Make no mistake: Vladimir Putin is Russia, and Russia is Vladimir Putin. He holds as
tight a grip on his country and its people as any dictator in the world. But for the
first time in decades, there are cracks beginning to show in that relationship,
and both Putin and his country are facing enormous challenges that must be terrifying them.
It’s been 400 years since Shakespeare wrote, “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” In
all that time, perhaps no leader has had a more uneasy head than Putin. He’s known as an autocrat,
an assassin, a kleptomaniac, and is now perilously close to facing an insurrection
in his own country. He’s done everything possible to silence criticism from within his own borders,
from closing rival news media outlets and jailing opposition leaders,
to outright murdering unflattering journalists and even targeting expatriates abroad. He’s
had his tightly controlled Duma pass laws preventing free speech, even jailing those
who dare call his invasion of Ukraine a “war.” But the continued failures of his armed forces
have left him in the most precarious position of his 24 year rule. Due to his miscalculations about
the speed with which he expected his invasion to succeed, his position offers few favorable
outcomes. He’s facing rising tensions at home, a brain drain of young skilled
workers—a million of whom have already fled to other countries—and an army that can neither
attack successfully nor defend continually but seemingly only wants to attack civilian targets,
And now, the long awaited Ukraine counter-offensive threatens to
liberate what little of Ukraine Putin’s army still occupies. Three major attack vectors appear to be
developing: one in the western Zaporizhia Oblast, one to the east in the western Donetsk Oblast,
and another from around the destroyed city of Bakhmut. There are also continuing cross-border
incursions into Russian territory near Belgorod, where Russian military bloggers have claimed
entire regiments have been wiped out. Russia and Putin face innumerable
challenges to their future and threats to their livelihood. And since Putin has been
likened more than once to a Shakespearean villain, let’s continue with the comparison.
“Truth is Truth, To the End of Reckoning” [Make bold text in this scene transition
title screens and add text in brackets as a smaller text below the bold title text]
(William Shakespeare, "Measure for Measure") Putin has done his best—or his worst—to stifle
dissent and hide the truth from his people. But even he recently had to admit that the war he
planned with little input besides a few handpicked yes-men is going poorly. Now that Russia is facing
Ukraine’s powerful counter-offensive that’s been half a year in the making, supplemented
with more modern tanks and artillery systems, Putin’s army is reeling under the multi-pronged
offensives. Even Putin himself had to admit, on June 9th, 2023, “In recent days, we have
seen significant losses in Ukraine.” Although that comment only barely scratches the surface
of Russia’s military woes, it’s an extremely rare admission from a man who rarely admits mistakes.
Despite suffering heavy losses in their initial assaults, Ukraine has continued making progress as
they penetrate Russia’s fortified defensive lines in the southeast of Ukraine. Notable success has
been made south of the Dnipro River, threatening the key transportation hub of Melitopol, and the
vital ports of Berdyansk and Mariupol. If these cities can be retaken, Ukraine will be able to cut
off support from Russia to more than a third of their forces occupying the southeastern portion of
Ukraine and throughout Crimea. There are already reports of sabotaged train lines between Crimea
and Melitopol, impacting Russia’s ability to move supplies and reinforcements between the
affected areas. These attacks are just part of an increasing wave of sabotage across all
of Russia and its occupied territories, with twice as many such attacks in the first five
months of 2023 than in all of the previous year. If Ukraine can manage to take those three key
cities—Melitopol, Bryansk and Mariupol—then the only supply corridor for the remaining
Russian troops will be the already damaged Kerch Bridge from Russia to
Crimea. The previous attack on that bridge, an attack whose source is still unconfirmed,
has proved that the bridge is vulnerable. In what must be for Putin an unsettling possibility,
there is strong evidence that the explosion was caused by a truck bomb that originated from
within Russia’s own borders. If a future attack is able to completely destroy the Kerch Bridge,
there’ll be no way out for tens of thousands of Russian troops, and equally as important,
for their heavy equipment, including hundreds of tanks, supply vehicles, and artillery systems.
In addition to the spearheads driving south of the Dnipro, Russian forces have had to retreat
from the northern and southern flanks near the city of Bakhmut, or what’s left of that
heavily destroyed town. As soon as the private military Wagner group announced they’d captured
the last of the city, they also announced they’d be pulling out of the front lines,
most likely because of the staggering losses they had incurred in the nearly ten months of fighting.
Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin made very public pronouncements that his forces would be turning
the area’s defense over to regular Russian forces. Within days of their departure, Ukrainian forces
began systematic attacks on both the northern and southern areas surrounding the city, threatening
to encircle the Russian forces trapped in between. One of the reasons for Ukraine’s success is the
increasing supplies of advanced US and European weapons systems that are being
delivered. In the months leading up to the offensive, Ukraine has received much-needed
deliveries of armored military vehicles, including German Leopard tanks and US-made Bradley infantry
fighting vehicles. Many of these new systems come with enhanced night-fighting capabilities,
which Russian troops either don’t have in sufficient numbers or are lacking altogether.
These abilities have allowed Ukraine to perform a significant number of successful night assaults,
which some Russian commentators have pointed to as a major reason for recent Ukrainian gains.
Another source of Ukraine’s dominance over Russia has been the delivery of US-made precision
artillery, including HIMARS rocket artillery systems and the GPS-guided Excalibur shells,
which provide Ukraine with the ability to target Russian ammo dumps, fuel production
facilities, and command and control centers. Combined with Western long-range rockets,
like Britain’s recently supplied Storm Shadow missiles, Russia has suffered devastating
attacks far behind the front lines. And if the US Congress can convince President Biden
to release the longer-ranged ATACMS, short for Army Tactical Missile Systems, Ukraine’s reach
will extend another 40 to 50 miles beyond the Storm Shadow’s already lengthy 150 mile range.
Meanwhile, Russia has run so low on ammunition that they’ve had to turn to countries like North
Korea and Iran to buy artillery shells, even if they might be from stockpiles that are more
than forty years old. In recent tests by North Korea, more than a quarter of the shells they
fired failed to detonate. Meanwhile, Iran is selling their less-expensive drones to Russia,
including the Shahed-129, the Shahed-191 and the Mohajer-6 models, which Russia
has then been firing at Ukrainian civilians. With such weaknesses in his military being
exposed daily, Putin runs the risk of having his generals turn on him,
or of his population rising up against in anger at the staggering losses of dead and wounded
from the past year of warfare. The frustration of such losses is becoming noticeable, even in
the normally tightly controlled Russian media. “In Time, We Hate That Which We Often Fear.”
(William Shakespeare, "Antony and Cleopatra") The reaction to Russia’s poor performance
in the invasion has begun to surface even within Russia’s closed ranks of politicians,
all of whom owe their positions to Putin. On June 1st, 2023, one of the more influential members of
the Russian Duma publicly criticized the war in an international forum. Konstantin Zatulin,
who is close to the top leaders in the Federal Security Service, Russia’s intelligence agency
known as the FSB, declared at a conference on the future of Ukraine that Russia had so
far failed in all its war aims, and that some of them had become, in his words, “senseless.”
“What were the aims announced at the beginning of the special military operation?” Zatulin asked,
using Putin’s preferred term for the war. “You all remember: denazification,
demilitarization, neutrality for Ukraine, and the defense of the residents of Donetsk
and Luhansk. On which of these points have we reached results today? Not one.”
One of the more outspoken critics of the Russian army and its geriatric leadership
has been Wagner’s boss, ex-chef and oligarch Prigozhin. As the financier behind the Wagner
private military company, he’s made himself visible on the front lines around Bakhmut,
and has been filmed repeatedly accompanied by his troops, who have lost as much as 80%
of their members in the ten-month-long siege of the Ukrainian city. Still, Prigozhin finds time
to film propaganda videos against what he calls the “bunker grandpas” back in Moscow. His anger
was directed against those he saw as derelict in their positions of authority, specifically
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov.
Prigozhin’s video on June 7th, 2023, was perhaps the most blistering so far in the
war. He predicted continual territorial losses to the advancing Ukrainian army,
and when that happened, he forecast one of two possibilities: either there’d be executions of
poorly performing Russian generals, or there’d be a popular revolt, by which he meant a civil war or
a coup. Prigozhin could get away with such dire warnings because of the success the Wagner group
had in Ukraine. But now that the Wagner group has been disbanded and Prigozhin has been sent into
exile, Putin is left in an unenviable position. It’s been suggested that Putin willingly allowed
Prigozhin’s tirades in part because they’re seen as coming from a front-line commander and former
war hero, while also allowing for criticism of Russia’s military leadership. This took some
of the pressure of the invasion’s failures off Putin, as the blame could be placed on others,
like Shoigu and Gerasimov. Always aware of any challenger to his iron control, Putin may have
perceived these criticisms as a means to reduce the popularity of any leader near the top, and
limit the challengers who may try to replace him. However, Putin faces far more challenges to his
authority, and even his freedom. There have been numerous allegations of the systematic
abduction and forcible relocation of children from occupied regions of Ukraine, beginning even before
the recent invasion was launched in February 2023. These alleged crimes have led to an arrest warrant
being issued for Putin by the International Criminal Court in the Hague, Netherlands.
