EXPERT PERSPECTIVE / OPINION (Part two of two) – Russian President Vladimir Putin and the kleptocratic regime he has created are the problem. The Putin regime is arguably the source of most of the disharmony and disruption visible in the world today. No reasonable person can dispute this.
An stark example is Putin’s willingness to use Russia’s military in naked aggression against neighbors by starting a war in Europe, the scale of which has not been seen since 1945. He has threatened the use of nuclear weapons. He has authorized his intelligence services to carry out lethal operations against dissidents and regime opponents overseas (Litvenenko, Skripal, Kangoshvili, among many, many other examples). His use of cyber capabilities within Russia’s intelligence services to disrupt economic activity in targets around the world and to influence elections and exacerbate social disharmony, is without precedent. The intervention of his military and mercenaries abroad to support corrupt and authoritarian regimes is without modern precedent. He has supplied weapons that have been used to shoot down civilian aircraft. His military has committed war crimes in Ukraine and Syria and Putin himself has been charged with war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The price Putin has paid personally, and the price suffered by his regime, has been insufficient compared to their crimes. It is time for that to change and for the house of cards to be brought down.
The outline of a strategy to so do would be to take measures to erode support for Putin in Russia’s class of oligarchs, exposing Putin’s corruption and ineptitude to the Russian people, and convincing the “siloviki” in Russia’s hard-line cadre in the military and security services, that Putin’s leadership is leading Russia toward catastrophe, and he needs to be removed.
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Putin is without question, a popular leader of the Russian Federation. He would be elected President even without election fraud - although likely by a less impressive margin of victory. Putin’s popularity though, is built on myths and his admittedly skillful manipulation of the Russian elite public.
His nearly 24 years of absolute power have certainly led to megalomania and likely paranoia, as well. Putin makes a great deal of his background as an officer in the KGB. In point of fact, he had a marginal career and never rose to senior ranks on merit. Most of his career was spent in Leipzig, German Democratic Republic - essentially Russian occupied territory - and in Leningrad/St. Petersburg. He never served as an operator in any of the environments—London, Washington—that really mattered for Soviet espionage. His KGB training certainly taught him some skills in terms of attention to detail, ability to assess and manipulate people. His experience with the Soviet and post-Soviet bureaucracy likely taught him a lot about corruption and how to manipulate government structures to his advantage. This might be the skill set which led him to put by Boris Yeltsin on the path to political power in the Russian Federation. There were probably many who underestimated this relatively obscure former KGB officer from Leningrad. He was never a “spymaster” in the conventional sense of the word.
Putin is a coward and a bully. Look at his actions during the Prigozhin mutiny. Putin essentially vanished, likely fearing for his life. And there have been other unexplained absences by Putin in times of crisis in Russia, for example, he was nowhere to be seen for ten days after Boris Nemtsov’s assassination near the Kremlin in early 2015. Putin’s conduct during COVID was paranoid and the ridiculous photos of him seated at the far end of huge conference tables became the butt of jokes globally.
Former members of his security service suggest Putin insists on extraordinary security—including the use of body doubles and medical protocols both domestically and when he travels abroad (now only to countries that are not signatories to the International Criminal Court). No one begrudges appropriate medical and security precautions for world leaders these days, but Putin’s protocols border on unhealthy isolation. Like other bullies, he is happy to show how tough he is against weaker opponents. Examples abound, but the massive cyberattack against Estonia in 2007, the invasion of Georgia in 2008, and the invasion of Crimea in 2014, are good examples. Putin also likes to keep visiting leaders and dignitaries waiting, in order to show them how powerful he is.
Putin’s personal life is not without blemish. He divorced his wife of many years and is reputed to have fathered children out of wedlock. He has also built a fantastic palace near Sochi on the Black Sea—of which he denies knowledge, while accumulating enough wealth to arguably be one of the world’s wealthiest men. So much for the image of the modest ascetic public servant.
Putin’s popularity in Russia rests in part on the myth he has created of his strategic genius and that he has returned Russia to prominence on the world stage. The latter is certainly true but likely only because of his willingness to be aggressive in the military, cyber and espionage/active measures arenas. An honest reckoning of Putin’s strategic leadership suggests something far less than genius.
Many of Putin’s aggressive actions foretold in his 2008 speech to the Munich Security Conference are based on perceived aggression and broken promises by the West directed at Russia, particularly the eastward expansion of NATO. Putin’s aggression has resulted in a significant weakening of Russia’s strategic position by first rejuvenating and giving new purpose to NATO.
Secondly, NATO has again expanded with Finland deciding to join and Sweden in the process of joining. This considerably weakens Russia’s position in the Baltic Sea region as well as the Arctic. Ukraine and Moldova may well have been put by Putin on a path to membership in NATO thus weakening Russia’s position in central Europe. The invasion of Ukraine has also exposed embarrassing weaknesses in Russia’s conventional forces, particularly their air force which has largely been in a stand-off role throughout the conflict.
Russia’s losses in men and material have been horrific. Russia’s military logistics have been hampered by the endemic corruption in the Russian economy. Russia’s tactics have shown little evolution from tactics used in the First and Second World Wars. Since the Second World War, Russia has presented itself as a conventional and nuclear military power. That myth has been debunked and this does not help Russia’s strategic position. Not much evidence of strategic genius in the above.
