BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT: Vladimir Putin is playing a long game and does not share the view that the ‘Special Military Operation’, as Moscow refers to its invasion of Ukraine, is a failure. Analysts believe that Putin is betting on western support for Ukraine to wane over time and sees the threat of nuclear weapons as an advantage.
CONTEXT / WAR UPDATE
An intelligence report by the UK’s Ministry of Defense released yesterday focuses on intense fighting in southern Ukraine and says that over the past few weeks, Russian forces have expended significant effort to reinforce their defenses in the area.
The report also says Russian troops have built an extensive ‘zone of defense’ over 9 km in length and that the importance that Moscow is placing on defending the area suggests that Russia’s military realizes that Ukraine is capable of mounting a serious effort in Crimea.
This comes as Ukraine’s military reports the recapture of eight villages in the south in what analysts have said are incremental but significant gains by Ukraine’s military. Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said Wednesday, that Ukraine’s forces were digging in, consolidating their positions along the front line and would continue offensive operations toward the Russian stronghold city of Melitopol. Earlier in the week, Mailiar said Ukraine’s decisive blow was yet to come.
Maliar says Ukrainian forces in the east are defending against large-scale Russian assaults near the towns of Lyman and Bakhmut. She also said Moscow still considers the eastern front to be its main focus.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday, that Ukraine’s counter offensive is moving “slower than desired” but that Ukraine’s military would not be pressured into moving faster than it deemed appropriate and cited the widespread use of landmines by Russian forces as having a slowing effect on Ukraine’s ability to advance more rapidly.
On the ground, analysts say it’s too early for an accurate assessment of Ukraine’s counteroffensive, but Ukraine still has the majority of its western trained and equipped forces in reserve and has not yet committed them to the fight.
“I would just caution that while I’m relatively optimistic about what the Ukrainian forces will achieve over time, given both the enormous training they’ve had and the new systems, and given the fact that the Russians have been in combat for 12 to 15 months in many cases, individual replacements that aren’t well-trained, not well-equipped, and they’re certainly not well led,” General David Petraeus (Ret.) told The Cipher Brief. “All of that notwithstanding, the early days, perhaps weeks will be hard.”
Amid ongoing fighting along the front, a spate of attacks inside mainland Russia has continued. Pro-Ukrainian resistance groups have mounted armed incursions in the Belgorod region forcing thousands of local residents to be relocated while drones have repeatedly targeted the Moscow region. Russia’s Defense Ministry reported that it downed three drones in the region on Wednesday, using electronic jamming equipment.
A spat between Wagner Group Founder Yevgeny Prigohzin and Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s Defense Minister and General Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s senior military officer, continues to play out publicly. Prigohzin, in a recent interview, blasted Shoigu as incompetent and suggested again, that Shoigu should face the death penalty for his performance to date in leading Russia’s military.
Army General Barry McCaffrey (Ret.) took to Twitter, to ask what we all want to know: “Absolutely fascinating. Why has Putin not acted against this guy? A daring and unconstrained critic of the corruption and incompetence of the Russian Armed Forces. It looks as if Putin’s criminal regime is starting to come apart.”
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin is maintaining a “business as usual” public approach. Speaking last week at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, he largely ignored the war and attempted to paint a positive picture of the Russian economy as one that is growing despite western sanctions. Let’s break his message down:
- Putin says the “very fabric” of economic life in Russia is being “rewoven” and added that western nations can no longer dictate how countries can interact economically.
- When asked about the war, Putin doubled down on his message that Russia is “denazifying” Ukraine while attacking Ukrainian President Zelensky’s Jewish heritage.
- Putin reiterated that Russia’s goals in Ukraine have not changed and claimed that Ukrainian forces have suffered many more losses in recent fighting than Russian forces.
- He said he believes western support will wane for Ukraine and warns that NATO could be drug into the conflict by continuing to support Ukraine’s military.
- Putin repeated his threats to use nuclear weapons to prevent a strategic defeat in Russia, a threat made more realistic by the reported arrival of Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
- US President Joe Biden said this week, that the nuclear threat from Russia in the region “is real”, and called Russia’s deployment of tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus “absolutely irresponsible”.
Western analysts, military and geopolitical experts largely agree that Putin’s gamble in Ukraine has been an enormous strategic blunder. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has galvanized US, EU and NATO support for Ukraine, along with global allies of the west.
NATO membership has increased with the addition of Finland, and likely Sweden, and Eastern European and Baltic nations have renewed energy on increasing their defensive posture and readiness to face a Russian military threat.
But Vladimir Putin, some experts say, is playing a long game and does not share the view that the ‘Special Military Operation’, as Moscow refers to its invasion of Ukraine, is a failure.
THE EXPERTS
We spoke with three Cipher Brief Experts, all former senior CIA officers who have previously served in Moscow, to better understand how Putin thinks, what could be playing out inside Russia, and what Putin is likely to do next. Some comments have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Dan Hoffman, Former Senior CIA Officer
Daniel Hoffman is a former senior officer with the Central Intelligence Agency, where he served as a three-time station chief and a senior executive Clandestine Services officer. Hoffman also led large-scale HUMINT (human intelligence gathering) and technical programs and his assignments included tours of duty in the former Soviet Union, Europe, and war zones in the Middle East and South Asia.