This warrant means he could be arrested in any country that honors the ICC’s ruling
Even his trips to non-aligned countries are in jeopardy, because of this arrest warrant.
South Africa had planned to host a summit in August 2023 for a meeting of the BRICS group,
a loose alliance of Chinese-influenced countries that includes Brazil, Russia,
India and South Africa. There has been talk of a possible Putin arrest, though summit leaders
deny this would happen. Still, South Africa has recently considered not hosting the event,
after intense international pressure had been applied to arrest Putin if he attended.
These allegations of war crimes are just the tip of the iceberg for Putin. His army,
which he controls directly through Defense Minister Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff
Gerasimov, have been responsible for thousands of alleged acts of torture and murder throughout
their brutal occupation of Ukraine. The town of Bucha, just outside of Kiev, saw the execution
of three hundred civilians, with their hands tied behind their backs and left lying in the streets.
Anywhere Ukraine has liberated their lands from Russian occupation, they’ve discovered torture
chambers and mass graves of executed civilians. The US is currently hosting Ukrainian prosecutors
so that they’ll be better able to handle the investigation and punishment of such crimes.
All of these war crimes can be laid at Putin’s feet. He’s been so supportive of such terror
campaigns that he awarded medals to the unit that was responsible for the murders at Bucha.
These crimes are in addition to causing what may turn out to be the worst ecological
catastrophe that’s hit Europe since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the blowing
up of the Nova Kakhovka dam. Putin admitted this was a “barbaric” act, as he called it,
though he denied Russia was responsible for it. But the dam was clearly in Russia’s sole control
before and after the massive explosion that rocked the dam. Experts have determined that the breach
was almost certainly caused by an internal explosion of hundreds of pounds of explosives:
the dam was designed with a Soviet engineering plan to withstand a nuclear attack, so it’s highly
doubtful any external threat like a missile could have done enough damage. Responsibility
for the dam’s destruction would most certainly be one more heinous crime attached to Putin’s
legacy. Russia has since destroyed other dams in occupied Ukrainian territory, so it’s not
out of the realm of possibility that they were behind the Nova Kakhovka dam destruction as well.
The greater implications behind the dam’s destruction suggest things are getting even
worse for Putin in his reckless war, and that he already knows it. More than 80% of occupied
Crimea’s drinking and agricultural water came directly from the lake that the dam controlled via
a lengthy canal. Destroying the dam signals that Putin is aware that he’s likely to lose control
over Crimea, and that he’s willing to destroy so that Ukraine cannot have it. Estimates are that
it could be more than a decade before such levels of fresh water can be returned to the peninsula.
Military failures, political threats from rivals, and potential war crimes are still
only a portion of what Putin and Russia are facing. There’s also the incalculable damage
he’s done to his country’s economy, as well as its standing in the eyes of the rest of the world.
“There is Thy Gold, Worse Poison to Men's Souls” (William Shakespeare, "Romeo and Juliet")
As bad as the Russian military is failing in Ukraine, Russia’s economy is faring ever worse.
Russia has been one of the world’s top three oil producers and exporters for much of the past two
decades, following only the US and Saudi Arabia. But the stiff sanctions and price caps imposed
by Europe and the US following Russia’s invasion have hit this part of their economy, once their
most reliable money-making segment, especially hard. Russia has offered a $20 a barrel discount
in the cost of its crude oil exports, hoping to draw in new buyers, primarily India and China,
to replace the EU members that have refrained in most part from buying Russian oil and gas.
But that discount, and Russia’s inability to sell as much as it did before the invasion,
means a shortfall of almost $65 billion a year. That’s in addition to the drop in sales and the
lower price of oil per barrel than Putin was counting on when the invasion began.
Total all those deductions, and Russia may be witnessing a decline of their total oil and
gas revenue in 2023 of an astounding $180 billion. The expense of the Ukraine invasion is now hitting
their economy directly as well. Putin has had an unusual tax slapped on Russia’s businesses,
demanding a 5% tithe from their “excess profits” to fund the war,
although who determines what is an excess profit has not been accurately spelled out.