Putin’s aggressions have resulted in significant economic sanctions as well as capital flight and brain drain. Putin has been forced to turn Russia’s economy into a full-fledged wartime command economy in order to produce the material necessary to continue to prosecute the war. He has mortgaged Russia’s economic future as a leading technological society for the sake of a few hundred kilometers of Ukrainian territory. The loss of young, tech savvy workers has hit hard. According to one estimate, more than 1.3 million Russians under the age of 35 left the Russian workforce in the last year alone.
In part due to sanctions, Russia cannot produce high-tech components for military (or civilian) systems and has become dependent on sourcing those components from China, Iran or sanctions-evaders. With discounted energy sales to China (and India) necessary to finance the war, Putin has essentially turned Russia into an economic vassal of China. The IMF recently adjusted its estimates for Russia’s GDP in 2024 downward to 1.3% growth. This gave Russia the weakest projection in the organizations list of major emerging and developing economies for whom the average growth projection is 4%. Again, not much evidence of strategic genius in managing the economy.
Putin has worked to convince Russian domestic audiences that he has returned Russia to a position of prominence on the world stage. Indeed, he has managed to grab headlines. He has also managed to get Russia kicked out of the G-8, marginalized at the G-20, and Russia could not even get enough votes in a secret ballot to get a seat on the UN Human Rights Council (Albania got more votes).
Yet despite NATO expansion, underperformance in the ‘Special Military Operation’ of unprovoked aggression in Ukraine, economic problems at home, and isolation on the world stage, Putin’s remarks at his recent four hour press conference and aggressive statements by other members of his administration, suggest a victory lap is in order. This is literally the mouse who roared.
It is time for the world to take steps that will help the Russian people themselves bring down Putin’s house of cards.
An outline of a strategy could be to take steps to undermine Putin’s support with Russia’s oligarchs as well as to expose his ineptitude and corruption to the Russian people. Putin has supported and promoted a criminal class of oligarchs to leading positions in Russia’s economy. Nonetheless, there is evidence to support that the direction Putin has taken Russia in - both strategically and economically - is not universally supported by this class of oligarchs.
Members of this class resent actions taken by the West to confiscate assets, impose sanctions on their persons and businesses and restrictions on their ability (and the ability of their dependents) to travel to desirable locations in the West. There are vulnerabilities in this class that can be exploited.
Russia’s military leadership and the leadership of the security services are some of the hardest of the hard-line supporters of Putin. But within Russia’s military, there is evidence of weakened support for Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine and the way Putin and Russia’s senior military leadership have conducted the war.
The Prigozhin mutiny and the ability of his mercenary force to advance toward Moscow with essentially no opposition and the Wagner Group’s ability to walk into the Southern Military District Command Center, show that there are problems in Russia’s military. Similarly, the “disappearance” and sudden replacement of a number of commanders responsible for the conduct of the war, show all is not well with those who wear the Russian uniform.
Evidence of dissent in Russia’s security services is more difficult to find, but the fact that Putin decided after the Prigozhin mutiny to provide armor to Rosgvardia—his private security army, suggest that Putin may not have full confidence in the special services’ willingness or ability to protect him. The best way to influence the “siloviki” is to demonstrate firm resolve against Putin’s aggression. In the face of Western solidarity, there is a chance to break that cadre.
Putin’s neighbors in the near abroad should be the target of strategic and economic outreach from the West. Russia’s failure to support its ally Armenia in the recent conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh show Russian weakness in the Caucasus. There are tensions between Central Asian states Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and well as pro-Western steps by the leadership of Kazakhstan that show eroding Russian influence in their own backyard. This should be programmatically exploited.
The willingness of the Russian people to endure hardship is legendary. Nonetheless, there are likely limits even there.
Every effort should be made to expose the hypocrisy and corruption of the Putin regime as well as the horrific cost of the Special Military Operation.
Russia’s performance on the world stage of athletics matters to the average Russian. Russia’s exclusion from international sports competitions should be expanded. In his latest remarks to the press, Putin said Russia needed to evaluate whether it should compete in the Paris Olympics if the event is designed to portray Russian sport as “dying.” Don’t give Putin the choice. Russian athletes should absolutely be proscribed from participating in any Olympic event if for no other reason than the systemic cheating Russia conducted at the Sochi Olympics, at a scale that belied even the massive cheating in the Soviet era. The Sochi cheating was Putin’s work and its consequence should be made visible to the Russian people.
Persuading Russia to rid itself of the scourge of Putin is certainly not a task to be undertaken lightly. But it must be done. Putin and his regime are the cancer that is killing the rules-based world order that has brought unparalleled wealth and technological advancement to the world. I
f the world fails to deal with Putin and he is allowed to win in Ukraine, we will soon find ourselves in a world that has Iran (a Putin ally) with a nuclear weapon, Iran’s surrogates Hezbollah and Hamas (terrorist organizations) engaging in additional attacks on Israel, China feeling empowered to re-unite with Taiwan through force, and even Venezuela, another client of Russia, probably assisted by Cuba - attacking Guyana in order to occupy that country’s oil fields.
Is this the world we want?
The West has built media, social media and other means of influence at a scale and power never before seen by the world. It is time those tools as well as Western economics might be used to expose and bring down Putin’s House of Cards.
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