Why Putin will lost the War with Ukraine

Since being elected president in 2000, Putin has basically ruled Russia for the past 22 years. During those two decades, Putin won the second Chechen war and the Russian-Georgian war, interfered in Syria's civil war to keep Bashar al-regime Assad's in power, successfully invaded Crimea, and intervened in Kazakhstan's civil war. In short, under his command, the Russian army appeared indestructible, and he was not only a black belt in judo, but an unstoppable war hero, a Napoleonic master.

Instead, on February 24, such a "clever man" authorized a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, firing more than 100 missiles at Ukrainian military sites, invading Ukraine from the east, north, and south, and immediately releasing reports that Russian forces had captured Kiev, Ukraine's capital, within hours. However, in Russia's hybrid warfare, this is only one method of information pollution. So yet, Russian forces have not occupied Kiev. The Russians did not even take over a Ukrainian city or destroy Ukraine's naval and air capabilities in the first four days. Ukrainian fighters and helicopters are still engaged in combat. Clearly, the Ukrainian navy is still fighting, since Russia is also denouncing the use of drones by the United States to lead Ukrainian missile ships to their targets. Russian forces have also failed to suppress ground-based anti-aircraft fire and radar systems, while Ukrainian military communications and command have remained open. The Ukrainian president's social media accounts have been operational.

Military analysts and specialists could easily conclude that the Russian military's fighting capabilities are mediocre. Russia's military will always be ranked second or third in the world, while Ukraine's ranks in the low twenties. It was as unexpected as watching China's national table tennis team play a tough match against Vietnam at the Olympics. So, why did "the Great" Putin make a decision that now appears perverse?

I have talked to many Chinese supporters of Putin and they will give you all kinds of reasons why Putin made the right decision, you just don't understand yet. That may be true, of course, but the trajectory of the conflict doesn't seem to bear it out. Ukraine has published a number of Russian military deaths and has even set up a hotline for Russian prisoners of war so that families can check whether their friends and relatives have been killed in the fighting. Russia's Defense Ministry, on the other hand, publishes battle results but never its own casualty figures. There are only two reasons why this cannot be done: there are no casualties or there are many casualties.

The speed with which the Russians were advancing on the battlefield also showed that things were not going well. Russian troops have been deployed along the Belarusian border since the beginning of the war, attacking Kiev from north to south as it is only 100 kilometers from the belarusian border. Air strikes on airstrips on the outskirts of Kiev allowed Russian strategic transport planes to quickly drop troops and take up positions on the outskirts of Kiev. Once the airport is captured, Russia could use strategic transport planes to quickly drop troops and establish footholds on the outskirts of Kiev. The operation was almost identical to the Soviet paratroopers' raid on Prague in 1968, although it lacked the same momentum. The reason was simple: the Czech army was almost entirely under the supervision of Soviet advisers, and neither the Czech army nor the civilian population was prepared to confront the Soviet Red Army directly. After a successful air raid, the tanks and armored vehicles in the streets would meet no decent resistance. Kiev, however, is different; Ukrainian forces have been fighting Pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine since the country gained independence in 2014, and they know exactly who their enemy will be if a future conflict breaks out. They know very well what Russia might use to attack them; After all, During the Crimean crisis in 2014, Ukraine acquired a powerful Form of Russian-style hybrid warfare, which used information pollution to paralyze decision makers. Russian forces would quickly take control of the situation, leaving anyone who tried to resist the courage to defend themselves. That is why, at the start of the war, the Russian side was quick to announce that Ukraine's navy and air force had been destroyed and that Kiev, the capital, had been captured in less than an hour. The Russian military believes it would weaken the Ukrainian people's desire to resist. It's not a bad idea, and it might work if Putin were planning a more aggressive blitzkrieg against Kiev in 2014. But it's a stretch to play that game today.

