UK Edition Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has failed to achieve its planned two-day blitzkrieg capture of the country. More than two weeks into the invasion, Russia has captured only one city, Kherson, and even there popular street protests are preventing a full-on occupation.
Putin has badly miscalculated in three important areas.
His first miscalculation regards the Russian people. The invasion of Ukraine will never generate the same level of public support as that of Crimea in 2014 which has a deeply imbedded mythical link to Russian imperial glory. Public support for Crimea’s annexation has remained at a steady 85 per cent over the last eight years and is supported by even opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Protests inside Russia are growing and will increase as knowledge of the high number of casualties filters back. In the 1980s, the totalitarian Soviet Union could not prevent knowledge of casualties in Afghanistan from reaching home. Despite state control of television and closure of social media, contemporary Russia will be even less successful. A critical mass of Russians will eventually learn about Putin’s war crimes in Ukraine, including the bombing and destruction of hospitals, leading to political instability.
Putin’s second miscalculation is his Tsarist nationalist denial of the existence of an independent Ukraine and separate Ukrainian people, which led him to the wrongheaded belief that Ukrainians are “Little Russians” who would cheer the Russian “liberators”.
Instead, Ukrainians welcomed the Russian army with stingers, NLAWs, javelins, and Bayraktar TB2 drones. Russian casualties in only two weeks of the invasion are higher than those sustained by the US over eight years in Iraq and 20 years in Afghanistan. The number of Russian dead is fast approaching the 15,000 Soviet casualties during the eight years of its occupation of Afghanistan.
The Kremlin is not unique in its ignorance as no Russian politician, academic and think tanker understands Ukraine. The Kremlin failed to learn its lessons from 2014 when attempts at separating south-eastern Ukraine failed; Russia had to twice invade to save its proxies from defeat in the Donbas. The eastern Ukrainian region of Dnipropetrovsk, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s home region bordering the Donbas war zone, was a patriotic hub of resistance.
Putin’s invasion and barbaric war crimes against innocent civilians has destroyed limited pro-Russian sentiments that remained after 2014. Today, nobody is pro-Russian in Ukraine. A pro-Russian puppet would have no legitimacy and tie down half the Russian army facing a widespread and popular resistance movement supported by Western arms supplies.
Putin’s third miscalculation was in believing the West would be divided and again impose weak sanctions, as in 2014. The West’s response was united and imposed crippling sanctions only previously seen against Iran. Nearly 300 Western companies have pulled out of Russia.
Deliveries of modern and large amounts of arms to Ukraine from Nato and others represents the biggest Western operation ever. Nato has warned Russia any attack on supply routes from eastern Europe into Ukraine would trigger article 5. The UK will provide Star Streak anti-aircraft systems. Berlin has closed the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, reversed – like Sweden – its policy of not supplying arms to conflict zones, and increased defence spending to Nato’s goal of two per cent of GDP.
The EU, for the first time in its history, is financing arms supplies to Ukraine. Even China is beginning to distance itself from Russia with whom it had hoped to forge an anti-Western alliance. Meanwhile, Western sanctions will completely cut Russia from the global economy, reduce Russia’s GDP by 5 per cent this year, and lead to a default and crash similar in magnitude to that in 1998.
His three miscalculations show the fallacy of Putin as a master strategist. The Kremlin dictator is simply another in the long line of tin pot dictators with no understanding of his country, neighbours and the West.
Taras Kuzio is a Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society and the author of 'Russian Nationalism and the Russian-Ukrainian War'
Putin's three big errors have doomed this invasion to disaster
Far from a master strategist, the Russian president is merely the latest in a long line of deluded tinpot dictators