Russia at the Crossroads as Elites "Sour" of Putin's War? Not So Fast
As a continuation of yesterday’s piece on Ukraine’s increasing escalations by way of “blurring the lines” of the conflict by potentially launching attacks via third countries, we will examine the ramifications of this process, should it continue to develop along the same track.
But first, we will address one of the most popular topics currently making the rounds apropos the Russian conflict: that of Russian elites supposedly increasingly “souring” toward the war. This was most notably discussed in a recent WSJ piece which covered the topic in about as impartially credible way as can be done by a Western press outlet:
It notes that several high profile Russian figures have admitted that Russia’s aims in the war are no longer possible to achieve. Popular figure Oleg Tsaryov, for instance, wrote in his Telegram last month that Russia should just end the war now and declare victory, as standing up to Europe and regaining most of Novorossiya is alone already a victory.
[They wanted Russia] to be isolated. Turned into a pariah. But it didn't work out. On the contrary. Thanks to Russia's resilience, the West has lost its monopoly on controlling the world. Looking at Russia and China, India and the global South have become bolder in defending their national interests. Russia has shown that one doesn't have to obey someone else's dictate. Thanks to Russia, the world has become multipolar.
And the West, as a result, has fallen apart. A crisis in Europe. Parties that supported the war against Russia are losing ratings. The US and Europe are at loggerheads.
Having stood our ground, we have won. We should proceed from the fact that we have already won. Our task is to end the war and hold on to the gains, build a prosperous Novorossiya.
The biggest plus from the end of the war is that our defenders will return home. We will stop losing Russian lives. All plans to "bury" Russia have failed. We've paid a high price. But we've stood our ground and brought our land and our people home. For the country, this is a victory.
What made even bigger waves was a piece written by Russian political scientist Vasily Kashin. In it, he likewise views a peace settlement based on the Anchorage formula as being a major victory for Russia, given the alternative.
What is that alternative?
He credibly argues that dreams of major military victory over Ukraine are unrealistic at this point because the power disparity between the entire West which backs Ukraine and that of singular Russia is simply too vast:
Power ratio of the parties
The SVO is being conducted on the territory of Ukraine, it is supported by fifty developed economies of the world, and Russia’s allies are the DPRK and Belarus. Taking into account the Western assistance attracted (both in equipment and in monetary terms), Ukrainian capabilities are approximately equal to the Russian military budget and exceed Russian expenditures directly on the SVO. Ukraine has a smaller population, but it is carrying out a general mobilization, while Russia has carried out only one wave of mobilization of three hundred thousand people during the war. Therefore, in terms of human resources, the capabilities of the parties are comparable.
Russia has superior firepower and air defense capabilities, but Ukraine, with access to Western capabilities, has an advantage in important areas such as tactical intelligence and communications. The use of drones, a key weapon in this war, is at a comparable level between the two sides.
Thus, the war is between comparable opponents. Historically, such wars have rarely led to the complete destruction of one side. Additionally, they can have a long duration, and the goals of the parties in such wars are significantly adjusted based on the course of the conflict. This adjustment is not surprising, and it does not necessarily indicate failure.
But what separates his critique is that he directly responds to the most popular argument from pro-Russian maximalists that once Russia turns up the intensity and switches the SMO to a “full scale war”, things will be different and Ukraine will be handily defeated. He dismisses such fantasies as childish.
War “for real”
Can we achieve significantly better results if, as many well-known authors write, we demonstrate “will,” “start fighting for real,” “stop holding back,” “unite for victory,” etc.? No, we have no solid basis to expect such qualitatively different results. Military planning should be based on the worst-case scenario as the baseline and cannot be based on dreams.
Ukraine is undoubtedly depleting its human resources faster than Russia. However, unlike Russia, Ukraine is operating under a state of war, which gives it greater resilience, allowing the government to control the domestic agenda and use violence to suppress dissent. The Ukrainian economy has been largely destroyed, and Ukraine’s economic growth is largely artificial, relying on external funding for military purposes. However, as long as the European Union continues to fund the war, this is not a significant concern. The criteria for resilience applied to a typical war-torn nation relying on its own resources do not apply to Ukraine. The Ukrainian authorities can withdraw much more of their population from the economy and lose much more of it on the battlefield than a “normal” country.
