Putin is coward, not insane
It is now the 21st day of the terrible aggression by the Putin’s regime on Ukraine. The war has escalated to mass bombing of innocent…
It is now the 21st day of the terrible aggression by the Putin’s regime on Ukraine. The war has escalated to mass bombing of innocent Ukrainian cities. Putin had threatened the West against entering into the conflict with nuclear weapon. Sadly, this intimidation was successful. While Ukrainians repeatedly plead to close the sky over Ukraine, the West tried to avoid any possibility of direct armed involvement. While Poland offered to send MIG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine, US president Biden was too intimidated and blocked this real, urgent help to Ukraine, the help that could save many innocent lives.
Do we consider Putin a sociopathic, unpredictable madman? If so, is the risk of war escalation and serious armed conflict with NATO really high? If conventional armed clash between NATO and Russia is started, can Russian forces be really dangerous? Can Russian forces win against NATO? Will Putin readily escalate to nuclear war in case of direct clash? The answer to these questions is no: all this is very unlikely.
Putinism is principally different from many other totalitarian and authoritarian regimes: it is not ideological, it is kleptocracy. The last thing Putin and his cronies want is to burn the whole world to nuclear apocalypse for the sake of some abstract idea. On the contrary, they are banally utilitarian: the main aim is power and money. This means that Putin is rational, tries to calculate all risks carefully and is rather cowardly in case of real imminent risk. The regime is indeed shameless and cynical, but it is far from being fanatical, reckless and suicidal. It had been so in the past and it remains the same during the current war.
The war on Ukraine was started as a “special operation,” a police action assuming the Ukrainian powers are weak, the military command is corrupted and timid, while most Ukrainians being sympathetic about the Russian rule. The massive tank columns was apparently a mean to intimidate rather than intended for real use in combat. The timing of the operation — the end of February — was correlated with high gas prices in Europe (hoped to reduce possible sanctions by timid European governments) rather than optimal weather conditions for tank operations (seasonal “rasputitsa” was the best friend of heroic Ukrainians). The main force of the “operation” was Rosgvardiya, trained to disperse protesters rather than to fight in high intensity combat. This shows extreme weakness of the Putin regime: the FSB intelligence turned out to be totally corrupt and impotent. Putin himself has apparently fallen into the “dictator trap.” All the assumptions for the “special operation” had failed: the Ukrainian people turned out to be highly motivated to defend their freedom while the government and forces were sufficiently efficient to organize the defence.
The unfortunate thing is that Putin never admits mistakes and cannot accept failure. He tries to escalate while keeping up the appearance. The state of war with Ukraine is still not admitted, as exemplified by the shamelessly crazy statement of the Russian Foreign Secretary Mr. Lavrov at the UN: Russia didn’t attack Ukraine!
The fact, however, is that the Russian forces are not as strong and dangerous as they may seem. They are damaged by corruption, inefficient management, technical failures, insufficient human resources, lack of morale and low motivation. The Russian army also suffered from outdated strategy (relying on extensive and expensive WWII-style tank armada at the age of high precision weapon, drones, Javelins and NLAW) failed tactic (long distance raids in absence of material support), bad planning and poor coordination. The result of the failed strategy was devastating for the Russian forces: huge causalities (several thousand for just 20 days) and significant loss of material resources. Even if the official propaganda will try to cover this failure, Russian command should be now well aware of the catastrophe in Ukraine. Even so, the huge disparity in the available resources would make Ukrainian chances of winning without massive western assistance rather questionable. Nonetheless, it is now clear that the Russian forces would not sustain a clash with a modern efficient army focused on high speed, high intensity, network-centric warfare.
The Russian forces appear large and strong, but in reality they are inefficient and weak when confronted with a really powerful adversary. The kleptocratic Putin regime is quite aware of this and tried to avoid any risks of collision with a strong enemy. There have been several examples of this in the recent past. For example, the battle of Deir ez-Zor (Syria) between the US military and Russian Wagner mercenaries, devastating for the later, went deliberately unnoticed by the official Russian authorities. Another example, the intentional destruction of the Russian Su-24 fighter by Turkish forces in Syria resulted in massive aggressive rhetoric but no military action. The main tactic of Russians is to intimidate — escalate to de-escalate — but they will engage into the armed conflict only against a clearly weaker adversary. All this makes the chances that Russians will escalate a conventional armed conflict against NATO, outside of the Russian territory, very improbable. Furthermore, if they decide to engage, this will be catastrophic for the Russian forces. The chances that kleptocratic Russia could start direct suicidal nuclear attack is also extremely low, unless it is really driven into a corner with no chance to survive. The expected response of Russians to a strong armed punishment is likely to be limited to aggressive rhetoric, massive internal propaganda or even cover-up, rather than armed escalation.
The worst risk — given the shameless and cynical nature of putinism — is a potentially dangerous asymmetric or false flag provocation avoiding direct armed encounters. Such “asymmetric response” could be really desperate, indeed. For example, they might attempt to damage a chemical or nuclear plant, causing some (primarily demonstrative) contamination, while accusing the other side. However, such a risk is much reduced if Russians are in advance threatened hardly and strongly by an appropriately high penalty. The best way to contain Russian aggression is through demonstration of willingness to escalate, by threatening imminently strong response. Do not be timid: Putin is not insane and strikes only a clearly weaker adversary. His main tactic is based on intimidating a fearful opponent while avoiding too large costs and risks. Putin will choose “bombing Voronezh” when confronted with a really aggressive, unintimidated adversary ready to strike back.
Closing the Ukrainian sky or sending fighter jets to Ukraine wouldn’t skyrocket the risk of nuclear escalation, but it will save many innocent lives.