Would-be Emperor Putin has set Russia back 50 years

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No matter what the outcome, Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine spells bad news for his regime. Neither taking Kyiv and declaring victory nor beginning peace negotiations will save the Russian president from the serious, if not fatal, domestic repercussions of this war.

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As the war drags on, the danger to Putin’s reign will come chiefly from three quarters: the oligarchs, the military and those whom we call “ordinary Russians.” The oligarchs, who stand to lose the most from the West’s sanctions, have been publicly cautious, whatever their true sentiments may be. Cowed since the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2003, some left Russia, while others appear reconciled to (in effect) managing their companies on behalf of the state rather than being their masters. Of the four who have registered concerns so far, three did so from London — Mikhail Fridman, Roman Abramovich and Oleg Tinkov. Only one, Oleg Deripaska, made a comment from Moscow. All point to the tragedy of the war and call for peace without blaming Putin. Only Tinkov explicitly said that he opposes the war.

Throughout Russian history, the military has generally stayed away from politics (with the notable exception of the hapless Decembrist revolt in 1825). Like other autocrats, Putin has had ample opportunity to choose his top officers for loyalty rather than capability. His minister of defense, Sergei Shoigu, has no military background at all: He is a civil engineer who was minister of emergency situations when Putin put him in charge of the country’s armed forces.

Yascha Mounk: We are not at war with the Russian people

Thousands of ordinary Russians have already been arrested for protesting the war. But the majority of citizens are almost certain to rally around Putin at first, as they did after Putin’s first attack on Ukraine in 2014. He is clearly hoping that this effect will last until the March 2024 presidential election, when, at 71, he will likely try to embark on a presidency for life. It is impossible to predict when the memories of the Soviet Union’s quagmire in Afghanistan — the zinc-lined coffins and the unmarked graves — will result in resentment, then anger, then mass protests.

It is for just such an eventuality that Putin set up the national guard, under his former bodyguard Viktor Zolotov, in 2016. Borrowing from the police and entirely absorbing the former special riot troops (known as the OMON), the guard, which in the past six years has grown to an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 men, is supposed to be utterly loyal to the Kremlin. However, it is one thing to bash the heads of students in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and another to shoot at the mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine. If the guardsmen hesitate, the military will not come to Putin’s rescue, while the oligarchs might be emboldened enough to donate to the protesters, as their Ukrainian counterparts did during the Orange Revolution of 2004 and the Maidan Revolution of 2014.

The Russian national tradition is unforgiving of military setbacks. Virtually every major defeat has resulted in radical change. The Crimean War (1853-1856) precipitated Emperor Alexander II’s liberal revolution from above. The Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) brought about the First Russian Revolution. The catastrophe of World War I resulted in Emperor Nicholas II’s abdication and the Bolshevik Revolution. And the war in Afghanistan became a key factor in Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms.

It’s also worth noting that the current regime is uniquely vulnerable on this account. More than any other Russian ruler, Putin has made war, or the threat of war, the foundation of his popular support. He began his presidency by promising economic modernization, but when growth slowed and then began to stall, he shifted his tactics to what Russian scholars have called “patriotic mobilization” or “militarized patriotism in peacetime.” Russian propaganda soon began stressing two main themes: The “West” is at war with Russia. An undeclared, mean, constant war. But the Motherland has nothing to worry about so long as Putin is in charge. Not only will he protect Russia, but he will also restore it to at least some of the victorious glory of the Soviet superpower status.

Compared with Marxism-Leninism, Putin’s national ideology of militarized patriotism lacks coherence and is yet to be tested by adversity. As to the terror, the evolution of the regime from a still “softer” authoritarianism to a traditional brutal dictatorship will be one of the most troubling consequences of this war. Wartime censorship has already started, with huge fines and up to 15 years in jail for “distorting the purpose, role and tasks of the Armed Forces,” arrests are piling up, and more repression is likely to follow. Yet after two decades of incomplete and steadily diminishing but real freedoms, a sudden switch to near-totalitarianism carries enormous risks for Putin.

Every day that Ukraine holds out erodes Putin’s regime. The consequences could be far-reaching.

The latest: Ukraine-Russia talks in Turkey ended without an agreement as President Zelensky condemned Russian airstrike on a maternity hospital in Mariupol that killed at least 3 people. Meanwhile, in the U.S., House lawmakers approved new humanitarian, economic and military assistance to Ukraine worth approximately $14 billion.

Oil exports: Russia is the world’s largest oil exporter, sending more than 7 million barrels of crude oil to countries around the world, including to Germany and other E.U. members.

The fight: Casualties are mounting in Ukraine — including civilians, while Moscow is facing allegations that it has used cluster and vacuum weapons. As many as 4,000 Russian soldiers may have died, according to a U.S. general.

Map: Russia’s assault on Ukraine has been extensive with strikes and attacks across the entire country.

The response: Russia’s war could be a global economic “game changer,” with rising gas prices and shifting trade decisions suggesting change that will be felt for years. Meanwhile, in Russia, online access has been significantly curtailed by censors at home and businesses abroad.

How you can help: Here are ways those in the U.S. can help support the Ukrainian people as well as what people around the world have been donating.

It feels like a passage out of darkness to light, but left behind are friends trapped in one man's tunnel vision.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin isn't just destroying Ukraine, but two nations, condemning Russians to an isolation they didn't necessarily choose.

Over the past couple of months while I've been reporting from Moscow, I've met many people who have been horrified, shocked and numbed by Putin's wanton aggression. Some of them believed him when he said he wouldn't invade Ukraine. Some even knew players in the Kremlin inner circle and thought they understood the President's red lines, but now that trust is blown and they fear he has no limits at all.

What makes Putin's actions all the more galling is how he executed his plot in plain sight. Distracting with one hand, transfixing attention on diplomacy, even while insisting falsely that his massed troops were carrying out exercises on Ukraine's borders.

Ordinary Muscovites didn't even flinch as he perpetrated this betrayal by marching the nation to war on a cocktail of carefully stewed grievances.

Putin spent years building a false narrative along with his empire. The wishes that he was denied, such as NATO withdrawing to 1997 lines or barring Ukraine from membership, was the West's fault, he claimed. But if Putin did believe Russia's security was threatened, and that the modern western world was pitted against him, the truth was that he never adjusted to the changing dynamics of the 21st century.

My first visit to Moscow came in 1990 not long after the Iron Curtain began to fall. I'd seen the Berlin Wall come down in the previous year, heralding the reunification of East and West Germany, and was in Bucharest shortly afterwards when Romanian President Nicolae Ceau?escu was deposed.

Back then a packet of American Marlboro cigarettes waved at the roadside outside the CNN bureau on the imposing Kutuzovsky Prospekt got you a taxi ride, another pack paid for a haircut. Moscow was finally connecting to the world; our bureau had phone lines that I helped install as a young engineer that were direct satellite extensions to our Atlanta switchboard.

During those bright, long summer days, the USSR's last leader Mikhail Gorbachev gave our network permission to erect a stage on Red Square in the center of the Russian capital. We were the first western media to broadcast live from the fabled military parade ground, yards from Lenin's tomb in the shadow of the Kremlin's foreboding brick walls, and were witness to the Soviet Union's last party Congress.