly weary of the Ukraine war, and being scapegoated; and the high command has been embarrassed and humiliated with the number of Russian casualties.
Putin sold the war as a quickie. Not only has that not happened, but Russia has become ostracized and isolated. Putin’s rationale for the war was that Ukraine threatened Russia. Last year, I spoke to one Russian citizen who insisted Ukraine was planning to invade Russia. Prigozhin felt his Wagner Group was having to pick up the pieces for a failed military strategy, and that the Russian military was not adequately supporting his mercenaries. Beyond infighting over military tactics, Prigozhin has publicly denounced Putin’s rationale for the war as a lie. He can’t take back his words that Putin tricked Russian citizens into the war.
But a deal? Putin is unforgiving. Whatever trust that existed between Putin and his former long-time ally Prigozhin is gone. We have reached the point of no return for Prigozhin, who knows that Putin’s modus operandi is assassination. Whatever deal Prigozhin and Putin (or his surrogate) reached is unlikely to hold. At the very least, Ukraine in the short-term is the winner, now that Russia’s disunity has reached such a high profile, further demoralizing Putin’s military.
Some will argue that if Putin remains, he wins because he has made further challengers to him likely to think twice. But Putin is the loser in this chaos in which he is demeaned before the world. What our intelligence community knew is now for the world to see — Putin’s grip on power is tenuous; he lost the oligarchs a long time ago, and loyalty to him among the top military and senior intelligence chiefs is more out of fear than conviction.
If Putin doesn’t take action to consolidate power, he is weak. And the more action he takes to quell dissent, the more he highlights discord. This can be compared to Soviet miscalculation in the Cold War; the authorities finally permitted emigration of Soviet Jews, to get rid of “the troublemakers” and to soften the movement. But the more Jews allowed to emigrate, the more others applied to emigrate. Worse, others in the Soviet Union were emboldened.
Consider Prigozhin’s dilemma. If he goes back into battle against Ukraine, perhaps he keeps his end of a supposed deal, but then he takes casualties, making his forces less formidable in challenging Moscow. This is a truce with Putin that will not help.
So far, developments confirm my own analysis more than a year ago that Russia, perceived as quasi-legitimate before the Ukraine debacle, would with the invasion become a pariah nation, and remain so as long as Putin remained in power. Putin is a liability to Russia. But he cannot be thrown out by voters, so the only alternative is a coup. Though Ukraine exaggerates its victories and inflates Russian casualties, and world media tilts toward Ukraine, it’s also true that Russia has exaggerated its victories and understated its casualties. The truth is somewhere in between what both sides claim. Public opinion polling in Russia is notoriously unreliable, because many are afraid to say what they think, but it’s likely that support for the “short” war is crumbling.
And I had indicated shortly after the invasion — and so predicated — that Putin’s days were numbered, I thought within a year. If Putin now survives what amounts to what seemed like an unconventional (that is, originating outside the formal military) military coup that is now supposedly not occurring, he is weakened even while retaining power. In theory, the odds favor his survival, but probabilities change rapidly in this kind of situation, because there is the question of momentum, which has been with the mercenary Wagner Group’s charismatic chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, when he took the initiative. But he needed key elements of Russia’s military to turn against Putin. That could have happened only if Prigozhin convinced senior generals that he holds Putin, and not them, responsible for blunders in the Ukraine war. In this kind of coup, no one high in the government wants to be on the losing side.
My prediction of Putin’s fall, though premature (we are past the one year mark), was reasonable. The oligarchs were skeptical of the invasion, then opposed it. Russia’s military leaders and the intelligence chiefs blamed each other for the supposed unforeseen heavy Ukraine resistance. That kind of finger-pointing and feuding does not make for stability. On the surface, the military and intelligence leaders were loyal to Putin, but beneath the surface there was and is growing resentment. Senior Russian military leaders were divided over prospects for a supposed quick victory. Then they claimed faulty intelligence. Meanwhile, it seems intelligence assessments were not entirely forthright because of the fear that Putin would, as the saying goes, kill the messenger bearing bad news.
All this seems odd given that even non-experts were aware of Ukraine’s nationalism and the spirit of its people, and its military capabilities, though the amount of outside military support to Ukraine is greater than anticipated, especially given Biden who our enemies regard as impotent. Though clueless Joe Biden offered Zelensky a plane out (that was Biden’s first impulse), the Ukrainian leader rebuffed Biden, then inspired his people and became a media star. Remember it was Biden who did next to nothing while the Russians spent months engaging their forces toward Ukraine and preparing for the invasion. Biden was too little, too late with sanctions. And remember his equivocal statement about how he might react to the Russian invasion. Just as Biden’s forever theoretical Tony Blinken now gives a go-ahead to China to invade Taiwan, so Biden and his team implicitly gave Putin a go-ahead, and the result is a war that has depleted U.S. military supplies while Biden’s priority for the Pentagon remains woke nonsense.
