Putin May be the Victim of his own Reaping Whirlwind

By Walter Pincus

Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist for The Cipher Brief. He spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on topics that ranged from nuclear weapons to politics. He is the author of Blown to Hell: America's Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders. Pincus won an Emmy in 1981 and was the recipient of the Arthur Ross Award from the American Academy for Diplomacy in 2010.  He was also a team member for a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 and the George Polk Award in 1978.  

OPINION — “He who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind, as the saying goes,” said Russian President Vladimir Putin during his multi-hour lecture and press conference on world problems last Thursday, before the Valdai International Discussion Club in Moscow.

While Putin was referring to the West’s management of world affairs, and the United States in particular, I would say the whirlwind is what’s happening to Putin himself, inside Russia, as a result of his ill-conceived and stalled invasion of Ukraine.

There have been numerous stories out of Russia and Ukraine focused on insufficient training, a lack of uniforms and equipment for 300,000 new Russian conscripts; the absence of information about pay and allowances for those called up and their families; the need for weapons for the new units as well as incidents of sabotage and unrest on the Russian side of the Ukraine border.

To handle these Ukraine war-related problems at home, Putin, with little international notice last week, created two new high-level Moscow-based government councils, apparently to take charge of what his Defense and Interior Ministries ostensibly have not been able to manage.

One, a Coordination Council, is to correct failures in meeting the needs of Russia’s new conscripts called up for the Ukraine war; the other, a State Council Commission, to manage future security for critical infrastructure in Russian regions bordering on Ukraine that have recently been hit by saboteurs and war damage.

Last Tuesday, Putin and the appointed chairmen of the two new Councils, met in the Kremlin and the Russian-published English transcript of the meeting described some of the Russian President’s problems.

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, head of the Coordination Council, told Putin “special personal protective equipment and materials” for new conscripts “is an important issue,” and thus, it was “important to increase their production and to launch full-scale production of uniforms and clothing items to fully provide mobilized citizens with all they may need.”

According to the transcript, Mishustin also said, “Uninterrupted supplies of raw materials, materials, fabrics must be organized” along with allocation of “additional funds to buy necessary types of uniforms.”  He named Deputy Prime Minister for Defense and Space Industry, Denis Manturov, as the person who “will deal with supplying weaponry, uniforms and food for our military personnel.”

Conscripted soldiers were to be paid the same as contract soldiers, 195,000 rubles a month (equal to $3,163) — that would be roughly five times the average Russian salary, according to The New York Times. However, there were public complaints that enough funds had not been available.

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Mishustin assured Putin, “Funds have been made available to the Defense Ministry in a timely manner. We are keeping a close watch.” Tatiana Golikova, Deputy Prime Minister of Russia for Social Policy, Labor, Health and Pension Provision was named to oversee “the military pay system,” Mishutin said. She was also given responsibility for “medical support, including provision of specialized, high-tech assistance and rehabilitation for our defenders,” he added.

To meet public complaints from “mobilized personnel and their families,” Mishustin told Putin that a hotline had been established since conscription had been announced a month ago. He said, “It had already received about 1.5 million calls though the number is steadily declining. By today,” Mishustin added, “it has gone down from 170,000 to 20,000 calls per day.”

The appointed head of the State Council Commission, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin, told Putin he was “developing levels of response to arising threats. “He cited first “the border areas like the Belgorod Region,” some 25 miles from the Ukrainian border and an important staging ground for Russia’s military where there had been an increase in artillery and missile strikes.

Just last Saturday, two Tajik men, drawn into the Army as conscripts in Moscow 20 days ago, opened fire at a military training base in Belgorod killing nine other trainees and wounding 15 others before being shot and killed themselves.

Three days earlier, Belgorod’s governor announced an explosive device had damaged railroad tracks nearby – the main rail link with southern Belarus – and the sixth instance of such sabotage that has taken place since June. Credit for the action was claimed by a Russian anti-war group called “Stop the Wagons.” 

