Self-inflicted damage is irreversible as long as Putin remains in charge
By Ian Bremmer, NIKKEI ASIA June 20, 2022 17:00 JST
Vladimir Putin has exposed Russia as a delusional and dangerous power. © Sputnik/AP
Russia continues to make gains on the ground in Ukraine, particularly in the Donbas region, where the war’s fighting is now most intense.
President Vladimir Putin can and will inflict more pain, and though his military is not strong enough to overthrow the Zelenskyy government and capture all of Ukraine as he initially hoped, he is confident that Ukraine is not strong enough to oust his troops from the territory it already holds. He also knows that the global food and fuel inflation his war creates will test the limits of Western resolve to continue support for Ukraine at its current levels.
But from a longer-term perspective, Russia has already lost this war, and Putin’s decision to invade will be remembered as one of the biggest blunders by any leader of a major power in decades.
What did Putin hope his invasion would accomplish? His stated goals were the “denazification and demilitarization” of Ukraine. By denazification, he meant the removal of any Ukrainian government that preferred stronger ties with Europe than with Russia. With demilitarization, he wanted to strip Ukraine of any ability to challenge Russian dominance in the future, whoever was in charge in Kyiv.
His ambition extended well beyond Ukraine. He also wanted to demonstrate to the U.S. and Europe that Russia must be treated as a great power capable of defining its own sphere of influence. He wanted to expose the Western powers as weak-willed and divided. He also hoped to bolster his standing with the Russian people, as the 2014 seizure and annexation of Crimea had done.
What has he achieved?
Putin has exposed Russia as a delusional and dangerous power that wants to redesign Europe’s security architecture and redraw the boundaries of a neighboring democracy with brute force and a steady stream of lies about its motives. He has demonstrated that he has no idea what Ukrainians are willing to fight for or how the West will respond to large-scale, naked aggression.
He has inflicted generational damage on his own military. More Russians have been killed in action in 100 days in Ukraine than Soviet soldiers died in a decade in Afghanistan. Large numbers of tanks and other heavy weapons have been lost. Artillery supplies have dwindled. U.S. export controls on the sale of critical parts to Russia will further undermine Russian efforts to restock. He has also given the rest of the world an unobstructed view of Russian capabilities, limitations and vulnerabilities. He also inflicted substantial damage on the morale of a fighting force that was badly ill-equipped for the mission its leader had in mind.
A destroyed Russian tank and armored vehicles at Dmytrivka village near Kyiv on May 30: Putin has inflicted generational damage on his own military. © Sipa/AP
Putin has given Europe and the United States a sense of common purpose that has not existed since the Cold War’s end. He has reminded many Europeans why American help is so valuable and shown Americans that Europeans will make tough choices and painful sacrifices to defend Western values. He has expanded NATO, current objections from Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan notwithstanding, and doubled the length of the Russian-NATO border by persuading Finland and Sweden that they are safer inside the alliance than outside it. Two-thirds of voters in Euroskeptic Denmark have now voted to tighten defense ties with the EU.
He has saddled his economy with U.S. and European sanctions that are unlikely to be lifted while Putin remains in power. He has created long-term shortages of critical spare parts for Russian manufacturing. He has left himself vulnerable to criticism not only from Russians who hate the international isolation they know is coming but also from those who feel he has mismanaged a war Russia should easily have won.
He has persuaded the EU to make drastic cuts to its imports of Russian energy, a vital source of revenue for Putin’s government. He has proved to European leaders that they must spend much more money on Europe’s defense. All these developments were all but unthinkable before Russia started amassing troops along Ukraine’s borders.
Putin has also left his country deeply dependent on China’s still limited goodwill. The process of diverting large volumes of Russian energy from Europe to Asia will take a lot of time and money, and, with fewer willing buyers, Russia will have to sell its commodities at discounted prices.
In return for all that, he might win control of Ukraine’s Donbas region and more Black Sea coastline to link that territory with Russian-controlled Crimea.
Russia is not entirely isolated, of course. There are still people and governments in every region of the world who consider the U.S. a greater threat than Russia to the world’s peace and shared prosperity. Many governments will continue to buy Russian commodities and weapons, especially at necessarily lower prices.
But worst of all, this self-inflicted damage is irreversible as long as Putin remains in charge. That is why, though fighting in Ukraine may continue for months, even for years, Putin has already lost this war.
Ian Bremmer is the president of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media and author of “The Power of Crisis.”
@inna1
You are probably right about the WEF plans but there is more to this (multiple goals), I think.
It’s also a replay of WWII by different means with the “Untermenschen” (Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Moldovans, etc) destroying each other this time but the fault being assigned to Russia (“the colossus on clay feet”) which is slated to be taken over by the Western powers once it “loses the war it provoked”.
The West does NOT want Ukraine to win, it wants the whole of the Eastern Europe destroyed to be taken over by the “Aryans”.
Chancellor Scholz has just announced that Germany is going to have the biggest Bundeswehr (military) (rearming for WWIII?)