It is hard for ordinary people to understand how Ukraine has changed from 2014 to the present: after the Crimean crisis, pro-Russian independent armed regions developed in eastern Ukraine, now recognized by Russia as the Donetsk and Luhansk republics. The Regular Ukrainian army was quickly destroyed by Pro-Russian forces, and both units received help from the Regular Russian army with information, weapons, communications and reconnaissance. Russian special forces have even been involved in some of the fighting. However, nationalist sentiment is running high in Ukraine. Volunteer civilian militias quickly formed and moved spontaneously to the front to fight Pro-Russian soldiers. The Nazi group, which Mr. Putin now calls the Azov Battalion, was one of the largest militias in western Ukraine at the time. Militias quickly pushed back Pro-Russian soldiers and even retook the city of Malinka in the Donetsk region. In 2016, Andrei (not his real name) led a militia in Ukraine, fighting not only eastern militias but Also Russian paratroopers. He said he did not believe the regular Russian army was that strong. At that point, Ukraine's military and its people might view the Russian army with suspicion, rather than as an unbeatable bunch of monsters. In other words, the chances of Russia repeating the Prague surprise attack of 2016 are low because people are no longer afraid of you and have already fought you before. This is similar to vaccination, but does not guarantee immunity.

Worse, NATO has not been idle for the previous eight years. Although Ukraine is not a member of NATO, it has received training, weapons, and cash. Apart from the US as commander-in-chief, Poland, which borders Ukraine, is the true plan practitioner. Poland is the most successful example of a former Warsaw Pact military being modernized in accordance with US standards. During the Iraq war, Polish special forces took on the initial wave of missions and were integrated into the highest level Task Force 121, which was in charge of high-level tasks such as the hunt for Saddam and Bin Laden. They are considered NATO's first echelon. Poland's army and air force were fully trained and incorporated into NATO, and they fought admirably in the Territorial War. Many memoirs by US generals and commanders praise the Polish army's fighting ability, training levels, and spirit. As a result, Poland was tasked with training the Ukrainian army. Only the Poles knew how to train a Warsaw Pact force to NATO standards.

According to the outcome of the battle, the Ukrainian army's training was highly successful. Not only in terms of its determination to resist and respond rapidly, but also in terms of its proficiency in using NATO-supplied anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, which caused major damage to Russian forces. What's more, the Ukrainian army's communication, command, and reconnaissance systems are all operational, which explains why there are so many recordings of ambushes, which require perfect coordination and intelligence assistance.

In short, Russia has transformed the Ukrainian military and civilian population into a quasi-NATO army fighting exclusively against the Russian military as a result of the Crimean crisis and the civil conflict in Eastern Ukraine. And Putin appears to have overlooked the fact that the Ukrainian military and civilian populations were very different when he chose to go all out.

It appears reasonable to inquire why Putin, as a veteran KGB man, was unaware of the situation. Many ideas about information cocoons and the like have been proposed, all of which appear to be correct. Because the president like to hear what he wants to hear, it is not surprising that his officials provide information tailored to his preferences. However, I don't believe this is the true explanation. Putin's most serious issue may be his arrogance. For example, on 2.21, Putin and Naryshkin, the head of Russia's foreign intelligence service, discussed whether to support the recognition of the two "republics" in the country's east, and Naryshkin acted reluctantly, and only after Putin persisted did he agree to recognize the independence of the two republics.

Naryshkin was clearly aware that the meeting was being aired live to the public, and his reluctance to do so demonstrated that he was not a soft touch who agreed with his leader wholeheartedly. After all, the Foreign Intelligence Service, which was rebuilt from the ruins of the KGB after the Soviet Union's demise, realized that intelligence agencies providing factually inaccurate intelligence products to suit their leaders' preferences was the primary reason for the Soviet Union's downfall. For all I know, Russian intelligence agencies have presented Putin with reports that match the truth, and probably more than one department has produced reports that match the truth, yet he remains entirely confident in his thunderbolt.

Indeed, Putin's body language betrayed him when he met Defence Minister Shoigu on February 27th, sitting far from the end of a long table, 10 m distant.

