If you listen to Putin, the war in Ukraine is going swimmingly - but some ominous signs
point to a very different reality.
What was boasted of as a few-weeks war that would see Russia overrunning Kyiv has instead
turned into a year-long quagmire that still has Russia fighting over the slice of Ukraine
that they took in the early days - using countless soldiers and fast-dwindling equipment to battle
Ukrainian defenders over sparsely populated, bombed-out cities like Bakhmut.
But despite this, Putin has not taken his foot off the gas.
In fact, he’s gotten more belligerent than ever - frequently threatening NATO with direct
retaliation.
But for those reading the tea leaves, all the evidence is pointing to the fact that
the Russian war effort may be reaching a disastrous turning point.
The first indication that the war is going badly for Putin might be that he’s increasingly
belligerent again.
He’s stepped up his threats against the West, claiming that every new step by NATO
is risking nuclear war - but in terms of who’s actually risking nuclear war, it’s only
him.
In recent days, Putin announced the suspension of the last major nuclear weapons treaty between
the US and Russia.
New START, which took effect in 2011, only had three years left before it had to be renewed
- but now Putin is pulling out effective immediately.
This treaty allowed each country to obtain information on the other country’s nuclear
arsenal through inspection, and was part of a larger effort post-Cold War to prevent the
uncontrolled growth of nuclear weapons.
So what does this mean in practice?
Experts say it’s not the sign of strength Putin wants it to be.
For one thing, Putin is now free to update his nuclear arsenal without any oversight.
Russia has the world’s largest nuclear arsenal - but that might be deceiving.
Much like the United States, Russia developed its nuclear arsenal during the Cold War, when
the primary goal was to ensure mutually assured destruction between the two superpowers.
If either one fired off a nuclear weapon, the odds were that all life on Earth was going
to die.
That thankfully never happened, and the weapons just sat in storage for decades, waiting and
biding their time.
And that time might never come.
Putin likes to threaten a nuclear first strike at every opportunity, but it’s not clear
if he could even pull it off.
Nuclear weapons need to be inspected and maintained every few years to stay in working order.
Not only have the Russian weapons been in storage for decades, but many of them were
stored in regions of the Soviet Union that are now independent countries - including
Russia.
It is not clear how many Russian weapons are even still in working order, or how many experts
there are in maintaining Soviet-era weapons.
The US, which is vastly wealthier than Russia, has publicly admitted trouble in keeping its
own massive stockpile properly maintained and recently allocated billions into a modernization
program.
So it’s doubtful Russia has managed to keep its own, even bigger arsenal in good working
order.
Now Putin has a reason to want new and modern weapons.
It’s possible that his withdrawal from the New START treaty might just be a game of brinksmanship
and intimidation, but it’s also possible that Putin is planning to ramp up production
on a modern wave of nukes.
However, there are some mixed signals on this front - only a few days after withdrawing
from the treaty, Putin clarified that it was only a partial withdrawal and would not lead
to the design of new weapons.
This means that the only point of this move was to make westerners even more scared about
the possibility of nuclear war, a fear that Putin uses to manipulate the west into self-deterrence.
Of course, like many things about the war, what Putin says and what he does might be
very different.
If Putin had the chance to add new and more powerful nuclear weapons that didn’t date
back forty years to his arsenal, the odds are he would jump at the chance.
But he’s not - which indicates that it might be yet another area where Russia is being
frozen out.
It’s well known that Russia is more isolated than ever before, with most of the world sanctioning
Russia and cutting it off from the global economy.
It's only consistent allies are its satellite state Belarus, fellow outlaw states Iran,
North Korea, and Venezuela, and a few stray countries like Nicaragua and Mali that back
it up at the UN.
And even a few of those countries are hesitant to back it fully.
Russia has been burning through its military equipment quickly, with NATO weapons and a
determined Ukrainian military tearing through the Cold War-era equipment.
That has limited Russia to getting weapons from its few remaining allies - with only
Iran and North Korea having the arsenal needed to provide them with suitable weapons.
But there’s one wild card in the picture - China.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping opened the war by emphasizing China’s alliance with Putin,
and most analysts viewed China as a likely long-term ally due to them having a vested
interest in the age of conquest returning.
After all, if Putin conquered Ukraine and the world grudgingly accepted it, China would
have a good chance of conquering Taiwan without global intervention.
Needless to say, it did not work out that way.
As the war ground on and it became clear that Russia would not be overrunning Kyiv any time
soon, China started hedging its bets on whether they would aid Russia.
During a recent United Nations vote calling on Russia to leave Ukraine, China abstained
- hardly a vote of confidence.
But despite this, reports keep leaking out that China could be on the verge of giving
Russia lethal weapons.
Yet they’re always on the verge - and never seem to take the step, at least as of February
2023.
Instead, China continues to try to portray itself as a rational, neutral actor - even
offering to mediate a peace deal, with terms that were widely mocked in the West.
So why aren’t they willing to aid another of the US’ long-term rivals?
