Russian dilemma: defeat Putin or face collapse?

It is difficult to count the years when Russia was not at war with someone. After all, Russians have always been enslaved to their tsars, lords, communists, oligarchs, and security services. Most of them traditionally answer in polls that they are not interested in politics.

And now, in Russia, the time is coming when politics itself is beginning to take an interest in Russians. After all, on behalf of this silent people, Putin started his war with Ukraine. And Russians know nothing else but to go to war meekly, believing that the “tsar” must think for them and that he bears full responsibility for what the Russian Federation is doing.

“But there is no excuse for the people, on whose behalf its leaders, through their henchmen, commit lawlessness on Ukrainian lands. And for some reason, they think that they are not to blame for this, therefore, they will not be punished for it.”

It is already clear that the myth of 'good Russians' misled by the 'evil Putin' will not work. How can war criminals avoid responsibility when they have invaded foreign territories, violated internationally recognized borders, and are committing outright genocide against the Ukrainian nation under the guise of supposed concern for the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine?

Even though Putin is running out of money to fund this bloody war, he is willing to stand with an outstretched hand before Iran and North Korea to somehow cover military expenses and delay his inevitable defeat in Ukraine just a little longer.

He dared to challenge the United States and Europe, which are supporting Ukraine, even though America's GDP is nearly $30 trillion, while Russia’s GDP barely exceeds $2 trillion. This is while the Russian Federation has no income from high-tech industries. They have few manufacturing capabilities, relying only on oil and gas, which Moscow finds increasingly difficult to sell each month due to sanctions that critically narrow the pool of buyers for its energy resources.

The problem is that while the Soviet Union was a totalitarian communist state, today Russia has been transformed by its leaders into a totalitarian country dominated by hyper-nationalism. This has made its ideology far more convincing to the population than communism ever was. Otherwise, the number of casualties, which far exceeds the losses in the war in Afghanistan, would already have been enough to topple Putin's regime.

The Russian leader still manages to lure simpletons into his war with payments that are enormous by Russian standards. However, over time, Russians may start to think twice about whether it’s worth signing up to voluntarily jump into the meat grinder. What’s the point of a monetary bonus for signing a contract if you end up maimed or killed? The dead don’t need money.

So far, Putin's regime has managed to more or less cope with replenishing its terrorist army by pumping out young men from remote areas, and non-Russian provinces, emptying prisons, and promising exorbitant bonuses to contract soldiers. However, all these sources of recruits are slowly running out.

Read also: Putin goes all-in with nuclear gamble

Putin is postponing a large-scale mobilization, which would bring the reality of the war directly to Russia’s main regions, including Moscow and Saint Petersburg. This is why he hesitates to demand a sharp increase in troop numbers through such measures. Of course, he could get new soldiers, but when Russians suddenly face thousands of 'Cargo 200' (KIA) returning home every month, the war will quickly become loathsome to them, as will the despot himself.

"It’s easy to be a super-patriot when the war doesn’t affect you personally. But when the capital of the Russian Empire starts receiving a massive influx of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine, their mothers in Moscow will begin to view the so-called Special Military Operation declared by Putin in a completely different light. After that, his time will be up."

Russia's war in Ukraine is Putin's Vietnam. And he will not be able, even through his television propagandists, to convince anyone that Russia is winning this intractable confrontation. He knows that this war is unpopular among his people, and the mass deployment of recruits to the front lines could provoke protests against his regime.

In the summer, Putin attempted to increase the size of his military forces by sharply raising the one-time payment to recruits to 400,000 rubles. He believes that these bonuses for mercenaries, equivalent to 2-3 years' worth of wages in some rural areas of the Russian Federation, will be enough to recruit new soldiers to cover the losses of 1,000-1,100 soldiers who die daily in frontal assaults in Donbas.

To successfully resist the onslaught of the Moscow horde, Ukrainians need constant assistance in the form of increased high-precision weapons and intelligence support from the West. Our allies in America and Europe should double their efforts to provide Ukraine with the necessary weapons to strike strategic Russian targets, command centers, and disrupt logistical supply routes for weapons, fuel, and food to the front line.

