The Times: Putin's Regime Proves To Be Fragile
2- 26.08.2024, 14:20
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Ukraine has ‘blown up the old game’.
Ukrainian troops' invasion of Kursk region combined with a wave of powerful missile and drone attacks are among the impressive developments this year. In particular, military airfields, ammunition depots, oil refineries, fuel storage centres and even Moscow have been hit. Edward Lucas, a consultant specialising in European and transatlantic security, writes about this for The Times.
‘They have sent to the bottom the only major ferry connecting Crimea and a valuable Kilo-class attack submarine anchored in an ostensibly well-defended Russian port. The other targets were left smouldering: red lines, taboos and prejudices,’ he emphasised.
The analyst quoted Edward Stringer, a defence expert at the Policy Exchange think tank, as saying that Ukraine had ‘blown up the old game’.
‘It was a slow war of attrition in which Western allies were providing support enough to keep Ukraine from losing, but (in most cases) they were imposing restrictions on the use of the long-range weapons they provided. American, German, and other leaders feared that using Western artillery and missiles to strike targets deep inside Russia would reinforce the Kremlin's impression that the real enemy is NATO and lead to a dangerous escalation. The tacit aim was for the conflict to dry up in negotiations,’ Lucas said.
At the same time, according to the expert, things are no longer the same, because Ukraine has not only changed the situation with the Russian Federation, but also ‘confounded the timidity and pessimism of its allies.’
Lucas believes that if Ukraine succeeds in stopping Russian forces, it will be able to lure 3,000 Russian soldiers in Kursk region into a ‘mousetrap.’
‘Once captured, they could be a useful bargaining chip for many other Ukrainian POWs held in Russia. More than 130,000 people have been evacuated from Kursk, spreading their tales of chaos and humiliation across Russia - and highlighting the gulf between the Kremlin's lie machine and reality. Putin had to withdraw air defences from Crimea to protect Moscow and other population centres in the Russian hinterland,’ the consultant said.
In turn, the most worrying thing for the Kremlin, according to the expert, is that Georgi Zakrevsky, leader of the Paladin mercenary private army, criticised the war, calling Putin a ‘so-called president’. He echoed the dissent previously voiced by another warlord, Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose coup attempt also rattled the Kremlin.
‘British academic Mark Galeotti and Russian-American journalist Anna Harutyunyan argue in their new book ‘Downfall: Prigozhin, Putin and the New Struggle for Russia's Future’ that Prigozhin's episode exposed ‘a moral and ideological vacuum at the heart of Putinism’. Last August his murder (there's that curse again) exposed not only how the system works, they write, but also how it is beginning to fail,’ Lucas added.
According to the expert, a decades-old trait of the Russian Federation is poor decision-making, because their regime is incapable of responding to crisis situations.
‘The key to success in Russian organisations is to hide bad news from the boss. No one dared to tell Putin on the eve of a full-scale invasion in 2022 that Ukraine would be at war. You can bet that no one told him in full and on time how much the ‘Nazi puppet regime’ in Kyiv is hurting Russia right now,’ Lucas emphasised.
He noted that the West is now talking about solidarity with Ukraine, but is shuddering at what could be a victory: probably chaos in Russia or replacing Putin with someone ‘worse.’
‘Zelensky's gambling game should focus our minds. Whether we like it or not, our chips are also on the table,’ the analyst summarised.
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