Russia is destroying the foundations of society to keep its bloody invasion of Ukraine going just a little bit longer behind a facade of indifference to the costs. It is seemingly a race between the collapse of the Russian state or regime on the one hand, and breaking Ukraine's defenses to end that growing pressure on the other.
The war goes on. The casualties and Russia's slow ground crawl are the constant background noise. The major new feature seems to be Ukraine's increasing capability to strike Russian logistics deeper inside Russia.
Putin is destroying the empire to expand it:
According to The New York Times, Russians suspected of a crime will now see their pending charges disappear if they sign up to join the war: “Local papers nationwide are full of cases of suspected murderers, rapists and thieves who are headed off to war after signing contracts instead of facing trial.” Officials jailed for corruption are being offered amnesty and debtors are having their debts forgiven for agreeing to deploy in a war that has killed or wounded an estimated 600,000 Russian troops.
These new and exploitative efforts are a reminder that while Russia has made significant territorial gains in Ukraine in the past year, its efforts to sustain its high-casualty war of aggression, where soldiers are often treated as expendable, are not without serious obstacles. It also reflects how Moscow’s commitment to the war is reshaping and militarizing Russian society in ways that could have far-reaching effects beyond the war.
This "solution" to the problem of shoving fresh cogs into the killing machine is astounding. The Russian state is breaking down societal compacts of justice and contracts. How does a society survive when it deliberately takes a sledgehammer to the pillars of protecting the people from criminals and economic growth by protecting lenders?
Especially when the Russian state risks a Time of Troubles 2.0 by encouraging private and sub-national security forces that might decide they must protect the people--and themselves--by restoring those pillars of society.
And what of the people? Back to the initial article:
According to Timothy Frye, a political scientist at Columbia University, the general consensus among researchers who follow public opinion on the war in Russia is that some 15% to 20% of Russians are enthusiastic about the war, about 10% are wholly opposed, and most everyone else falls in between. “They don’t want to lose the war, but they’re not willing to sacrifice to stop the war,” Frye told me. “They’re also not willing to volunteer and encourage people to go to the front in some kind of wave of organic patriotism.” Frye also said polling shows that a majority of Russians oppose general conscription, and that any attempt to impose it could spark resistance. Thus the reliance on what he called more “hidden forms of mobilization.”
How will Russians react to a general conscription of unwilling civilians for the war when these civilians know they are doomed at the front and that they can't even count on their government to protect their families from the most heinous crimes when they are gone? Or to even punish the criminals inflicting such heinous acts on their loved ones?
How will they react after seeing Putin fail in Syria?
Syria’s army refused to fight in late 2024 and the same thing could happen in Russia, Ivashov has warned. “Our regime is no more stable than others that have been overthrown. Ours could fall as suddenly as Assad’s,” he said. “I see no grounds for optimism.”
Ivanashov is a Russian nationalist who, like Putin, sees the fall of the USSR as a tragedy; but sees the invasion of Ukraine as a huge mistake.
Despite potential fault lines in his military and society, Putin maintains the facade of confidence by refusing to moderate his conquest demands despite words that imply he is "reasonable" in his conquest demands during negotiations:
The Financial Times (FT) reported on January 10, citing a former senior Kremlin official and another source who has discussed this topic with Putin, that Putin will maintain his pre-war demands of preventing Ukraine from joining NATO and forcing NATO to withdraw from deployments in Eastern Europe in any such talks by "chang[ing] the rules" of the international system to ensure that there are "no threats to Russia," a callback to his December 2021 ultimatum to the United States ahead of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Putin claims he wants negotiations "without preconditions" but he has many that have nothing to do with the brutal war he started and everything to do with weakening NATO and making the Soviet Union's former empire vulnerable to reconquest.
Future historians may trace the Time of Troubles 2.0 to Putin's bizarre war on Ukraine and reality.
Or, if the West abandons Ukraine, future historians may marvel at how the West helped Putin the Great snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
UPDATE (Monday): Relevant and timely thoughts:
Only last month we witnessed the sudden collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s Syria. Rulers in Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, Pyongyang, Havana and elsewhere nervously understand the Hemingway rule, even if they have never read him.
Perhaps there is nervousness in Brussels, too, eh?
NOTE: ISW updates continue here. Also, I put war-related links and commentary in the Weekend Data Dump.
NOTE: I'm adding updates on the Last Hamas War and the related Syria events in this post.
NOTE: You may also read my posts on Substack, at The Dignified Rant: Evolved.
