Double or quits for high-stakes gambler Putin
UK Defence Secretary claims Russian president will use Victory Day to declare new war on ‘Nazis’
‘There will be mobilisation, or we will lose the war. Total defeat of Ukraine requires 600,000 to 800,000 men’
It is the most totemic day in Russia’s political calendar. Tomorrow, Vladimir Putin will review Russian troops marching across Red Square to mark victory over Nazis in the Second World War.
It is a struggle, he has told his public, that continues today in Ukraine. But he will not be able to present them with a victory to match 1945. Seventy-four days since the invasion, Mr Putin’s war machine is in trouble.
The element of surprise has been squandered, the assault on Kyiv has failed, and a much-vaunted offensive in the Donbas designed to turn the tide is making painfully slow progress.
His troops have not even completely captured Mariupol, where a hardcore of Ukrainian fighters still hold out beneath the battered ruins of the Azovstal steel plant.
This should not be a crisis for Mr Putin. He can easily deliver a speech of platitudes about continuing struggle without being seen as weak.
But he is facing a tough choice. One more throw of the dice, or call it quits?
Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, believes the gambler in the Kremlin will go for the former.
Mr Putin, he claims, will use the parade to declare a new “war” against the Nazis so he can mobilise reservists in a bid to muster enough men for a final big push to defeat Ukraine.
A state of war is a legal requirement for such a move, and some in the Kremlin may be wary of frightening the public by admitting the “special military operation” has come to a re-run of 1941. But there is another constituency in Russia – particularly among those charged with actually fighting the war – who like the idea.
“It’s like this,” wrote the Reverse Side of the Medal, a Telegram channel run by members of Russia’s Wagner mercenary company, on Friday. “There will be mobilisation, or we’ll lose the war. Total defeat of Ukraine requires 600,000 to 800,000 men.”
The anonymous author did not show how he came to that figure. But it is not a bad stab at the scale of the challenge.
Ukraine claims to have killed more than 22,000 Russian soldiers since Feb 24. The British Ministry of Defence issued a more conservative estimate of 15,000 as of April 25, still more than the Soviet Union lost in the whole nine years of its war in Afghanistan.
So Russia desperately needs to replace casualties, but also muster the three-to-one superiority in force to conduct offensive operations. “Total defeat” of Ukraine also implies huge numbers to secure supply lines and occupy captured areas.
But political considerations may stay Mr Putin’s hand.
For a start, “total defeat” of Ukraine is already out of reach.
The decision in late March to abandon the battle for Kyiv and retreat from Sumy and Chernihiv marked the end of that dream – for the time being.
“I don’t see any rational reason for this decision,” said Nikolai Petrov, a senior researcher at Chatham House who has followed Russian domestic policy for decades. “It will still not be enough to invade the whole of Ukraine. There is a lack of officers and lack of equipment. What does it mean to get additional unskilled soldiers?”
One thing it would mean is further dislocation of an economy already under severe strain as men are taken out of their jobs. It would also bring the war uncomfortably close to home.
At the moment, says Mr Petrov, the body bags are mostly going back to rather remote, depressed regions of Russia far from the powerful and wealthy metropolises.
That is why for many Russians this is still “a war watched from a sofa,” he said. “It is possible to feel being great and heirs of our grandfathers’ greatness. But at the same time not to sacrifice, not to pay for this,” he said.
“But immediately when the cost appears – and the cost is huge – it will be much more difficult for the Kremlin to control public opinion. Certainly to keep it in its current shape, which for now is good enough for continuing the war.” Oleksiy Arestovych, an advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, predicts that mobilisation would provoke a “revolution” in Russia, ending Mr Putin’s regime.
That’s probably an exaggeration. And there are ways to more carefully calibrate such a move. After declaring war, Mr Putin could order every reservist in the country to report to their local army office for duty – or he could limit the order to certain regions, age groups, professions or skill sets.
Such half measures could provide a useful boost in manpower while still insulating most of the population from the reality of war. But it would take months, before the new cadre would be properly trained, equipped and ready to hit the battlefield. It is not clear that when they do, they will change the momentum of the war, points out Mark Galeotti, an expert in the Russian security services.
And Mr Putin may not have that long. Elvira Nabiullina, the head of Russia’s central bank, told the State Duma last month that “the period when the economy can live on its reserves is ending” and that “in the second and beginning of the third quart we will enter the period of structural transformation and search for new models of business”. In other words, the Kremlin has until late summer or early autumn before ordinary Russians really begin to feel the crushing cost of sanctions.
With a breakthrough in Donbas elusive and more Western weapons and money pouring into Ukraine, the prospect of a decisive victory in that time is slim. More logical, argues Mr Petrov, is a switch to the defensive and an attempt to consolidate and hold on to the territories already captured.
At the end of the summer, Mr Putin could present the public with a payoff to make the looming economic disaster worth it: “peace” and a “great victory”.
The territories that Russia currently holds, including Donbas, Kherson, and part of Zaporizhzhya region, will be annexed. The Nazis will be “defeated”. The Western powers who the Kremlin says have conspired against Russia for centuries will be humiliated.
At least, that is what he will tell the public.
William Burns, director of the CIA, said yesterday that Mr Putin believes doubling down on the military conflict in Ukraine will improve his outcome in the war.
“He’s in a frame of mind in which he doesn’t believe he can afford to lose,” said Mr Burns, who was speaking at a Financial Times event in Washington.
“I think he’s convinced right now that doubling down still will enable him to make progress.”