New Russian commander in Ukraine after brutality in Syria
Since the Ukrainian army began retaking swaths of territory in southern and eastern Ukraine, Putin has struggled, being forced to send thousands of lightly trained reservists to check the exhausted Russian military, a move that sparked protests across Russia and sent at least 300,000 Russian troops fleeing across the country’s borders to avoid conscription.
As symptoms of discord within Putin’s inner circle began to emerge, Saturday’s humiliating attack on the Kremlin’s valuable Kerch bridge to Crimea was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
“No one is happy with the prestige quo,” the Russian state official said. “It is transparent that a military or political victory will not be imaginable. But a defeat is also not imaginable. This becomes a chess scenario known as zugzwang, where each step is worse than the next and yet it is unimaginable not to move.
The optimism of the summer when, according to a state official at one point, many in the country’s elite believed that “we’re going to turn everything upside down and somehow” has completely evaporated. “People see that there is no future,” he said.
The forced mobilization has already dealt a blow to Putin’s popularity, one of the main foundations of his legitimacy as president, and when the corpses of the reservists begin to return from the front, the scenario may worsen, the Moscow businessman said.
“In a few months there will be a very negative dynamic in Russia: a worsening of the mood in society,” he said. “Everything in the front. “
“Putin’s imaginable arsenal of action is very limited,” said Sergei Aleksashenko, a former deputy governor of Russia’s central bank who now lives in exile in the United States. nuclear weapon. If the Ukrainian counterattack continues, the question of what else to do remains before Putin.
Russia’s annexation pushes the world “two or three steps” away from nuclear war
But few in Moscow say Putin will stay in deploying a tactical nuclear strike, despite the Kremlin’s statements, the Moscow businessman said, because “then he will have no more cards,” while China could simply block this kind of escalation. a Pandora’s box [that the Chinese] don’t need to open,” he said.
Saudi Arabia’s oil production cuts this winter appear to have emboldened the Russian president, said the same Moscow official, who maintains contacts with politicians. Even if energy costs remain at the same level, Putin “thinks that Europe will be in crisis and will have no time for Ukraine. “
“This is still a war of attrition, until one aspect is to stop continuing the war,” he said.
Gazprom Chief Executive Alexei Miller warned on Wednesday that “entire cities” in Europe could freeze and said there was no guarantee Europe could get through the winter with existing levels of energy reserves.
Economists and business leaders say sanctions are starting to hit the Russian economy hardest, with budget cuts already imposed, while a proposal to limit costs to be imposed across Group of Seven countries on Russian oil sales starting in December would be a further blow. The president “will run out of liquidity. . . He wants cash to pay for weapons to Iran and North Korea. But we will see an absolutely new truth in December,” said Sergei Guriev, rector of Sciences Po University in Paris.
While tough sanctions are expected, any and all bad news from the front is another blow to the Russian economy, a member of Moscow’s business elite said.
“All corporations suffer from what is happening. Everyone has frozen their investment plans,” he said. Previous confidence that Russia could simply redirect industry flows from the West to China, Kazakhstan and India is fading, two of the business executives said. Kazakhstan began blocking shipments of European goods to Russia, while the Chinese also began cutting off some supplies.
“Everyone is frustrated. The atmosphere is very bad,” said a third Russian businessman.
Members of Moscow’s elite are beginning to communicate about a possible replacement in leadership in a way they have never done before in more than 20 years of Putin’s rule, though no one can say how or when that might happen.
“We have begun to introduce a revolutionary situation,” the first state official said. “Everyone expects something other than what is happening now: another direction, another war. Falcons need tougher action. Pigeons don’t need war at all. The time for the replacement of the political formula is coming of age. But how it’s going to be, I don’t know.
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