A quick summary of the last one and a half months on the Eastern Front.
It's obvious by now that crazy or not, Putin started this war on very bad information regarding both Ukraine and the quality of his own army. Back in February, when he was blabbering about drug-addicted nazis in the Ukrainian government, I was wondering who he really thinks will eat this crap. Apparently, many people (see the previous post) and even he got high on his own supply and really believed that the Ukrainians would welcome the Russians as liberators from the tyranny of nazis. Otherwise, there is no explanation why he launched a war with at most a third of the force that would have been required against a country of 40 million people and of the biggest landmass in Europe.
Another huge blow to the stomach for Putin is the performance of the Russian army, which has been abysmal. The fearsome and modernized military machine turned out to be a Potemkin army. Which, in the large scheme of things, is unsurprising. The army reflects the whole Russian society. Corrupt and ineffective, where advancement is a matter of connections and bribery instead of real achievement. Incredible sums of modernization apparently were spent on the top brass's yachts and dachas. Good. I hope they keep to their traditions in the future.
This would be a great advertisement for democracy if it wasn't likely to be wasted on most people: in a dictatorship, eventually, only yes-men will stay around the boss, and no one who would tell him he lost the plot. Putin is not yet moving around non-existing legions on the map like Hitler did at the end, but there are similarities.
The West did much, much better than anyone had anticipated. British/American intelligence knew about Russian plans well ahead, and the White House chose to disclose the information on the fly on military moves and preparations for false-flag operations to pre-empt the Kremlin's attempts to control the narrative. The Biden administration has also done a stellar job in pushing the Europeans to get their act together (and even letting them take the lead). Which they did, amazingly. They cut most Russian banks off SWIFT, froze most of Putin's war chest, leveled unprecedented sanctions against Russia, and after a couple of days of fucking around, they started to deliver weapons to Ukraine. It's not all rosy, Zhelensky is justifiably exasperated, the Germans are still funding the Russian war machine, but the EU's reaction and handling of the situation are still much, much better than anyone had dared say before. It is hard to overstate.
Another thing that defied all expectations is Ukraine itself, which has been doing something absolutely amazing. Not only did they stall the Russian army, but they also forced it to give up on taking Kyiv completely. Now the Russians scramble to focus on the southern front and try to pretend that this was their plan all along, but that only makes them pathetic losers, not just losers. In Western media, the early panic slowly had given place first to the hope that the Ukrainians may be able to hold the Russians and force them to the negotiating table, and then to the view that they can win the war. Not only getting an acceptable settlement but actually winning the war. I know nothing about warfare but this is a seismic shift in the sentiment of experts who do. One exception is Edward Luttwak who held this opinion from the start.
What about Putin's domestic arena? As far as I know, he enjoys popularity at home. Annexing Crimea was supported by Russian society as a whole (not exactly the tale of the oppressed innocents living under the cruel leader), and even now he is experiencing a popularity boost. In times of danger, there is a strong rally 'round the flag effect, and Putin surely does everything he can to propel it along the way forward. And whoever is not enthusiastic enough can decide between pretense and prison. So revolution is not what's gonna topple Putin.
Who at this point must be desperate. He managed to completely humiliate the Russian army, unify the EU, revive NATO, cut off the main line of revenue for his country and ensure decades of hatred for Russia in Ukraine. He must be frantically groping for something that he could sell at home as a victory. Some say that his best option is to provoke NATO to enter the fray by committing war crimes (check), launching chemical attacks, or employing tactical nuclear weapons. A war against the historical enemy would be a rallying cry for even unenthusiastic Russians to close the lines, and even defeat can be sold as some sort of victory, at least a moral one. Losing against the mighty NATO may present him as a tragic but valiant hero of the Motherland. Losing against puny Ukraine would make him a joke. It's not entirely unlikely that it would prompt someone in the inner circle to come out and say to the rest: "the old man made a mistake".
Luckily, not sending NATO troops to the ground is the common view now. Instead, the West should be churning out weapons like sausages and sending those to Ukrainians. Plus aid, food, money, medical assistance, and anything they need. And put on an extra sweater if needed, if that's not too much to ask. Go Ukraine!
0 Comments:
Post a Comment