Simply put - right now, backing Russia looks like a losing proposition.
There is no indication that Russia is truly turning the corner, and China has heavy investments
in the rest of the world.
And while China has largely thumbed its nose at international law, the US does have one
massive piece of leverage against it here - secondary sanctions.
These sanctions target non-US persons or institutions that do business with a party under sanctions.
This is usually used to target those doing business with Iran, but could easily be expanded
to those doing business with Russia if China decides to get more directly involved.
And if China is going to risk that, it’s definitely not going to be for a losing war.
And it may not be in China’s best interests right now.
Analysts say that if China did decide to give lethal aid to Russia, it would formally transform
Ukraine into a proxy war and essentially kick off a full cold war between the US and China
- one that could easily turn hot.
And if that’s going to happen, China wants it to be on its timeline.
That means Russia is largely on its own as it enters the next phase of the war - but
Putin is acting as confident as ever.
He’s looking to intimidate the world, announcing a ramp-up in weapons and a likely mobilization
to try to push deeper into Ukrainian territory.
But neither of these might work out how he’s hoping.
Another bad sign for Putin came shortly after he announced the withdrawal from the New START
treaty, as Russia attempted to test a new intercontinental ballistic missile.
This was a clear attempt to intimidate the west and remind them that Russia could still
hit them anywhere and any time - except that it seemed they really couldn’t.
The RS-28 Sarmat missile, known as the Satan II, could carry a ten-ton payload - but reportedly
failed at liftoff this time.
Russian media, of course, made no mention of the test, but insiders reported that it
was yet another black eye for Russia.
And it may not be the only area where things are collapsing.
Russia has been heavily rumored to be preparing for a spring mobilization and surge, full
of shock and awe, designed to finish off the last Ukrainian defenders in the East and begin
the process of retaking the Black Sea and pushing toward Kyiv.
But in recent weeks, the noise has quieted down - and while more Russian troops are flooding
into Ukraine, they’re mostly clustered around Bakhmut, where the Russians are slowly grinding
down the opposition - but losing far more troops in the process.
Which means Russia will need more troops - and soon.
During the last mobilization, Russia resorted to a draft - which led to the biggest antiwar
protests the country had seen yet.
The mobilization was largely seen as a disaster, as Russia relied heavily on ethnic minority
groups, often drafted young professionals with no military experience and sent them
into the front with only weeks of training, and got little for its efforts besides more
war dead.
So this time, Putin is taking a different approach - conducting what is being called
a “Silent mobilization”.
The first draft is still technically in effect, but this wave seems to be conducted in small
dribs and drabs to avoid public attention.
This is probably the biggest sign yet that Putin realizes the public is no longer on
his side - and for the first time, he’s acting like that matters.
But the biggest sign that the wheels are coming off the car for Putin might be happening not
in Ukraine OR Russia.
In recent weeks, the discourse over the war has shifted away from the two warring countries
to tiny Moldova, a former Soviet Republic bordering Ukraine and Romania.
While it doesn’t border Russia, Russia actually does have a beachhead in the country - the
region of Transnistria, a breakaway region that seeks independence with Russian backing.
There are even Russian troops in the region - troops that could be used to surge into
Ukraine and open a new front in the war.
But right now, Moldova is concerned about something else.
In recent weeks, Moldova saw its government collapse, and Russian missiles fly over the
small country.
This was seen as part of a plot by Russia to collapse the government and replace the
pro-western leadership with a pro-Putin flack.
It failed utterly, as President Maia Sandu not only appointed a new pro-western Prime
Minister - but openly accused Putin of being behind a coup attempt, and met with Ukrainian
leader Voldomyr Zelenskyy to share details of Russia’s plotting in the region.
In the days after, Sandu reached out to NATO and the west for support, bringing the country
closer to formally joining the alliance.
Which means that the west isn’t just aware of Putin’s actions - they’re not afraid
of him anymore.
In the past, Putin’s intimidation has meant that he has been able to run roughshod over
the independence of former Soviet republics.
The international community watched as he annexed Crimea with impunity and interfered
in the politics of border nations repeatedly.
They assumed that by letting him get away with this, it would keep him from embarking
on a full war of conquest - which was proven wrong in Ukraine.
Putin’s goal in launching the war was creating a new world order, one where he could hold
all of Europe at nuclear blackmail and begin recollecting the countries of the Soviet Union.
But that only happens when you win.
The biggest sign that the war is going badly for Putin isn’t that he’s loudly withdrawing
from treaties, or quietly calling up soldiers without a full draft, or begging China for
help.
It’s that the invasion of Ukraine was largely designed to punish Ukraine for getting too
close to the West and warn other countries off from doing the same - and instead, more
people are lining up to join than ever before.
And a new world order is being shaped - with Putin on the outside looking in.
To learn more about the state of the war, check out “Why Putin Is Scared of US Sending
Ukraine Tanks” or watch “Ukraine Deploys ‘Death Ray” Gun Against Russian Forces”
for one of the strangest chapters in the war.