Putin's Strategic Patience Has Run Its Course

An excerpt from, “Putin’s Strategic Blunder” By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, Global Research, May 20, 2024:

The West is so involved now and the Western political leaders are so certain that Russia intends more aggression that they are preparing for war against Russia. Still, Putin and Lavrov speak of negotiation. After a decade of the West’s rejection of negotiation, how can the Kremlin still see negotiation as a solution?

What needed to be done was to knock Kiev out of the war, install a Russian friendly government in place of the American puppet regime, and present the West with a fait accompli before the West had time to get involved. It is Western involvement that presents the danger of the conflict widening into a war between Russia and the West.

Possibly the solution is still viable. It would leave a neutral Ukrainian state west of the Dnieper River with no Black Sea access. It is highly unlikely that such an outcome can be achieved by negotiation. It can only be imposed by force.

By restraining Russia’s use of force, Putin has opened the road to nuclear Armageddon?

An excerpt from, “Putin’s Strategy Is Far Better Than You Think” By Michael Kofman, War on The Rocks, September 7, 2015:

Lawrence Freedman has also criticized Putin’s strategy in War on the Rocks. These assessments often fall victim to reading Putin’s speeches and statements as though Russia’s strategy can be found therein. Putin’s statements are not official declarations of policy, but instead a supporting theatrical role to whatever strategy is being implemented. Freedman believes it is unhelpful to call Putin a good strategist, but it is even more problematic to underestimate and misunderstand your opponent. From a purely analytical standpoint, Russia has done reasonably well in pursuit of his objectives in Ukraine. Whether weak or strong, Russia faced a basic challenge: how to impose control and influence on Ukraine, the second largest country in Europe. Certainly Moscow lacks the military strength to occupy all of Ukraine, but that is a null point. The point is to control Ukraine without owning it. The memory of the Soviet war in Afghanistan is still fresh in Russia, and its leadership has no interest in a costly proxy war with the West, especially one that would also destroy Ukraine in the process.

Even if Moscow had requisite military strength, the United States has aptly demonstrated by invading Afghanistan and Iraq how difficult it is to get an occupation right. What Russia could have done easily is invade, beat Ukraine’s army, and fragment the country in a number of pieces. This was likely debated in the Kremlin, but ultimately Moscow wanted all of Ukraine in its orbit, not ownership of a few defunct pieces and a geopolitical mess. This approach would largely nullify the Maidan’s ability to govern Ukraine and reorient it towards the West, while allowing Russia to retain influence.

. . .From the perspective of domestic politics and regime survival, this conflict with the West is a paradoxical success story for Moscow. The invasion of Ukraine may have even saved Putin’s presidency. In January 2014, he was looking at 65-percent approval ratings (great for any democratic leader but dangerously low for a populist autocrat), a creeping recession, and a sclerotic political system. Instead of wilting away, Putin became the glorious leader who returned Crimea and its famed city of Sevastopol to Russia, along with facing down the West in Ukraine. Now the Russian people are mobilized as part of the confrontation and Russia’s economic woes are blamed almost entirely on the West instead of resting on Putin’s shoulders.

Despite the disastrous state of Russia’s economy, his approval hovers at 80–90 percent with the Russian people. Putin is the most popular leader in Europe, and rather than weaken him, Western sanctions have achieved a remarkable consolidation of opinion across Russian society behind him. Detractors have said that his approval has nowhere to go but down, but these sentiments have been pronounced since Crimea, and at each turn his support has remained steady.

. . .For Moscow, this confrontation is probably a more comfortable and normal state than the past two decades of cyclical relations with the United States. Punitive sanctions and containment have replaced integration, but where exactly does that leave the West’s strategy for Russia? The United States is not ready to commit to containment and regime rollback, while Europe is wholly unprepared to return to a Cold War-like adversarial relationship with Russia. Nobody wants Russia’s collapse, either. Blaming Putin’s lack of strategy seems to be a knee-jerk response for the rapid conclusion of two decades of Western policy toward Russia and the absence of any replacement.

An excerpt from, “Putin’s Strategic Patience And The West’s Anxiety – OpEd” By Collins Chong Yew Keat, eurasia review, May 9, 2022:

The stark old realities of international political maneuvering and gameplay are on full display in the Ukrainian high intensity conflict. This fall-out signals the official return to state led traditional threats with the interests of state superseding all other considerations. President Putin has long been earmarked as the aggressor and symbolic face of the autocratic front and assertive nature of global politics, in the same league as President Xi and others with the nucleus of global politics once again being shaped by the return to state competition for power and purpose. The US and the West have been singled out as the prime instigators in this conflict, goading the Kremlin to the all-out affront and upping the ante in securing hidden interests and purposes.

Putin has been playing a long and calculated strategic plan in reviving and securing these interests, deemed by himself as non-negotiable. Timing and window of opportunities remain one of the prime strategic chessboard maneuverings. In the decisive path leading towards the full steam incursion, various parameters will need to be assessed by Putin and his elite advisors. Previous moves in Georgia and Crimea were executed where the US Presidencies at those periods were deemed incapable of mounting a serious enough response that could upset the balance of reward and returns.

An excerpt from, “Russia starts exercise to simulate launch of tactical nuclear weapons” By Mark Trevelyan, Reuters, May 21, 2024:

Russian forces have started the first stage of exercises ordered by President Vladimir Putin to simulate preparation for the launch of tactical nuclear weapons, the Defence Ministry said on Tuesday.

Moscow has linked the exercises to what it calls “militant statements” by Western officials, including French President Emmanuel Macron, which it said created security threats for Russia.

. . .Belarus, where Russia said last year it was deploying tactical nuclear weapons, will also be involved, the two countries have said.

Tactical, or non-strategic, nuclear weapons are less powerful than the strategic arms designed to wipe out whole enemy cities, but they nevertheless have vast destructive potential.