Olga Lautman: Putin Has Not Many Options Left
3- 24.02.2023, 11:01
- 15,970
The only way to ensure the security of Belarus and Ukraine is a complete defeat of Russia.
Olga Lautman, a senior researcher at the Centre for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), summed up the year of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine for the Charter97.org website.
— The largest military conflict in Europe since World War II is ongoing for one year already. Looking into the big picture, where do the things stand?
— In the history of Russia, they don't care about human lives, and Putin has no issue throwing hundreds of thousands of Russian citizens onto the frontline. He started his aggression against Ukraine in 2014, so we see 9 years of war. I think, he will continue prolonging this war in the hopes of damaging the unity of the West.
The fractures, happening inside Russia between security services and military and the elite, are so deep that you see them in public. You have military bloggers, for instance, calling for the arrest of Defense Ministry officials; you have FSB, who is concerned with Prigozhin and his quick rise, and they are trying to minimize the threat that PMC Wagner poses to Russia itself.
Normally, Russians are very good with keeping the propaganda on message, but even with their propaganda you see falling apart: for the most part, everybody is on their own. You see constant chaos domestically.
— What is the trajectory for Ukraine?
— Every single Ukrainian has been affected in one way or another: whether their family member died, or their neighbors died, or they were displaced. You see in the latest polls they are more united than ever.
Anyone who thinks there are going to be negotiations is absolutely crazy, if you ask me, because no one is going to sit down after this genocide campaign and negotiate with Russia on anything.
Ukrainians are resilient and they will continue being resilient, making sure that Russia is fully defeated because that will be the only way to secure the future of Ukraine, and for that matter, all of the Eastern Europe, including Belarus.
— What does the total defeat of Russia mean in practice?
— Ukraine needs to fully defeat Russia inside of Ukraine, and everything else will fall into its place inside of Russia. Ukraine doesn't need to capture the Kremlin — they will collapse on their own.
Putin right now is at the weakest he has ever been. You see, he has lost control. He doesn't know what he is doing except just throwing more citizens onto the frontlines using the same nuclear fear mongering that the Soviets used.
From the signs I've seen over the past few weeks, it looks like Russia potentially might be preparing a terrorist attack inside of Russia in order to try to gain unity inside the country which won't work either because a lot of people are not interested of going to the frontline.
— If Putin would do a terrorist attack inside Russia, you don't expect it would work?
— I don't expect it to work domestically because the Russians are not running to volunteer to be shipped to the frontlines in Ukraine. The Russians do not care that their military is slaughtering Ukrainians, but they also don't have the interest of themselves sacrificing their own families — that's why you saw 700,000 people flee Russia after the partial mobilization.
Putin was successful over the past 20 years because of his Western enablers and because of his malign influence operations. We see what is happening with the German scandal, how they had a Russian mole inside the security services. We saw the past year Europeans exposing Russian's spy networks, whether it's Norway or Italy, or Bulgaria.
Putin relied on captured politicians over the past few decades to push Russia's foreign policy — and that's even more difficult to do right now because not that many politicians will come out inside of Germany or France, or Italy to advocate for Russian, and if they do, they are marginal, no one who listens to them.
As far as his shock factor, the whole world is watching every single move that Putin is doing, so there isn't going to be a shock. Last February, Russia took some by surprise because a lot of people thought that Russia was trying to gain concessions and that was why they were putting pressure and building up on Ukraine's border. But now, everyone is anticipating anything and everything from Russia and preparing for every single scenario, and also monitoring every single move that they are making. So it is going to be very hard for him to do any kind of shock, surprise in Ukraine or across Europe, for that matter.
The only thing I do see Russia doing is continuing their malign operations, destabilizing Moldova or Georgia, or Kazakhstan, or other countries and causing chaos there.
— What has prevented Putin from using a nuclear bomb over the past 12 months?
— Before escalating to a nuclear bomb, Putin could have easily attacked a NATO country last year: either the Baltics or Poland, but Russia can't even capture Bakhmut; they lost 200,000 people dead or wounded, according to US estimates. They can't even move forward inside of Eastern Ukraine — forget facing off with NATO, that has state-of-the-art military equipment and is unified: they understand that the threat is not only to Ukraine. If Ukraine falls then Russia will not stop there: next will be Moldova; also Russians have floated over the years that they want to take the Suwalki gap, that they can roll through the Baltics in 48 hours.
So, NATO has a purpose. They understand the threat, they have the unity, whereas Russia, even the citizens they're throwing on the frontlines, they don't understand the purpose: they don't want to be there, they don't want to go there. The choice is either face arrest, commit suicide or go to the frontline. Russia right now can't challenge NATO, and if they were to use a nuclear tactical weapon, they would have to deal with NATO militarily.
I don't think NATO will respond with a nuclear attack, but they will potentially respond with a conventional attack — Russia is not ready to deal with that. They still can set off a tactical nuke inside Ukraine, but it is not going change anything on the military field, and it is not going to break the resilience of Ukrainians. If anything, it's going to make them more resilient and more vocal: "This is a threat that faces the world — that is why Russia must be defeated. We need more weapons."
— Before the war, you have correctly assessed that, Putin would start a large scale aggression against Ukraine, that his main strategic goal was to conquer Ukraine in one form or another. What is Putin's calculus now?
— One of the factors Russia launching their full-scale invasion of Ukraine last February was that they were going to take Ukraine from within. They ran influence operations — the same as in Belarus — inside of Ukraine. They thought that the people, that the Russian intelligence services cultivated for the past few decades, were going to take the town halls and the government buildings and repeat what happened in Crimea and in Eastern Ukraine.
The second factor was that the West has never responded to Russia's invasion of Georgia, the assassinations across Europe, the atrocities in Syria and Chechnya. Even after the annexation of Crimea and invasion of Eastern Ukraine, you still had very weak response. You had watered-down sanctions, but that didn't provide any deterrence to Russia. Putin was calculating on the West not responding and just issuing deep concerns and issuing sanctions.
Russia has so many Western enablers that they cultivated over the past few decades, that every time western governments even begin to work on sanctions, you have the lobbyists who water them down and whatnot. So, this is what Putin's calculation was, and clearly it did not go this way.
Now, I think, Putin realizes that he is not going to reinstate the Soviet Union. At best, I think, he will be happy if he could try to capture Donbas — which I don't think will happen either.
But with that said, I think he will continue the vicious retaliatory terrorist attacks against Ukrainian civilians, who do not want Russia there and Russia's influence there.
I think that Putin's goals have minimized and that his only choices to attempt to prolong the war and wear down the West, so the support for Ukraine wears down or there is an administration change in the United States who might be less eager to help Ukraine. So, he doesn't have that many options, I think, that is his only one.
— Let's hope that there will come a day when Russia will leave Ukraine, including Crimea. What is the probable chain of events in Belarus?
— If Russia gets weakened, you will see an implosion inside of Russia. The elites are tired and see that Putin has taken them into a dead end, the security services see the same. They understand that Russia is not going to win this war. I have never seen anything like this. In the Soviet Union you didn't see this kind of insanity, division between various agencies and forces. You'll see total chaos break out inside of Russia where they will try to fight for power.
In the meantime, all the Russia's proxies will become immediately weakened if not their regimes collapse. There is not going to be much for Lukashenka to survive or Assad, or any other one of their proxies that Russia controls. Then, the Belarusians will finally be free and be able to try to choose a normal leader who moves towards the path of democracy.
