As the anniversary of Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine approaches, many analysts are looking back, recalling the key factors that led to the war and highlighting the highlights of the initial period of the hostilities in order to better assess the causes that led to the current state of the war. business.
Underestimated by everyone at the start of the war, Ukraine, through its desperate struggle, guaranteed a free and independent future, the road to which will however be long, according to the experts gathered at the Center for Strategic and International Studies Studies in the US capital Washington.
Russian roulette “a la Poutine”
Michael Kimmage, a former US State Department official in charge of the Europe, Russia and Eurasia program (Michael Kimmage, CSIS), admitted that after almost a year, the Russian leader’s longstanding fears that “he’s losing the Ukraine” and “that he will be the one who will be the leader of Russia, which has finally lost Ukraine, as Ukraine enters the political, legal and military structures of the West.
Michael Kimmage
“At first, Putin’s imperial rhetoric in his speeches until February 24, 2022 sounded like propaganda and verbal extremism,” Kimmage recalled. “Now it is clear that the war for Putin is an ‘aspect of Russian strategy’. It is not really ‘imperial’. Putin believes that instead of ‘giving Ukraine into the hands of Europe West and the United States”, Russia should “break it” and, so to speak, “change the whole trajectory of American policy in the region, the trajectory of Europe” in another direction. ”
Maria Snegovaya, senior researcher at the Center for International and Strategic Studies (Maria Snegovaya, CSIS), pointed out that Putin’s self-deception was the reason for quite consistent actions. She recalled an “eloquent document”: an article published in the summer of 2021, where Putin, in fact, “described his “warlike impulses””, calling Ukraine an “anti-Russian state”.
“Ukraine drifted into a transatlantic alliance, and also armed itself and got stronger, while Russia really degraded. It understood that time was not on its side,” said Snegovaya.
Understanding Russia’s military plans is the “pearl” of US intelligence achievements
Dara Massicot, Senior Fellow at the RAND Corporation (Dara Massicot), described the incredible lengths the US intelligence community has gone to in an attempt to prevent this war.
“Now we know from reports in various publications that a concerted effort has been made on many levels in the United States not only to maintain intelligence contacts with the Ukrainians and our NATO allies, but also to communicate directly with the Russians. This was done at several levels: the State Department, through the direct Biden-Putin channel. But most importantly – directly to Nikolai Patrushev – one of Russia’s superhawks (Secretary of the Council of Security of the Russian Federation – GA), it has been said privately and publicly: “America is aware of your invasion plans. Don’t do this. We will support Ukraine. You will face heavy consequences,” recalls Dara Massicot.
She recalled that when this was done in November 2021, it became clear that the Kremlin expected Western aid to Ukraine to be negligible and Ukrainians not to resist.
Miscalculations by Putin and the Kremlin
Michael Kimmage believes that all Russian miscalculations had a basis – the successful events of 2014 for them. Kimmage noted that after Viktor Yanukovych fled, “paralysis of political will” reigned in Kiev. The expert suggested that “Russian military planning in 2022, so to speak, refers to this moment.” If this time the President (Zelenskyyy) “flees or is destroyed”, then, according to the logic of the Kremlin, all the conditions for the capture will be repeated.
Maria Snegovaya agreed, adding that the Kremlin’s experience in 2014 also included “the lack of a strong enough Western response after Crimea.”
“The energy supplied by Russia to Europe played a huge role in this, so Putin assumed that everything would be fine and not necessarily cause a serious rebuff from the international community, even if he it was about the survival of the Ukrainian state,” Snegovaya said. .
One of the important factors for the continuation of the war, Michael Kimmage considers the nature of the elections in Ukraine in 2019: “Zelenskyyy came to replace Poroshenko. He is truly a democratically elected leader. He was elected with the support of 70% of the Ukrainian electorate, which was unusual for Ukrainian politics. And in Zelenskyyy’s electorate, one cannot see a certain division into north, south, east, west,” said an analyst from the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
He explained Ukraine’s military successes by the fact that its “decentralization contributed to the development of civilian activity on the ground”: “Today, Ukrainian soldiers not only fight valiantly on the front lines – million people are working from the rear for victory. This is civic activism born out of Ukraine’s decentralized political culture. What Putin saw as Ukraine’s weakness has turned out to be its strength “, underlined the analyst.
Russia’s New Plans
Dara Massicot is sure that at the start of the invasion, the Russians assumed that “there would be no significant resistance, but if there was, then Ukraine’s arsenals would be exhausted by spring.”