When Russia recruits 30,000 people every month to serve in the army and sends them to war, it simultaneously removes 30,000 working individuals from its economy. The complacency of the Russians is striking - they are constantly exchanging one totalitarian leader or system for another. And now, they are once again sacrificing their sons to satisfy Putin’s ambitions, a man who has simply lost his mind due to his absolute power over Russia.

“The Russian 'military art' lies in the dubious tactic of slaughtering their own soldiers during 'meat assaults,' a strategy chosen by incompetent generals to satisfy the exaggerated pride of the Russian dictator.”

Some representatives of the Russian establishment are already beginning to realize what a fiasco Russia's war against Ukraine has become, and the irreparable damage it has caused to the Russian Federation economically and internationally. The reckoning for all that has been done will be inevitable. Already, Russia is lacking several million working hands, and this trend will only worsen irreversibly. This means that a large portion of the workforce in Russia will not be replaced over the next 25 years or more, especially considering the sharp decline in birth rates in the country.

Arrogant and incompetent, Putin appears strong and powerful when he is able to silence his opponents. But when he cannot do so, as in Ukraine, he resorts to nuclear threats, recruiting new young conscripts, and attacking Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. His perverse imperial thinking produces a scorched version of the future - 'If I can’t have this, then no one will.'

The legacy of the Kremlin’s chief will be the demographic demise of Russia. He will never overcome the will of the Ukrainians to resist and could have achieved much more by establishing strong economic ties with Ukraine instead of invading. But Putin chose to act harshly and aggressively, and now he is reaping the consequences. And the 19% interest rate is just the beginning. The economy of the Russian Federation is terribly unbalanced, with a constant brain drain abroad. Educated people see no future for themselves in totalitarian Russia.

Before the war with Ukraine, Russia had a fairly powerful army of well-trained and prepared soldiers, especially in elite brigades such as the Airborne Forces, Special Forces, and Marines. However, since Putin, for whom the destruction of Ukraine’s statehood became an obsession, failed to think strategically, he prematurely threw all of his well-trained troops into the war. All of them were successfully destroyed by the Ukrainian army.

Now, the once formidable Russian army is almost 90% made up of raw, untrained recruits. Although the return of Stalin-era practices, such as blocking units, allows Russian generals to successfully drive them into 'meat assaults,' during which only 3% of the Russian infantry sent to storm Ukrainian positions survive.

“After the war started by this Kremlin “genius” is over, the Russian Federation, if it can survive within its current borders, will need at least a decade to rebuild the army that Putin destroyed. And all of this was the result of the Kremlin's incompetence and arrogance.”

The post-Soviet Russian army was frozen in the past and never developed. Meanwhile, Ukrainian soldiers underwent training in the West, had the opportunity to evolve, improve, and develop their professional skills. However, the main miscalculation and the root cause of all of Moscow's problems is that Putin decided to start a war with Ukraine.

The Russian military machine and military-industrial complex, which are geared towards war, allow the usurper to extend the duration of the invasion of Ukrainian land for a while longer. Although now he might wish to put the 'genie of war' back in the bottle, the time for that has already been hopelessly lost.

By clinging to his war in Ukraine, Putin is deliberately driving Russia towards its collapse. He has shown the world the true face of the Russian Federation, its dystopian society, which Russia had long managed to hide, concealing it behind the facade of the supposed prosperity of its capital, Moscow.

The consequences of Putin's war in Ukraine have already resulted in a demographic crisis, shortened life expectancy, alcoholism, drug use, suicides, and an imbalance in the male-to-female population ratio. Russian society is increasingly degenerating, and if this continues at the same pace, it’s unlikely that Russians, as a people, see any positive future ahead.

At one time, the ideologists of Putinism came up with the dubious formula that Russia is Putin, and Putin is Russia. It seems that the dictator, surrounded by sycophants and flatterers, has come to believe it himself. Now, the Russians are faced with a difficult dilemma: to choose the destruction of Russia or the destruction of Putin. The final choice is theirs.

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About the author. Viktor Kaspruk, journalist.

The editors don't always share the opinions expressed by the blog authors.