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Why should Putin be desperate? He doesn’t give a shit about how many people and how much material he throws into the meat grinder, and he’s winning in the long game of slowly but steadily dismantling western alliances through psy-ops.
His largely unopposed propaganda and disinformation campaign bolstering far right groups in the west is bearing fruit, the US is ruled by Donald Trump once more (maybe once and for all), Austria has a far right government, Germany is going to be next if things don’t drastically change. Nationalist extremists coming to power all over the West will dry up international support for Ukraine and break apart alliances like the EU and NATO. Then he has free reign enlarging his empire piece by piece as he pleases.
He doesn’t give a shit about how many people and how much material he throws into the meat grinder
The immolation of two nations worth of young people is taking its toll on the country and the region at large. We saw Iran and Iraq hollowed out during the 80s war in much the same way (and for many of the same reasons - a Republican president playing both sides against the middle, hoping they’d both fail and fall into US sphere of influence).
Russia isn’t served by this war. It will only decay into a deindustrialized dictatorship further. The air war has immolated billions in Soviet era capital and severed access to European and Middle Eastern markets.
Ukraine isn’t served, as they land they’ve lost pales beside the obliteration of lives and livelihoods and working capital to the West.
Putin’s position on the world stage is significantly weaker than when he started, even with his friend Trump back in office. All Cheeto can do for him is staunch the bleeding, assuming he doesn’t take the opportunity to stab Putin the back and boost up a more America friendly replacement.
Russia isn’t served by this war. It will only decay into a deindustrialized dictatorship further. The air war has immolated billions in Soviet era capital and severed access to European and Middle Eastern markets.
Sure, Russia isn’t served by this, but Putin doesn’t care as long as he is in power and can live in luxury from being a cleptocrat dictator and inflate his ego by the size of his empire.
Putin’s position on the world stage is significantly weaker than when he started, even with his friend Trump back in office. All Cheeto can do for him is staunch the bleeding, assuming he doesn’t take the opportunity to stab Putin the back and boost up a more America friendly replacement.
Currently, his position on the world stage is weakened, but with western alliances falling apart, this won’t matter, as long as he has a stronger position than the unfortunate isolated neighbour country he sets his sights on next. All Putler needs to secure Cheeto’s support is supporting his hunhinged plans of annexing Canada, Greenland, or Panama. Of course, a certain risk of being stabbed in the back by a serial con artist like Trump exists, but Russia hasn’t been an autocratic dictatorship only since yesterday. Even the Wagner rebellion failed. I doubt any backstabbing that could be done from abroad has any better chance of succeeding.
Putin doesn’t care as long as he is in power and can live in luxury
The war hasn’t improved Putin’s living conditions. This war has much more to do with Russians biter over the end of the USSR than Putin wanting to live like Elon Musk.
But has it worsened his living conditions? He is so obscenely rich that a few billions more or less won’t make much of a difference.
But has it worsened his living conditions?
Just for starters, he can’t travel to NATO states anymore. Interbank lenders have cut Russian financial institutions out of their network, so he can’t get cheap USD loans. Russia is functionally out of the G8, which means he’s not flying up to Jackson Hole for Davos Summits or wining and dining in Paris or Rome or Brussels with the other Euro-snobs administering the West. Then there’s just the broad national balance sheet - refineries are getting blown up, military readiness is degraded which makes those parades a bit lackluster, and he’s doing far fewer ribbon cuttings on vanity projects in Moscow given the possibility of assassination attempts.
Bush Jr Era Putin was having a much better time than Trump v2 Era Putin.
The fundamental problem is that the war in Ukraine makes a coup or a revolution more likely. We already saw Wagner march on Moscow after all. That will get worse with the economy in trouble amking paying the forces harder and living conditions falling, making revolutions more likely. The oligarchs are already paying a massive price for the war, but do not seem to revolte. Complaining about Putin increases fall risk by quite a bit in Russia. So any sane actor would hide it for as long as possible, to then go hard at Putin with the goal of full removal. If Putin can no forsee it, then the average dude in the West has no chance at all.
I’d say he’s the opposite of desperate, I’d say that with trump back in power, he’s mostly excited and enthusiastic about what’s to come.
At the moment, Putin will only make a deal if he believes that such a deal weakens the west or Ukraine or both in the long term. He is not in a place where he believes it is necessary for Russia to make any deal out of self preservation.
John Mearsheimer keeps saying, that he believes this war to be decided on the battlefield. The West is not going to significantly step up their efforts. As it stands Russia is battered but not yet fully committed to the war, so they still have escalating potential. The Western demand to put Ukraine into NATO and EU, is nothing for Putin to negotiate for, unless he has to negotiate. But if he is forced to negotiate Ukraine would have the power to fight back Russia until behind their borders.
I hope his generals are and I also hope one of them deposes him
