What is Putin's major malfunction?
Putin is frustrating. Obviously, he's much worse considering his brutal and bloody invasion of Ukraine. But even that is born from his utterly frustrating idiocy:
Putin has made a fetish of defending a Russian national sovereignty that no one had attempted to destroy[.]
This is astounding. I observed this sad reality recently:
I think Putin screwed the pooch by portraying a docile and disarming West as his enemy. But the West has to make Putin pay the price for it to be a serious mistake. If we let Russia defeat Ukraine by depriving Ukraine of the means to fight, in fifty years Putin's strategic error could instead look far-sighted.
As I noted, post-Cold War, Westerners were wondering if NATO should be shut down--as if 1991 was a permanent victory. Back in 2008, Russian stupidity exasperated me:
The proto-thugs in Moscow actually have the nerve to be upset that joining NATO has become fairly popular amongst the formerly Soviet satellite nations and even parts of the old Soviet Union. Instead of wondering why the tender loving attention of Mother Russia scares the crap out of these people eager to join NATO, the Russians are busy whining and blustering even as their military continues to rot and their economy enjoys a temporary oil-fueled bubble that will leave Russia like any other Third World oil exporter--poorer and unfree.
Putin, I thought, is destroying Russia:
If Russia had continued to behave like a developing ex-communist ally, NATO would have dissolved or atrophied. Instead, beginning with the 1999 march on Pristina airport after the Kosovo War to carve out a Russian occupation zone, and continuing through the Georgia Olympics War of 2008, with sabre rattling over the Baltic States, Ukraine, and European energy supplies thrown in as bonuses, Russia has given Europe a reason to keep NATO--with America in the lead--intact.
So all Russia has done with their so-called revival is alienate potential allies in NATO should the real threat to Russian territorial integrity--China--decide to act to reverse those unequal treaties that gave the far east to Russia.
But the fools in the Kremlin have figuratively stripped to the waist, strutted about, and convinced themselves that they're back!
Despite the talk of a rising, rearmed, aggressive, Russia, the Russians are declining. A death rattle is not evidence of life.
Yet rather than welcome Western disarmament even as NATO expanded on paper,
Putin could not stand that the West didn't think about Russia very much
after 1991. Yet (as that initial author writes) the invasion seemed
like it might be a big whack with the clue bat. Sadly, that was not the
case:
Two years in, and neither the Russian military nor its economy shows any sign of imminent collapse. On the contrary, Putin appears confident, cheerful and even cocky. ...
And yet, as he prepares for his fifth term, the truth is that Putin is a hollow tsar.
I don't take Putin's confident demeanor at face value. Lying is in Russia's DNA. And portraying a hollow shell as a robust reality is nothing new. I wasn't fooled prior to Putin's invasion and I'm not fooled now.
And if Russia keeps this up, before long Putin is head of the Grand Duchy of Moscow.
UPDATE: Hmmm:
Hard limits are appearing on Russia’s ability to continue the Ukraine war. It has begun running out of tube artillery (as opposed to rocket artillery) and light armored fighting vehicles (AFVs). The artillery shortage is because tube artillery barrels are wearing out, while the light AFV shortage is because so many have been lost in combat.
Putin bluffs a good game. Or maybe he just plays against the easily bluffed, as I observed five months ago:
The Russians pretend all is well and Westerners believe Russia's cardboard cutout bravado to justify retreating before Russia.
We're not stupid enough to let Putin win with a pair of 2s in his hand, are we?
UPDATE: I have no doubt that Putin would like this to be true:
Several Russian financial, economic, and military indicators suggest that Russia is preparing for a large-scale conventional conflict with NATO, not imminently but likely on a shorter timeline than what some Western analysts have initially posited.
But at some level I suspect this is part of the bluff that Russia is close to defeating Ukraine.
And while America's pause in aiding Ukraine is making this a race Putin could win, I suspect Russian talk of invading NATO soon is part of an information operation designed to demoralize the West into thinking Russia's victory over Ukraine is so inevitable that Putin is already preparing his next war.
I think we can stop Russia in Ukraine.
UPDATE: Or maybe Putin survives in his throne perched on the ruins of the Russia he creates, as I observed last summer.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
NOTE: I'm adding updates on the Last Hamas War in this post.
