Was Putin Right All Along? No.
I needed to write a rebuttal to Grant Piper’s article of nearly the same title, minus final word. To start, I’m a retired Russian linguist and intelligence analyst with 20 years of experience working the RF and UA at all levels. I’ve lived in UA since 2020, and spent time living in Moscow working at the US Embassy there, and have travelled far and wide all over Russia: Moscow, StPt, Yoshkar Ola, Yekaterinburg, Omsk, Orsk, Krasnoyarsk, Ulan Ude, Volgograd, and others. I have at least sixteen stamps in my passport(s) from the RF. My first visit to Ukraine was in 2014 during Maidan, and I have been travelling there frequently until I moved there in 2020. I twice graduated from the National Intelligence University, in 2005 and 2011.
No. Putin wasn’t “right all along”. First, the West is actually getting more interested in the conflict as time drags on, because it has finally dawned on the West what is at stake. First, of course, is freedom, democracy, self-determination, yada yada yada. However, more importantly, there is oil, gas, and coal. If Ukraine controls Donetsk, Lugansk, and Crimea, then Russia is finished as a state and as an economy. Western oil companies are poised to swoop in and rebuild the infrastructure there, permanently removing the influence of Russia from the European theater.
“The West is facing economic headwinds”, but Russia is in far, far, worse shape. The strong ruble is a bad thing, for more on that see my other article from last week. Inflation in the West is single-digit, in Russia it is 20% or more. Russian unemployment is at least 30%, perhaps higher. Piper mentions McD’s — but failed to realize that McD’s isn’t a restaurant, it is a logistics chain attached to a real estate empire. Russia got the real estate, but it can’t match the logistics. Vkusno Tochka is not long for this world. Russia is building soviet era cars, yes, but with soviet era technology. No ABS, no airbags, and no buyers.
The military analysis by Piper is almost comical. He fails to understand the Ukrainian strategy, which was the successful Russian strategy during WWII, but with some very important differences. They are trading land for bodies and time, because time is on the side of Ukraine, not Russia. Russia pays dearly for each city block, each kilometer of forest or farmland, and Ukrainian casualties, once 100 per day, are now down to 30 per day, while Russia’s are 200+ per day, sometimes as high as 400, not to mention the ammo dumps, fuel depots, and HQ’s Ukraine hits with HIMARS.
Russia does not outnumber Ukraine. Russia is struggling to recruit and has fewer than 250,000 soldiers in Ukraine, probably half that, and Ukraine currently has on the order of 700,000 to one million. Russia’s units are demoralized, apathetic, and often damaging their own equipment, even themselves, to avoid combat. Ukrainian moral is high and ready to fight.
Ukrainian troops are getting more, and much better training than the Russians. Ukraine has partnered with the California and New York National Guard, and the DoD, for the past eight years and has a cadre of experienced, competent officer trained to western standards and educated in Western war colleges. They are also training troops in Germany, the US, and Britain on new weapon systems that Russia simply cannot counter (HIMARS is just the beginning).
Is this “Russia’s kind of War”, as Piper supposed? No. First, in WWII, Russia was defending, not attacking, and this gives many advantages. Second, the disparity it technology and training is making it apparent that Russia is fighting a war in 1939, while Ukraine is fighting in 2021. Maneuver warfare beats out trench warfare every single time, and Russia has no experience or capability to conduct complex tactical operations.
Russia has more manpower? No. As addressed, Russia has somewhat less than 200k troops in Ukraine, a third what Ukraine has raised. An attacking force should outnumber defenders 7 to 1, so Russia needs roughly FIVE MILLION to win.
Another interesting stat is that, among the dead Russians, only one in two hundred are actually “Russian”. The rest are from the eastern parts of Russia, the poorer areas, and their patience of sacrificing their sons for new white Lada’s is limited. Russians are not lining up in droves to serve in Ukraine, indeed they are fleeing the country to avoid it.
Piper, seriously. You talk about a “rebellion” in Donbas? There was never a rebellion in Donbas. There was a Russian invasion. The Russians invaded, and only THEN did the conflict start. At least have the decency to understand your topic.
Ukrainians are taking civilian vehicles that were donated to them from private citizens in the West, and yes, using them. They are also taking quite a few Russian vehicles and using those, as well. Like I said, 21st century warcraft.
No, Putin was wrong. Deadly wrong. Putin started this war because he had to, not because of NATO or Nazis or protecting Russian speakers, but because Ukraine was going to start tapping the gas and selling it to Europe.
Putin is not a genius, he just plays one on TV. (remind you of anyone)? He is surrounded by sycophants and careerists who dare not question him, dare not bring him bad news. That’s why he thought Ukraine would fall in 3 days and they would be welcomed with flowers. He literally believes in the myth of Ukrainian Nazis, in the persecution of Russian speakers, and in so many of the other myths he has put out.
Putin doesn’t use electronics — no phone, no computers, etc. His only sources of information are those close to him, and they know better than to bring him bad news. This is a common feature of autocrats — Trump was like that as well, while Lincoln and Obama purposefully surrounded themselves with those that disagreed with them. Putin’s perception of the world, his perception of Russia, are completely misguided.
You might have heard about the economic report recently published about Russia, in which several economists analyzed the Russian economy from without, using instead numbers from India, China, and elsewhere because Russia has stopped publishing most of the economic information, focusing only on what can be perceived as good news. But it isn’t Putin that is hiding those facts from the world, it is Putin’s lackeys hiding it from Putin.
Two things to note on Nazis. First, every country with white people in it has it’s fair share of Nazis, but Ukraine has fewer than Russia. One need look no farther than the head of Wagner group, Dmitri Utkin. There are regular neoNazi parades in Moscow and other major cities, and Putin works closely with their figureheads, including the head of the Russian church.
Yup, that’s the head of Wagner group. Where are the Nazis, again?