We see growing difficulties with mobilization and an increase in attacks on TSK employees in Ukraine, but so far this has not escalated into any coordinated protest actions, even at the level of individual regions. There is no reason to predict that this will happen in the foreseeable future. We must assume that Ukraine will continue to hold the front for several more years.
Equally, we have no reason to expect that the positional impasse in the war in Ukraine will be overcome in the foreseeable future. So far, no tactical or technical solutions have been found that would give us a chance to return to mobile warfare in the face of the transparency of the battlefield and the massive use of FPV-drones in the absence of effective countermeasures.
There is no reason to expect the rapid development of technical means and tactical techniques that would allow for a deep breakthrough of the enemy’s defenses. It is possible that such techniques are being developed in secrecy, but we can only rely on the information that is available to us. Therefore, the idea that we can quickly collapse the Ukrainian front by “mobilizing, straining, and striking with all our might” should also be discarded and forgotten. The Russian command is operating within the constraints of the situation, trying to achieve the best possible outcome.
He also dismisses the idea of “destroying the Dnieper bridges”, and how that would cripple Ukraine. He believes Russia is already operating at maximum military capacity and cannot realistically cause greater strain unto Ukraine than is already being doled out.
Ultimately, he he concludes the freezing of the conflict along current lines is the only reasonable expectation, given historical precedents.
On the flip side, the Carnegie Endowment’s Russia-Eurasia Center believes the “conflict of the elites” angle is completely overblown.
In a new piece they write that such wishful thinking vastly exaggerated an internal elite squabble that had no real existential parameters:
For several weeks, some commentators have been proclaiming that Russian President Vladimir Putin is losing control, that his popularity is waning, and an open conflict between Russian elite groups is undermining the regime. The main indicator of the system’s instability was supposedly the unusual level of frustration over internet shutdowns in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Insiders cited by Bloomberg suggested Putin would ease restrictions in the face of pressure from his domestic politics bloc. The Guardian’s sources disagreed, claiming Putin was doubling down because of his total reliance on the Federal Security Service (FSB).
None of this was idle fantasy. Tension within the Russian political system really did grow, but it was not an existential crisis. The conflict over internet restrictions was bureaucratic—not political. It was not a fight for freedom, nor an attempt to seize power. It was a clash between two groups of bureaucrats seeking to protect their interests, and the fall in Putin’s rating was just a weapon in this conflict.
Ultimately, Russia’s security establishment came out on top. The online restrictions have become normalized, and the FSB and the government have been tasked with working together to ensure certain key functions remain accessible.
Their conclusion? Putin and the “security state” won, showing rapid stabilization of any internal quarrels:
In other words, the conflict was settled without endangering the regime. The system was successfully stabilized.
The piece even decries Putin’s recent “popularity drop” in polls as mostly illusory, and more the result of deliberate political maneuvering by opponents in the so-called ‘bureaucracy’.
The virulently anti-Russian Moscow Times agreed with this take:
The authors glibly point out that the recurring zeitgeist should be obvious to anyone:
Russia is waging a war against its neighbor. Its economy is overheated and dependent on the continuing conflict, while the country is rapidly growing more authoritarian as political rights are further curtailed.
The date is not 2026, it’s 1999. Or 2008. Or 2014. It doesn’t matter. Each time, Russia did not collapse.
…for some decades, one could see headlines that Russia is either on the brink of collapse or is collapsing at any moment. A 2001 cover story in The Atlantic proclaimed that “Russia is finished.” Recently, a new slew of arguments for Russia’s decline has been spritzed into the discourse, predicting the collapse of the Russian military or even a coup back in Moscow.
They likewise conclude: don’t hold your breath, Russia is doing fine and is building huge inroads with the Global South despite being under historic-level sanctions.
How to reconcile these two sides?