Another area where Russia’s economy is reeling is in its military sales. As recently as 2011,
Russia was on an almost equal basis with the US in terms of military equipment sales. Russia’s
exports have been sliding since then, but while it may have been suffering, the invasion seems to
have hammered the final nail into that coffin. Part of that is due to the poor performance of
Russian tanks and airplanes. Russia’s once-vaunted main battle tank line,
from the T-72 through the T-80 and T-90, were all designed to be low to the ground, thus making them
harder to hit. One design element necessary to accomplish this was the use of an autoloader,
which loads the tank’s main gun with an automated system that pulls shells from a circular tray at
the bottom of the tank turret. But this system has been shown to be highly dangerous, as any
penetration of the turret from above can easily ignite the large numbers of shells on the floor
of the turret. Hundreds of Russian tanks have been filmed with their turrets blown completely
off from such a resultant fire and explosion. This has helped lead to a massive drop-off in
overseas buyers, and without overseas buyers, the Russian military won’t be able to afford
to build the more advanced tanks on their own. The economic sanctions have also resulted in a
massive lack of advanced computer chips. This has severely affected many areas of
Russian production, and again, one of the areas hardest hit has been Russia’s military. Without
advanced computer chips, Russia can’t produce its most modern tank, the T-14 Armada. Nor can
it manufacture as many rockets and missiles as it’s been firing. Russia has been caught using
stolen Swedish traffic cameras in some of their drones, along with computer chips from washing
machines that they were buying in record numbers before sanctions were placed on their import.
Perhaps most importantly, the decline in arms sales signals Moscow’s increasing dependence on
China and India. Russia is now more dependent on arms sales to those two nations than at any time
since 2003, but with much smaller export numbers. All the while both China and India continue to
develop their own arms industries that they export in direct competition with Russia. Some
of these military exports from China have been a direct result of back-engineering technology
Russia originally sold them, including Russia’s S-300 surface to air missile system, and China’s
version of the Su-27. What’s even more worrisome for Russia are the reports from Ukraine that
Chinese components are being seen in increasing numbers in destroyed or captured Russian weapons,
from tank targeting systems to drone and missile guidance systems. These developments suggest
Russia is now reliant on China’s military aid, a reverse of their former position.
“Heat Not a Furnace for Your Foe So Hot That It Doth Singe Yourself”
(William Shakespeare, "Henry VIII") It’s clear now that Putin made the
greatest mistake of his political career when he decided to invade Ukraine. Everything that’s
happened since then has negatively affected Russia. His war of conquest has instead turned
into a series of self-inflicted wounds that have driven Russia to its lowest point politically,
economically, and internationally since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
His military belligerence has pushed countries like Sweden and Finland to seek NATO membership,
the exact opposite of one of his pre-invasion goals, which was to prevent NATO from further
eastward expansion. His once-vaunted military, thought to have been the second strongest in the
world behind only the US, is now being clowned on by the likes of US Secretary of State Antony
Blinken as the “second strongest in Ukraine.” Putin is single-handedly responsible for weaning
the EU off of Russian oil and gas imports, which in turn has greatly reduced Russia’s
export market. The same can be said for their military export market. One of the
few cards Putin has remaining to play is his continued threat of nuclear blackmail,
which has drawn loud rebukes from all circles, including even from his supposed ally, China.
After their inevitable defeat and withdrawal from Ukraine and Crimea, what does Russia have to look
forward to? A declining birth rate, exacerbated by the loss of more than 200,000 Russian casualties,
and another one million young people who have fled the country. An economy that is in shambles,
and facing more trouble in the future, if they are forced to pay reparations for the destruction
they’ve caused in Ukraine. They must also face the possibility, as Prigozhin has predicted, of
a possible revolution or a civil war, which could bring even more violence and economic upheaval.
There are already foreign units attacking Russia in Belgorod. How long will it be before China
decides it wants to retake Vladivostok, which as recently as 1860 was a Chinese territory known as
Haishenwai? There have already been semi-official pronouncements by state-approved media in China
that the city and the region surrounding it should be returned to Chinese control.
The recent cross-border raids and the drone strikes against Moscow show that
all of western Russia is vulnerable. Infighting among battlefield leaders,
continued sabotage and a spate of mysterious fires, coupled with these
unprecedented incursions by paramilitary groups into Russian regions bordering
Ukraine are raising questions over whether Putin hast lost control of the situation.
Many world leaders are calling for peace and an end to hostilities. Only two things need to happen
to ensure such a peace: all of Russia’s troops need to leave occupied Ukraine, and Putin needs
to step down or be forcibly removed from office. Now go check out Why Putin Is Scared To
Deploy The Su-57 To Ukraine, or click this other video instead.