4.19.22
Almost eight weeks after Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine, with military losses mounting and Russia facing unprecedented international isolation, a small but growing number of senior Kremlin insiders are quietly questioning his decision to go to war. The ranks of the critics at the pinnacle of power remain limited, spread across high-level posts in government and state-run business. They believe the invasion was a catastrophic mistake that will set the country back for years, according to ten people with direct knowledge of the situation. All spoke on condition of anonymity, too fearful of retribution to comment publicly. So far, these people see no chance the Russian president will change course and no prospect of any challenge to him at home. More and more reliant on a narrowing circle of hardline advisers, Putin has dismissed attempts by other officials to warn him of the crippling economic and political cost, they said. Still, more and more top insiders have come to believe that Putin’s commitment to continue the invasion will doom Russia to years of isolation and heightened tension that will leave its economy crippled, its security compromised and its global influence gutted. The decision to invade was made by Putin and just a handful of hawks including Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, General Staff chief Valery Gerasimov, and Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia’s Security Council, these people said.
The skeptics were surprised by the speed and breadth of the response by the U.S. and its allies, with sanctions freezing half of the central bank’s $640 billion in reserves and foreign companies ditching decades of investment to shut down operations almost overnight, as well as the steadily expanding military support for Kyiv that’s helping its forces to blunt the Russian advance. Senior officials have tried to explain to the president that the economic impact of the sanctions will be devastating, erasing the two decades of growth and higher living standards that Putin had delivered during his rule, according to people familiar with the situation. “Putin has built his regime mainly on stoking public support, which has given him the means to control the elite,” said Tatiana Stanovaya of political consultant R.Politik. “There’s no room for disagreement or discussion, everyone must just get on with it and implement the president’s orders and as long as Putin keeps the situation under control, people will follow him.”