An electrical substation in the city of Belgorod, which is across the border from Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine, was set on fire on October 14, by a Ukrainian weapons strike, causing electricity outages. The next day an oil depot in the Belgorod region caught fire after being shelled on October 15, the third consecutive day of strikes on strategic targets in the region.

Back in August, saboteurs hit six high-voltage power pylons connected to the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant just 55 miles from the Ukraine border and north of Belgorod. That attack clearly stuck in Putin’s mind, given current world concerns about Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant, now under Russian control.

In his talk last Thursday, Putin brought up the Kursk nuclear facility attack saying, “Unfortunately, the FSB was unable to catch them [the saboteurs].” To complain about the difference between then and now, Putin added, “We let all Western partners know about the [August] incident. Silence was all we got in response, as if nothing happened.”

Another task for the new State Council Commission that Mayor Sobyanin described to Putin was to assist the Defense Ministry in setting up training sites for new conscripts. As Sobyanin told Putin last Tuesday, “At present, we have organized accommodation for about 60,000 with the assistance of the Russian Federation regions.”

Sobyanin also said he would deal with “social support for the families of mobilized personnel, which would include “sending children to kindergartens and schools with the most convenient location for families of the military personnel…[and] job seeking and professional development for wives of mobilized personnel.”

Putin, at the end of the meeting, acknowledged that while things were not working out in Ukraine and in Russia as he had wished, these new Councils had to work together to change the direction.

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He said, “Now we are facing new challenges that are serious and considerable. I will repeat that this concerns the activities of law-enforcement bodies, the security wing, and the Defense Ministry, but this also concerns the entire civilian component. Therefore, I would like to ask all of you to set your minds on doing meaningful work in the new format.”

Putin then appeared to place the blame for Ukraine not going well not on himself, but on the way things have worked in the past.

He said, “If we follow standard bureaucratic procedures and hide behind formalities, we will not achieve the desired result in any area. We established a mechanism like the Coordination Council with the express purpose of resolving all issues faster and more effectively.”

Putin also responded specifically to published stories that Russian troops did not have modern equipment by saying, “As far as the special military operation is directly concerned, kits, special gear and other special equipment must not be simply available, but must be modern, easy to use and effective. There must be a clear-cut specific plan of work in every area.”

Last Friday, Putin pursued the conscription status with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, according to another Kremlin-released transcript.

Shoigu admitted that “at an early stage” of Putin’s order for conscription of 300,000 new soldiers, “there were problems with various types of supplies and subsistence for the mobilized.”

But Shoigu claimed the 300,000 “has been achieved” and the “problems have been resolved. All those deployed to their units are provided with the required supplies, uniforms, equipment, and food at the same standard as professional military personnel serving under contract.”

He said 41,000 were already with combat units in Ukraine; another 41,000 “are in areas where the special military operation is being conducted,” which could mean carrying out support or logistic activities. The remaining 218,000 “are in combat training as part of crews or units in training centers and grounds.” Shoigu said.

Without mentioning the new Kremlin-led Councils, Putin told Shoigu, “We have an Armed Forces development plan that is in place and is being implemented. It is being implemented at a pace and to the extent that it was planned and agreed to at all levels.”

Putin then pointed out “Based on the experience of the special military operation, we need to review and make adjustments in developing all the components of the Armed Forces, including the Ground Forces.”

Putin set a deadline of December where all would be prepared to adopt changes for the Armed Forces.

Shoigu responded, “Will do, Mr. President.”

Putin is the one who “sowed the wind” last February when he instigated an invasion of Ukraine that initially attempted to replace the Zelensky government in Kyiv with an eventual goal of absorbing the country into Russia.

The “reaping whirlwind” now may be attacking him in the form of what “adjustments” in the Russian Armed Forces Putin and his new Councils may want, and what Russian military leaders are willing to make.

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