The experts on the Soviet Union never predicted its seemingly abrupt downfall. Nor similarly have they anticipated the limitations of Putin’s hold on power . Within weeks of the invasion, and certainly within the first 90 days, cracks appeared in Russia’s support of Putin. We saw it in his credibility gap: though most Russians accepted Putin’s rationale for Ukraine, a growing number of Russians did not. There was dissension, and in public. And men left Russia to avoid being conscripted into military service.
Whatever the reasons or the background, Putin erred in raising expectations of a quick victory, marketing the war on the promise of immediate gratification. Despite state control of the Russian media and internet manipulation and censorship, word spread among Russians that all was not well. Putin himself raised the profile of this coup and thus legitimized it.
Still, the results of a prolonged war in Ukraine remain questionable. How long can Ukraine hold on, in a war of depletion? And what about Russia, no longer the Soviet Union? This war has shown the world that while Russia remains a nuclear threat, its conventional military is not ready for prime time, and it has stretched its military resources.
Putin never would have invaded Ukraine if Trump were around. That’s because though Trump awkwardly and stupidly praised Putin, the Trump administration policies on Russia were hardly soft. Trump’s national security advisers, though realists and pragmatic, were not admirers of Putin; though they regarded China as more of a threat, they were hardliners on Putin. Remember that while Trump’s volatility and unpredictability are troubling to even some of his supporters, they give pause to the Bad Guys. Old-time Communist hardliners like Putin want stability and predictability. That’s why, when I was in the Soviet Union at the same time the Islamists in Iran seized power, I learned firsthand that the Soviets did not celebrate the revolution that ended the rule of the pro-Western Shah; rather, they worried about an awakening of Muslims within the adjacent Soviet areas. The Communists then, and Putin now, want secure knowledge on who their friends and enemies are. Putin wants to anticipate chess moves; he could not with Trump, he thought he could with Biden. And in a sense he was right. Biden’s first impulse was for Zelensky to cut and run.
But Biden is a clown, a joke. He has always been a lightweight, never the brightest bulb in the Senate, and as president he is more likely to validate major decisions made by others than to make those decisions himself. Thus, we were and are put into a dangerous situation in foreign policy and national security, not only in general but specifically with regard to Putin. Many wars arise because of miscalculation, and it’s easy to miscalculate U.S. policy under the feckless and incompetent Biden, whose humiliating and unplanned exit from Afghanistan telegraphed to Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, et al. that we have a bumbling fool as commander-in-chief.
So here we are, with Putin, who lives in the shadow of the former Soviet Empire.
The proverbial Emperor has no clothes. He acts as if he presides over the former Soviet Union, but he does not. The USSR is gone! The FSB may be the successor to the KGB, but it is not the KGB. There is no Communist ideology that rationalizes and binds governmental entities. Russia now is all about Putin. In some ways, he is the Wizard of Oz.
His invasion of Ukraine was based on ego and hubris, nostalgia and delusion.
Ego and hubris? Look at Biden, a lifetime of failed presidential bids, he was put out to pasture, then COVID appeared to legitimize his evasive non-campaign in 2020, from a political bunker in a secure, undisclosed location. Thus, Biden was an accidental president as much as Trump was. Trump won because Hillary’s inept campaign stopped polling and reduced spending in key battleground states that ultimately, narrowly in terms of popular votes, but dispositively in electoral votes, determined the election. Four years later, Biden won because of Trump, a caricature of Trump himself: that is, Trump’s record and achievements were outstanding, but the election was a referendum on Trump the man; meanwhile, a complicit deep state, a corrupt social media, and biased news media sealed the deal for Biden.
Biden does not know what he is doing. Instead of supporting our military to perform its mission, he insists on diversity, equity, inclusion, and all the woke nonsense. Morale is down. Recruitment is down. Generals are promoted if they are loyal to wokeness, not because they are strong and capable leaders. North Korea is headed by a maniac. Iran remains in the hands of extremists who also want nuclear capability. Russia’s leader is unstable and lives in the past. China has strong leaders and is the main long-term threat to America.
We live in a perilous world.
