The Russian Army Has Failed. But Putin Cannot End the War As Is And Survive

As the Alaska summit with Trump approaches, Putin is fighting for his life. 

His army has failed, his navy non-existent, his air force reduced to terror bombing of Ukrainian civilians. He probably believes he can buy Trump with promises of real estate deals and cash payouts. And he is probably at least partially correct. But the Ukrainians are not going to give up - and Putin no longer has the strength to suppress them. Meanwhile, the Kremlin elite are waiting for their opportunity. The upcoming meeting feels like a sell-out, for good reason, but Putin's weakness is a wild card. JL

Garry Kasparov interviews George Friedman in The Atlantic:

Russia is no longer a military threat to Europe. Putin has failed. The Russian army has failed. It is not a force to be threatened with. It is now descended to terror bombings in Kyiv. The problem is that if the war ends at the current terms, Putin is a dead man. Putin has no organized opposition. He’s not surrounded by a central committee or a presidium that will look at him and say, You have to go. There’s no way that another leader can emerge, and Putin is fighting for his life. He cannot allow the war to end on the terms it is. It cannot allow the war to cost a million Russian lives, and this is all they have.

When I look at the situation here, I see a normal geopolitical shift taking place. The recognition that Russia is no longer a military threat to Europe—and therefore the ability to disengage. This violates all the norms of the last 80 years, but it’s an inevitable process.

Kasparov: I have to give you credit for seeing very early what so many people did not: that Putin’s Russia would become more belligerent and would cross the border, attacking Ukraine. So indeed you even wrote it in your book back in 2008—that not just Russia would attack Ukraine, but also you predicted it would not succeed. So what did you see back then? And just, you know, now could you give us a little bit of insight into the future? So if you are so accurate predicting it, though, I also have to you know, boast, I also made the same prediction. Though more intuitively, not from the same strategic perspectives as you did. But what do you expect to happen now in Russia? What is the end of this war? So just if you combine your analysis of the past, present, and the future.

Friedman: First, why did they have to invade? The northern border of Ukraine is 300 miles from Moscow. The Russians remember Napoleon. The Russians remember Hitler. When the Maidan Square rising happened, the U.S. made a big mistake by involving itself in the future of Ukraine. The Russians took this to mean that they were going to integrate, somehow, Ukraine into its structure. And if I were a Russian leader, and I looked at the map, I would say I can’t live with that. And so I said, the Russians would rationally choose to create a buffer zone between NATO and Russia. But they failed to understand that the border would then be on Poland, so that the Russian army would now be on the border of NATO. And they miscalculated that the United States, which did substantially intervene, would allow that to happen.

Putin has failed. The Russian army has failed. It is not a force to be threatened with. It is now descended to terror bombings in Kyiv. Now the problem is that if the war ends at the current terms, Putin is a dead man. The problem is Putin has no organized opposition. He’s not surrounded by a central committee or a presidium that will look at him and say, You have to go. There’s no way that another leader can emerge, and Putin is fighting for his life. He cannot allow the war to end on the terms it is. It cannot allow the war to cost a million Russian lives, and this is all they have.

For me, the fundamental question is—there are forces inside of Russia that are horrified by this war and what it, how it turned out, and what’s happening now. I don’t know how powerful the oligarchs are. I don’t know how the military is taking it. The military was savaged in this war. I do not understand the internal politics that allows Putin to keep his position.

So in this case, you have to look at the idea of true dictatorship—true fascism, if you want to call it that—where a single person has so destructed opposition forces and will act simply for the purpose of showing that he was not defeated. So I read this as turning out with Putin falling. When? How? I don’t know.