Michael Sulick, Former Director, CIA National Clandestine Service
Michael Sulick is the former director of CIA’s National Clandestine Service and is currently a consultant on counterintelligence and global risk assessment. Sulick also served as Chief of Counterintelligence and Chief of the Central Eurasia Division where he was responsible for intelligence collection operations and foreign liaison relationships in Russia, Eastern Europe and the former republics of the Soviet Union.
Robert Dannenberg, Former Chief, CIA's Central Eurasia Division
Rob Dannenberg served as chief of operations for CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, chief of the Central Eurasia Division and chief of the Information Operations Center before retiring from the Agency. He served as managing director and head of the Office of Global Security for Goldman Sachs, and as director of International Security Affairs at BP. He is now an independent consultant on geopolitical and security risk.
The Cipher Brief: Most western analysts agree that Putin's gamble in Ukraine has turned out to be a strategic blunder. Do you think that thinking will begin to spread inside Russia with the domestic audience?
Dan Hoffman: The situation is dynamic. Vladimir Putin is playing the long game. This war isn't over from his estimation and while Russia has failed to achieve its objectives thus far, there's no question that Putin is continuing his war effort and hasn't changed those objectives. So, he's hoping that he might be able to wait us out.
Mike Sulick: I was struck recently by reports of taped conversations allegedly between so-called members of the ‘elite’ in Russia - not people from Putin's inner circle - but part of the ‘elite’ and they were very critical of him and the war. But ultimately, the issue is recourse. What can they do about it? There are reports now of average citizens returning to Stalinist times when they informed on their neighbors who made anti-war comments. In Russia, there's no real dissent, or widespread protest that you would certainly see in the West, like we’ve historically seen related to the war in Iraq or other US engagements.
The Cipher Brief: There have been a spate of attacks inside Russia including ground assaults from pro-Ukrainian resistance groups in the Belgorod region and a series of drone attacks that have reached all the way into Moscow. How significant are these attacks and do you think that if they continue, they may start to erode Putin's ability to remain solidly in control of his relationship with the elites?
Hoffman: Those attacks are significant. We're seeing anti-Putin regime militants exploiting an opportunity to take the fight to the Kremlin and they're doing it most likely with the knowledge, if not tacit support - and maybe more than tacit support - from Ukrainian forces, especially on the border regions of Belgorod. How much of an impact this has we don’t know for sure, but it will have some impact on the Russians. I don't think it has a significant military impact though. I don't think it tips the balance though to the point where people say, "We've got to overthrow Vladimir Putin." There just isn't that capability. Ukraine, I think, believes that they need regime change for this war to end. As long as Vladimir Putin is in power, then Ukraine's sovereignty is at risk, and there is no indication that what Ukraine is doing right now is going to bring an end result.
Sulick: They're probably rankled by the recent attacks and they are certainly creating anxiety among the population, as it’s difficult hide the attacks. People will talk and spread this around to their friends and neighbors throughout the country. But again, I get to the question of recourse. What are they going to do about it? I think most Russians believe Putin is firmly in control. And many people will buy the spin that Putin is putting on the war. ‘How could the ‘weak Ukraine’ launch these attacks? It's obviously the US and/or NATO that's behind them.’ And I think that hardens the position of some of the average Russian citizens and makes them even more of a supporter of the war. There'll be others, of course, who probably were objecting to the special military operation beforehand, who will be more bothered by it. But I just don't see that is ever going to coalesce it to some kind of mass protest.
Rob Dannenberg: I don't think that these attacks are significant enough or at a scale that would lead people to believe that Russia is in imminent danger of occupation and losing the war, and therefore, we need to take some form of action to affect regime change. I think you can make an argument that the average Russian thinks the fact that the Ukrainians can do this is because we're letting them do it and we're not being tough enough and we're not going as far as we need to go to win this war. One of the areas that was targeted, in at least one of the drone strikes, was the area where the elite have their dachas, so a likely reaction from the elites who live in that community may be to ask why they don’t have their own dedicated surface air missile defense system, not that they should overthrow Putin.
The Cipher Brief: What do you make of the public spat playing out between Wagner Group founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu, and Russia's senior military officer, Army Chief of Staff General Valery Gerasimov? Are there any indications that there could be more going on behind the scenes that indicate there's disruption at the senior level or is this just something that Putin's allowing to play out because it creates chaos or confusion in the West?
Hoffman: There are a couple of things to consider with the very public conflict between Prigozhin, Shoigu, Gerasimov. The first, is that Putin made a Faustian bargain sending Wagner into Ukraine. I think Putin must have realized that it was not the right job for the Wagner mercenaries. They were better equipped, better suited to be operating in Africa and Syria, where they have been very effective.