Dara Massicot
According to Massicot, the Russians in the fall “started to understand a bit what was going on when they decided to mobilize and went on the defensive. They began to fortify their positions. They dug trenches everywhere. They are trying to create conditions that would make a Ukrainian counter-offensive very difficult.
She added that there are satellite images showing the construction of tent camps for thousands of servicemen, as well as the removal of equipment from long-term storage warehouses in Siberia.
Putin and Mobilization: The Kremlin’s Biggest Domestic Policy Mistake
“When the impact of sanctions was discussed in the United States, it was expected that they would bring down Putin’s regime. However, over the past year, the biggest event that really undermined Putin’s support was his personal decision to mobilize,” noted Maria Snegovaya.
It is “the first event in a year that has made Russians aware that the war concerns them personally”, added the expert.
She explained that in “Russian society and the system as a whole, there is a huge inertia”: “The stability of this system is incredible. Part of it is people’s inner desire to continue living ordinary lives.
Opinion polls received by Maria Snegovaya show that Russia is “too optimistic about the future”: Russians hope that the war will not last long, that everything will return to normal and that in the end Russia will be friends with the West.
At the same time, there are also encouraging data. Snegovaya noted that “the mood today is still very different from what it was in 2014, when people rallied around this crime – the annexation of Crimea”.
Panel discussion at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC
“One of the most reliable indicators is not even what people are talking about now directly about this war, but how they communicate their moods. Lots of anxiety, stress, fear and uncertainty about the future,” Snegovaya said.
According to her, “many Russians are already struggling to accept what Russian troops are doing in Ukraine, with their terrible crimes against humanity and international law.”
However, “psychological self-defense” still works. For most Russians, according to Snegova, “it is even easier to believe that they are ‘good liberators from a hostile world.’ This identity is built around Putin, which makes the regime and his personality irreplaceable for them, because they do not find a positive identity alternative in the modern world.
Fragile “crystal ball with predictions”
Experts treated the proposal to predict the development of events in and around Ukraine as a “fortune-teller’s prediction”, but tried to make some assumptions.
Dara Massicot, not without irony, quoted Michael Kofman (an American military analyst. Kofman was convinced that Ukraine would be defeated. – GA), saying that “many things can happen”.
After Russian troops lost ‘most of their trained personnel – it’s important to understand exactly what Russia is transferring from other parts of the country, Siberia and the Far East,’ said the former official of the United States Department of Defense.
Massicot reiterated that “there is a disconnect between what the Kremlin thinks of the remaining army and the reality on the ground”, adding that she constantly wants to understand “does anyone in Russia see what we see?After all, Facebook and Twitter are disabled and YouTube is not fully functional.
Michael Kimmage is convinced that “a long war is coming, and in such cases the economy begins to play a big role”. However, Kimmage suggests that, while losing economic and military-technical capabilities, Russia “will try to excel in the ability to sow chaos in Ukraine, as well as in Europe.”
“I expect different attacks: cyberattacks on the scale of 2016 that strike the critical infrastructure of the banking system of a European country, or attempts to interfere in politics. There are already news that Russia is trying to stage a coup in Moldova,” said Michael Kimmage.
Mary Snow
Maria Snegovaya expressed one of the unpleasant but obvious scenarios for the Kremlin: “This is a war with the West, not just a war with Ukraine. It is a proxy war with the West. Putin practically admitted that for him this is a clear attempt to show not only Ukraine and neighboring states, but also other countries of the world that the West can be challenged.
The expert is sure that this is a war that the Kremlin will not be able to win due to the fact that the total share of GDP of Western countries with Ukraine compared to Russia is 42 to 1.
“The question for me is not whether he can win, but how strong can a defeat be for him? – This is the biggest mystery for years to come. If Putin stops his war against four regions, occupying and annexing them completely, this could turn out to be a kind of “not a complete defeat” for him. And he will be able to “sell” it to Russian society, ”lamented Maria Snegovaya.
To assess Russia’s post-Putin future, Maria Snegovaya suggested, on the one hand, to look to the experience of “Central Asian countries, where they also like ‘strong male leaders’, and he there have been cases where they died or left. On the other hand, Snegovaya believes, “it is worth considering the trajectory of Russia over the past centuries”.
“After the catastrophic defeat of the previous ruler, the next ruler in Russia generally tried to slightly adjust state policy. Therefore, I expect an attempt to reset and an attempt to restore relations with the West. It is quite obvious that Russia, unfortunately, in its current state, is a really serious challenge and threat to the international order. Russia’s place in the international system must be seriously reconsidered as soon as such an opportunity arises,” summed up Maria Snegovaya.