This is not a good approach to communicate because the other person may not even hear you if you speak normally. Putin is a lonely man who believes that those around him do not understand him, as evidenced by this photograph. Of course, it is not the case that no one understands him. At the moment, Alexander Glievich Dugin is perhaps Putin's lone confidant. The Kremlin has made him an honorary visitor. He is a well-known Russian political philosopher and professor at Moscow State University. Dugin had the appearance of a great scholar, with long hair, a bushy beard, and bright eyes, and a voice as contagious as a bell. In the age of self-promotion, any man with this look might easily take over the internet with a video of him saying a couple of Chicken Soup for the Soul.

Durkin doesn't say much about chicken soup for the soul. He believes Russia should reform and rebuild its image, rather than divide it into Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, as Lenin did. Mr Putin clearly shared his views, publicly criticising Lenin's division of Russia just before the war, while claiming that Ukraine was an artificial state. However, this notion of national Lebensraum is definitely not recognized in twenty-first-century international relations; after all, state-to-state ties are a paradigm of international relations formed after World War II.

I assume that the so-called NATO expansion to the east was certainly one factor that prompted Putin to send in his forces, but deeper than that was Putin's determination to harness the image of greatness he had amassed to rebuild a Russian country. He believes that eastern Ukraine, and especially Kiev, have always been a part of Russia. With Belarus almost completely included into the map, Ukraine is the only remaining piece of the new Russian puzzle. Putin, who was born with the air of a protagonist, is still persuaded, even at the age of 70, that he can handle his dream. If my above deduction is correct, the reason for today's sad Russia-Ukraine war is not some information cocoon, not a story of a dim-witted monarch being duped by foolish officials, but a ideal of a manly man . However, ideals that can be realized are referred to be ideals, while ideals that cannot be realized are referred to as delusions of grandeur. Can Putin's ideals be realized?

The Russians were now turning the blitzkrieg into a full-scale blitzkrieg, coming to a stalemate at lightning speed. No one doubts that Russian forces could possible take Kiev, or even kill Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. But Putin will not win this war, because even if Kiev loses, the Ukrainian people will fight to the death, because the will to resist has awakened, and more shattered cities and bodies will only inspire them to fight. Moreover, while NATO and the European Union are not deploying soldiers, funds for weapons and fuel supplies are being brought in from their western and southern borders, and Poland and the Czech Republic are even providing miG aircraft in service directly to the Ukrainian air force. Zelensky not only provided weapons for the Ukrainian people to fight, but also launched a global appeal for international volunteers and funds. European veterans sympathetic to Ukraine and not afraid to die have been encouraged to bring their own food and weapons into Ukraine to fight Russia. Whether it is a popular war or a guerrilla war, the determination to resist and the power of outside assistance are the key to perseverance, and Ukraine is not lacking both.

During the ten years of war in Afghanistan, the CIA fired only 500 stinger missiles at Afghan militants, smashing the Red Army from top to bottom and bringing the Soviet Union down on the spot. During the Russia-Ukraine war, Germany alone contributed 500 Stinger missiles to Ukraine, and other countries collaborated to provide at least 1,000 man-portable air defense missiles to Ukraine. Even if Ukraine's government forces are defeated as guerrillas, they remain special guerrillas. There is an abundance of murder, consumption, and torture. Given the current state of Russia's economy and birth rate, a similar war like Afghanistan may bring the country down in a year or two rather than a decade. That is why, despite threatening to use nuclear weapons, Mr Putin is desperate for a solution with Ukraine. He understood better than anyone that he didn't have time to waste, that aspirations were ideals, and reality was reality.

What Mr. Putin is doing is beyond the realm of rationalists in terms of his vision of the future. The only thing I know for sure is that, given the state of affairs on the ground, Putin has less than a week to end this war in some dignified fashion. Although Mr. Putin has a long-term ideal, time seems to be limited.