EXPERT PERSPECTIVE / OPINION — When Russian President Vladimir Putin rose to power in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, one of his promises to the population of the Russian Federation was that he would restore stability to Russians at home, and the country’s honor abroad. The Russian people were desperate to see both of those promises fulfilled after suffering through the humiliation of the collapse of the Soviet Union and a chaotic and difficult period during the 1990s.
Putin was seen as delivering on his promises during the first decade of the 2000s, with Russia’s economy stabilizing thanks to the revenue earned from gas and oil exports, arms sales, Putin’s consolidation of power in the hands of the Kremlin and Russia’s Security Services, and a perception among Russians that Putin was reigning in the mafia and Russia’s Oligarchs. Putin also greatly benefited by the poor foreign policy choices of his main competitors in the West, taking advantage of America’s mistakes to promote Russia’s image as being a strong alternative to Washington and reliable “partner” for other countries.
But Putin’s series of successful “strategic moves” at home and abroad started to come to an end in 2014, with Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and invasion of Ukraine. Putin’s initial aggression against Ukraine led to limited sanctions against Russia by the U.S. and European Union (EU). Putin’s use of cyber and active measures tools to target U.S. and European elections in 2016 and onwards was a critical turning point in the priority that Washington and its allies placed on monitoring and countering Russia’s malign influence activities and led to even harsher sanctions and diplomatic isolation for the Russians. The Kremlin’s attempted assassination of former Russian Main Directorate for Military Intelligence (GRU) officer Sergey Skripal in Salisbury, England in March 2018, and the exposure of Russian efforts to overthrow the government of Montenegro and involvement in lethal activities in Germany, Bulgaria and Turkiye further damaged Russia’s international reputation and increased diplomatic and economic pressure on Moscow.
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Despite the Kremlin’s repeated attempts to portray Western sanctions on the Russian economy as a “good thing” for Russia, the reality has been the opposite. Russia’s economy has retracted and at a minimum, has failed to grow and develop according to its potential. For a country that is blessed with an educated and capable population and vast natural resources, Russia has failed to develop a competitive manufacturing base or effective trade relations with most of the world’s developed nations and has become increasingly reliant on support from countries like the People’s Republic of China (PRC), North Korea and the Islamic Republic of Iran. None of that has been good for the average Russian citizen.
But of all of Putin’s mistakes, his decision to try to conquer Ukraine and overthrow the government in February 2022, stands out as his biggest blunder. Not only did Putin fail to accomplish his objective of seizing control of Kyiv and installing a pro-Russian leader but his war has left the Russian Armed Forces humiliated and increasingly dependent on support from Tehran, Beijing and Pyongyang. This reality must be extremely humiliating for most Russians.
The war and Putin’s autocratic style of rule has also resulted in a new “brain drain” of capable and well-educated Russians, who started fleeing the country after the invasion of Ukraine, seeking refuge outside of Russia. According to reporting in The Economist, the number of Russians who have fled since the start of Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is between 500,000 to a million, although these numbers are not completely reliable.
Of course, Putin’s folly has also cost the lives and welfare of far too many Russian soldiers, who have been used as cannon-fodder by Russian commanders desperate to fulfill Putin’s orders and avoid a complete military disaster and humiliating defeat at the hands of the Ukrainians.
A recent New York Times article suggested that Russian casualties in the war are approaching 300,000, with 120,000 Russian military personnel killed during fighting and the remaining number wounded or captured. Fighting since August 2023 has continued to cost Moscow blood and treasure at a rate that a country with a struggling economy and dwindling population can hardly afford to sustain. And as Russian casualties mount, the number of Russian families at home directly impacted by the war continues to rise as the long-term impact of the war on Russian society worsens.
In her Washington Post article in December 2022, Mary Ilyushina reported that “Russia sends soldiers to war but ignores the mental trauma they bring home” and writes, “it is only a matter of time before thousands of veterans begin returning from the front — to their families and to a failed mental-health-care system that many experts say is no better equipped to help them than it was when the Afghanistan war ended in 1989, or after two wars in Chechnya in the 1990s and 2000s.”
Americans know all too well how years of war in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq resulted in significant problems for U.S. veterans returning home from war and how these conflicts led to an increase in violent crimes inside the U.S. And despite the claims of some “experts” who argue that Russians enjoy “suffering” and can handle hardships better than others, it is naïve to believe that the large number of Russian veterans who are returning from the battlefields of Ukraine will not suffer from significant psychological trauma that will negatively impact Russia’s internal stability.
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According to a recent article in the new Russian language newspaper Novaya Gazeta, the number of violent crimes taking place in Russia has increased significantly since the start of the Kremlin’s “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine. Statistics from the General Prosecutor’s Office showed an increase in criminal activity in a number of Russia’s regions in 2022. For example, Yaroslavskaya Oblast’ witnessed a 14.2 percent increase of crimes between 2022 and 2021. Tomskaya Oblast’ experienced a 10.49 percent increase during the same period, and Samaraskaya Oblast’ saw an 8.73 percent increase. Of note, the private military company Wagner Group reportedly recruited several hundred fighters from these three regions, although it is not clear how many actually returned from service. In Udmurtii Oblast’ the increase in crimes involving illegal weapons increased 34.95 percent, in Samara, 33.88 percent, and in Belgoradskaya Oblast’, 22.73 percent. In Moscow, the number of murders rose 54 percent, Belgorodskaya Oblast’, 96.15 percent, Tambov, 69.23 percent and Kurskskaya Oblast’ 53.44 percent.
Putin is not only failing to deliver on his promises to bring stability at home and prestige abroad, but he is putting the long-term health and security of his nation at significant risk. As Rafael Rueveny and Aseem Prakash argue in their paper, The Afghanistan war and the breakdown of the Soviet Union, the failed Soviet invasion of Afghanistan played a direct role in the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In their paper, the authors write “Major wars critically impact domestic politics by producing durable social changes and by redistributing political power among groups. An established literature explains how major wars may make as well as break states.”
In the case of Russia, it is likely that Putin’s significant miscalculations vis a vis Ukraine will break his regime. And when some experts argue that Russia can outlast Ukraine and the West in this conflict, we should remember that in 1979, when Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan, few experts in the West would have predicted that little more than a decade later, humiliated Soviet forces would withdrawal from that country and the Soviet Union would cease to exist by the end of 1991.
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