Putting them on the front lines against trained Ukrainian military units was not going to be a recipe for success. And it wasn't. They lost 20,000 people reportedly just in Bakhmut. So, Prigozhin is understandably upset about that. This public spat reveals a lack of a unity of command and that Prigozhin is not going to take orders from the Russian Ministry of Defense. He's causing a real rift between his own mercenaries and the army and that's a problem because in the military, obviously, you want a unity of command.
The second thing though that's really important here, is that Prigozhin is publicly stating what everybody knows and that is that the war has been a failure, and that it has caused a lot of economic harm and massive casualties. You're not allowed to say it publicly or else you go to jail or worse. Except that Prigozhin is getting away with it. And that's giving a little license to ordinary Russians who want to believe that there might be a way to hold the Kremlin accountable for this war. And so that, I'm quite sure, is an issue that the US intelligence community is focused on quite seriously.
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Sulick: Prigozhin's survival is still a bit of a mystery. I thought he would have been silenced a while ago. I can only speculate that Putin realizes he needs the Wagner Group. Prigozhin's caustic public statements keep Shoigu on his toes, and if Putin is ever looking for a scapegoat, then there you have Shoigu. And Prigozhin's comments appeal to the hard right Russian supporters, bloggers especially, who are all criticizing the military. But it is coming to a bit of a head now because Putin just agreed that all the so-called volunteers - what he means by that is Wagner Group - now must sign contracts that put them under the command of the Russian armed forces. It's obviously a tactic to put Wagner under his control. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
The Cipher Brief: The head of Ukraine's military intelligence, Major General Kyrylo Budanov has recently said he believes that the Russians have wired the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant with explosives. What scenarios could you see playing out, either intentionally or unintentionally, on the Russian side that could change the dynamic?
Hoffman: In the long-term: Strategically, Russia has become China's resource colony. They're shipping their hydrocarbons to China and receiving China's manufacturing goods in return. Russia is decoupling themselves from Europe and that's not a good thing for us, and it's only going to make China stronger as a result.
In the shorter term, when we ask about how this war might end, Putin is a ruthless KGB operative. And if he assesses that his regime security is at such risk that he needs to take extraordinary measures to stay in power, he may indeed do that. And this may get down to whether Russian soldiers and the military chain of command will follow his orders. And that's another question for the intelligence community. If Putin were to give the order, for example, to use tactical nuclear weapons, and you could say there's a low likelihood of that happening, but would the Russian military actually follow that order? Would they risk a nuclear catastrophe worse than Chernobyl by detonating explosives around Zaporizhzhia’s nuclear power plant and the cooling system there? We just don't know the answer to those questions. It's why the CIA and FBI put out those videos recently because we've got a full court press right now to recruit Russians who can fill in these reporting gaps about what Putin's plans and intentions are, and then what might follow Vladimir Putin.
Sulick: The tragic irony is that the better the Ukrainian military does in the counteroffensive and the more successful they are, the more they back Putin into a corner. And if he gets desperate, and as he himself puts it, his territorial integrity and sovereignty is about to be threatened, that's when the tactical nuke question becomes much more serious. Right now, it's a more powerful weapon in his speeches than it would be in reality. There's limited military advantage of using it in battle against Ukraine. And Putin is a pariah already, he’ll definitely be a bigger pariah if he does that, and also anger his new Chinese partners and Xi Jinping, who has come out pretty strongly in opposition to the use of nuclear weapons of any kind.
Dannenberg: There isn't anything that isn't on the table as far as Putin is concerned. The Russians are masters at conducting acts of sabotage or carrying out active measures and then blaming it on somebody else. There's no shortage of examples throughout history of that type of operation on the part of the Russians.
The Cipher Brief: It would seem that a frozen conflict at this point, would be in Putin's best interest, both in terms of dragging it out and wearing down the west and wearing down Ukraine, but also in preventing Ukraine's acceptance into the NATO alliance - with a state of conflict still being on the border. Is that how you see the long term?
Sulick: Putin is not coming to a point where he would ever concede defeat. It's clear from his statement that he believes a protracted war will weaken Western support. And even if the Ukrainian counteroffensive is successful to some degree, I don't think it's going to bring a sweeping defeat of Russia. I could see him agreeing to negotiations, spinning it to convince the Russian people that, "See, we are winning, the West blinked first," and then he would engage in some long, protracted negotiations which would buy him time to rebuild the military, and he would spin every step made at the negotiating table as a victory, and ultimately he would cheat on any agreements that were made. There's not a treaty or an agreement, especially in the military sphere, that Russia hasn't violated in the past just as a matter of practice.
Dannenberg: Putin's very comfortable with frozen conflicts. We’ve seen that with Transnistria since 1991, and South Ossetia and Abkhazia. There is the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics and so on and so forth. Around the periphery of the Russian Federation and in territories of the states of the former Soviet Union, there are these frozen conflicts. If Putin could end up with a situation where he's got substantial control of Donbas or Luhansk and a land bridge to Crimea and this conflict goes on for 10 years with only dozens of kilometers of shifts in the border, that's fine for Putin. He can paint that to the Russian people as a victory. “Look, we're fighting NATO and we're still in their territory”. Putin will be perfectly happy with that.
Cipher Brief COO Brad Christian contributed to this report.
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