A one sided manifesto under the guise of a costs-rewards excel sheet to Russia ; to shout against Poutine is easy ; to go deeper into the mechanisms of this remote control war is beyond the capacity of Ian Bremmer . Not a word about the Brzezinski plan to snatch Ukraine from Russia influence . Not a word about the 2014 Maidan carefully controlled uprising ? Anyway , this war will run its course . Russia will keep its conquests , Ukraine will be half destroyed for 20 years. Economic crisis will morph into enduring regression ( energy-food-work ) and Europe will suffer the most . Should we also give a diploma to the stupid european puppets who kindly entered this conflict engineered in the USA ? By the way , Henry Kissinger ( a real caliber of International relations who made History with a capital H ) just told the hot heads at Davos WEF , a month that NEUTRALITY was THE ONLY OPTION for Ukraine and that Russia would still be here like it was here for 1400 years . Neutrality is totally different from Finlandisation But astutely Ian Bremmer disguised it under the pejorative concept of ” Finlandisation ” . Just to remind Mr Bremmer , Finland though not part of NATO, always trained its army with other NATO armies . That was accepted by Russia . It could have been the same situation in Ukraine but the Bragadaccio prevailed …Russia’s blunders are small fries beside american blunders. .
https://youtu.be/_PBhET4IvUA
@Inna
Watch the Lavrov interview. That’s how I understand the facts.
Good article. IMHO people here do not understand what’s going on in Ukraine. Putin wanted to end the war in a couple of weeks. He could not. The atrocities committed by Russians are horrific. With American/NATO/EU help Ukrainians could win long ago, but very little weapons came. Read the 40 billion bill text, there is only 6 blns will go for weapons and it’s until Sept. 30, much less than in Afghanistan. The Lend Lease did not start. The war is prolonging on purpose. This is the WEF’s plan – to expend the war, to destroy the world economy. Ukraine is bleeding, Russia is weakening (35,000 soldiers already killed), Russian economy is suffering. It’s a part of the globalists’ plan. Part 2, after the “plandemic”. Biden is still buying Russian oil, and food plants in the US are mysteriously burning…
Oh, paahleeeze! @Ted This is comic relief, right?
@Ted @Alex Ha ha. Witty, pithy, and true. Good one.
@Ted
Very astute characterization by Alex.
Alex Markovsky asked me to post this comment.
I would like to know how Bremmer and other msm pundits have learned Putins strategy such, according to them, as conquering all of Ukraine. What is their source, personal discussions with Putin? These idiots have their own notion of Putins Hitler like character and then step personally into his mind for their interpretation of events. Concurrently they celebrate an obvious fraud like the “Jewish” guy Zelensky who defends Ukraine on the front lines. If he were on the front lines why isn’t he dead yet unlike a true hero such as Leonidas?
It looks as though the Ukrainian positions around Lysychansk are close to collapse:
https://thesaker.is/sitrep-operation-z-cauldrons-and-fatigue/
Unless the Ukrainians have a “mystery reserve” lurking in the background, this battle might open the floodgates of a Russian advance, ultimately, to Odessa. I can’t see any profit for NATO to continue this war, if the Black Sea coast falls.
Unfortunately peloni1986 appears up have nailed it. Our leadership apoears to have gone out of its way to provoke Russia. This is a war we didn’t need, can’t readily afford, probably can’t win, even if we do somehow “win” we gain nothing of value, and the almost inevitable defeat will be catastrophe for us. Hopefully I misread this situation.
These actions on the part of our leadership seem stupid on so many levels that it’s hard to know where to begin. Ideology can make otherwise smart people dumb. Perhaps this explains such stupidity.
Former president Trump understood the absolute imperative nature of ending Cold War 2. In this regard he put together a careful and meticulous diplomatic effort that was many years in the making and it was bearing fruit. Unfortunately our leadership class destroyed it.
I quite agree with Vivarto. The author here is quite delusional as to Putin’s aims, Russia’s position in the war and the effect that will be felt in the years to come following Russia’s ultimate victory.
For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the Russians came to realize the level of absolute hatred that the West has held for her people, attempting to even abuse people, events and animals(seriously) simply due to their association with Russia, regardless of how tangential that association might be based. In doing so, the liberal West displayed their great hypocrisy regarding liberal standards.
More than this, though, in seeking to utterly devastate the Russian people by attempting to cripple them financially and isolated them completely, the West forced Russia to demonstrate a sense of self reliance, and national independence that they had never before attempted, not since they cured themselves of their Soviet credo. The ultimate result of this has been, to the shock of the West and Russia, both, that Russia has strengthened while her abusers have been weakened. Incapable of exercising rational judgements, the West has since resolved to persist in the very policy strengthening Russia and damaging themselves.
Without some great setback to alter current events, which seems quite remotely possible, Russia will emerge from this fiasco, with an independence, and sufficiency that will enable her to make many choices in the future, independent of the interests of the West, which will directly affect her neighbors as well as her former and current trade partners. When she does so, I hope that Russia will make those choices with the same calm resolve of rational policy that has brought her to this period of strength and independence, and not devolve into the radical policies of military adventurism pursued by her war-hungry, rabid Russophobic opponents in the West.
It looks like someone trying really hard to deny reality.
And reality is that Russia has already wan this war.
Speculating about what will happen in the future holds about as much water as speculating about the ocean levels in 100 years.