The war in Ukraine lasts for more than nine months, and it is unlikely that it will end soon. The president of the aggressor state, Vladimir Putin cannot win against Ukraine, while domestically people start protesting against his dimensions.
The Russian dictator, with his huge ego, sees no way to lose face. Putin fell into his own trap by launching a catastrophic war aggression, and he cannot achieve his initial goals due to Ukraine’s powerful resistance.
On the one hand, maintaining power in a Russia that is on the edge of becoming a bankrupt and failed state will only lead to additional economic destruction and eventually spark massive rebellions across the regions of the Russian Federation. And no tanks or gulags will be able to suppress rebellions.
On the other hand, if Putin is fortunate enough to avoid the anger in his inner circle, an eventual transfer of power will almost certainly mean going to a war crimes tribunal.
The failure of Putin’s plan
Putin tries to achieve at least some success on the battlefield. As a result, despite many significant tactical errors that have given the Ukrainian army the upper hand in this fight, Russia is pouring in vain even more financial and human resources onto the battlefield.
Moscow recognizes how badly it underestimated the level of resistance that Ukrainians would put up to stop the invasion. Instead Russian mobilization ordered by Putin, hasn’t been a success so far.
According to one source, almost 1 million people have left Russia since the beginning of the mobilisation. The second source, in the administration of the President of the Russian Federation, reports that between 600,000 and 700,000 Russians have left the country. The magazine’s source emphasised that it is not yet clear what percentage of people left the country as tourists.
With the Russian government touting that at least 50,000 of the recently drafted are now in Ukraine, a long list of complaints is emerging: Lack of leadership from mid-ranking officers, tactics that lead to heavy casualties, non-existent training, promised payments not received.
There are also logistical difficulties, as reported by soldiers, their families and Russian military bloggers: Insufficient uniforms, poor food, a lack of medical supplies.
And there are discipline issues, with some families complaining their men face charges of desertion and are being held in basements in occupied Ukrainian territory.
As soldiers relay their plight back home, their complaints are being amplified by wives and mothers through social media and in direct appeals to regional authorities.
More often than not, the families don’t get a response.
Journalist Anastasia Kashevarova, whose Telegram channel has more than 200,000 subscribers, said she’d received hundreds of messages from relatives of fighters. “Groups are abandoned without communication, without the necessary weapons, without medicines, naturally without artillery. No one knows who is on their right, who is on the left, who is in the rear,” she posted.
“Instead of being listened to, they are threatened with punishment, a tribunal, and sent back to the front line with four magazines of ammunition and a grenade launcher with a few shots.”
The British Defense Ministry claims that troops are sent off to fight with “minimal or no training.” Poorly trained and quickly killed in action it follows that Russian soldiers are not ready to participate in the war.
Putting the Kremlin and its collaborators through their paces
In addition to the extraordinary bravery of Ukrainian soldiers, the EU must take action to cripple the aggressor’s economy. So far, despite Western sanctions, Moscow has been able to maintain export restrictions, and reduced diplomatic representation or the blocklisting of some prominent leaders has not seriously impacted the Russian economic viability.
Every time Russia finds a way to bypass sanctions. Obviously, Europe has not yet taken effective measures to influence Russia, there has not been a powerful blow. At the same time, Russians survive among the restrictions and obey Putin’s power. It is clear that more time is needed to feel the full effect of sanctions imposed on the aggressor country.
Strengthening trade with underdeveloped countries, the Kremlin ignores the sanctions imposed by the West.
European leaders need to start thinking wisely and using all of the available power, as opposed to simply stepping up the sanctions that are currently in place.
The suffering that Ukrainians are going through due to the Russian invasion
The influence of sanctions, not their quantity, will be the key to their effectiveness. The West has to use statecraft that will weaken the impact of the Kremlin.
The only way to stop Russia from undermining the current sanctions is by waging an all-out, ironclad campaign that makes any cross-border travel impossible.
To significantly reduce what Russia currently enjoys, it will require active collaboration between western countries and several developing nations.
Developing nations should decide between favorable relations with the West and Russia.
Russia is still a tiny economy despite its enormous territory, and it is evident that developing countries gain more from its trade relations with the West.
Leaders of the developing world must be urged not to endanger these ties by developing close relations with an unstable Putin regime that is disintegrating right before our eyes.
Additionally, developing countries should be aware that the money made from the sale of Russia’s abundant resources goes directly toward Putin’s war machine, which has murdered tens of thousands of Ukrainians. And at the same time, Russia’s war sharply increased the cost of food and fuel globally.
Putin’s declining support
One of the many problems with autocratic government is the inability to distinguish between genuine allegiance and coerced public support. It is more important than ever for a genuinely insecure Putin to establish his credibility as the nation’s leader as Russian soldiers in Ukraine lose ground.
The military call-up served as a litmus test for devotion that exposed many Russians’ genuine lack of commitment to his rule. Indicating their accurate opinions toward the Russian war in Ukraine, potential recruits spent their entire life savings to flee to another country.
Although young Russian men were running away from the Russian government, the full-scale invasion was justified as required to defend Russia from the Ukrainian authorities.
State-sponsored propagandists are struggling to explain the invasion to their domestic audience. Since the start of the war, Putin’s approval rating has understandably plummeted, with every socioeconomic level suffering due to his poor decision.
Even several of the wealthy oligarchs who Putin has helped have publicly criticized the invasion, which was followed by the strange deaths of several of them. The battle has revealed how unwilling Russians are by nature to carry out their obligations, dispelling the illusion that their force is the second-strongest in the world.
Putin has resorted to actions beyond the pale in his desperation to restore his reputation, including threatening nuclear attacks and exploiting the most recent attack on the Kerch bridge as justification for stepping up the shelling of Ukrainian cities. These instances are undoubtedly not Putin’s most recent examples of increasingly unpredictable behavior.
Putin has done irreparable harm to Russia that will last for years, if not decades, by essentially driving out a sizable portion of the country’s economically productive population and uniting the whole world against him.
While the current brain drain deprives state coffers of crucial tax income, the slowdown in corporate activity is harming financing and consumer confidence. Putin also guaranteed the future of Russia in the form of reparations, which the state will be forced to pay in an already difficult situation.
