3.1.22
After six days, it is clear that Vladimir Putin’s invasion was based on delusions about Ukraine, the West and Russia. Whatever the outcome on the battlefield, Putin has unleashed forces that weaken his country’s, and his own, position. Firstly, Putin drastically underestimated Ukraine’s cohesion and will to resist. When he declared war, he called on Ukrainian forces to lay down their arms. Many have died rather than surrender, while many Russian soldiers have done the opposite. Doubling down on his delusion, Putin then called on the Ukrainian military to overthrow President Volodymyr Zelensky. Instead, Ukrainians who have never used a gun are now learning to do so, and to make Molotov cocktails, in defence of their country. Putin is inadvertently completing the work he began in 2014 of uniting Ukrainian society and reinforcing its national identity. Secondly, Putin badly underestimated Western cohesion and resolve. Russia now faces a range of sanctions never inflicted on a major economy, notably the freezing of central bank assets. Russia’s aggression – which threatens the wider international order, as well as Western security – enjoys almost no support elsewhere.
Thirdly, Putin underestimated domestic opposition. His war against fellow Slavs is the most unpopular decision he has ever made. The stated aims – to ‘denazify’ a country with a democratically elected Jewish president, and to stop a ‘genocide’ that does not exist – lack credibility. Despite a severely repressed civil society, demonstrations began on the first day of the invasion, with 6,000 arrests made already. The invasion is emerging as a grand strategic mistake. As Ukraine’s resistance, Russia’s international isolation and Putin’s isolation within Russia all deepen, the Kremlin suddenly finds itself much weaker on every political front. This continues a pattern of successive failures. When controlled instability through occupation and the Minsk Accords failed, Putin resorted to compellence. When compellence failed, he went to war. War is now producing even greater adverse effects.