Putin Could Lose for Winning in Ukraine

It's still early days, but the invasion isn't the cakewalk Russia's leader expected, and the worst may be yet to come.

There are two ways Vladimir Putin could lose his war in Ukraine.

The first is by losing on the battlefield, which he will do anything to avoid, as his bizarre brandishing of nuclear weapons suggests.

The second is by winning.

Putin already has managed to unite NATO and most of the U.S. Congress, tasks that just weeks ago appeared nigh impossible; lit the Eiffel Tower and countless other landmarks in Ukraine’s colors; triggered economic sanctions and other measures that will be felt not only by his oligarch friends, but also by ordinary Russians already battling inflation, shortages and COVID. Even before the weight of all that lands on them, Russians are mounting antiwar protests in Moscow and St. Petersburg and decorating them with flowers in Ukraine’s blue and yellow colors.

The real costs of victory, however, will come if the Russians ignore last-ditch diplomacy, seize Kyiv and decapitate the Ukrainian government and its heroic leader, literally, figuratively or both. That would leave Putin the task of controlling hostile territory roughly the size of Texas with an army too small and logistically challenged to do that, while trying to drag a 21st Century democracy backward more than three decades to the glory days of the Iron Curtain. He would have to do all that while confronting a host of troubles at home that will worsen if Ivan and Igor are coming home in body bags.

As Ukrainians confronting Russia’s invaders put new definitions of heroism on front pages, tv screens and cell phones every minute, Putin is treading the well-worn path of infallible authoritarians whose mistaken military adventures cost them dearly. Instead of expecting a repeat of Georgia, Chechnya and the Crimea, he should have remembered the Soviet catastrophe in backward Afghanistan. It also might have been wise to revisit the revolts against Soviet rule in Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Poland in 1980.

Although he served as a KGB officer in East Germany, Vlad the Impaler clearly doesn’t know European history, though. Two 20th Century examples couldn't be closer to home.

Hitler ignored the advice of his generals, including his chief of military intelligence, when in 1941 he launched Barbarossa, his strategically fatal invasion of the Soviet Union. On the receiving end, ironically enough, Joseph Stalin did the same thing.  Despite a fine job by his spies, Stalin dismissed their intelligence reports on the Fuehrer’s plan, not to mention ignoring the millions of German troops massing on his borders, which should have turned the Kremlin’s warning lights bright red.

Whoever designed the Russian plan for invading Ukraine told Putin the Ukrainians would fold or run away and reassured him that he’d quickly have Kyiv in the bag isn’t talking, needless to say. They probably aren’t expecting a performance award this year. If there were any intrepid souls who raised doubts about a forthcoming cakewalk, they, too, are likely keeping their counsel, especially after their leader’s bullying at a pre-taped Kremlin Security Council meeting. In fact, it’s hard to see anyone among the cabinet-level characters videoed around Putin's gargantuan conference table with the cohones to question the boss the way ordinary Russians are doing outside the Kremlin. Indeed, the evidence that Putin alone is the decider is accumulating by the day. 

Take Putin’s rhetoric. His recent vow to de-Nazify Ukraine is a case in point. Like his actions, his pronouncements appear to be drawing on the fantasies contained in Radio Moscow’s historical archives—see “Speeches, Foreign Minister Molotov, German Revanchism.” They suggest that Putin is doubling down on his right to take “technical military measures,” whatever his geographic borders may be. Add his nuclear threats and his back-to-the-future approach at home. Under Putin, of course, rolling up protesters has been a full employment program for his security services.  But their alacrity in hustling antiwar Russians into paddy wagons clearly reflects word from the top to step lively or else.

Unfortunately for Putin, the crisis facing him as Moscow’s mastermind-in-chief isn’t just on the battlefield. The Ukrainians’ fight—including, if Kyiv falls, their certain rejection of a puppet regime and bloody resistance to follow—is presenting a challenge well beyond the work of toppling a dangerous democracy next door. The Ukrainians are promising Putin the gift that any American should recognize instantly: his very own forever war. With sanctions foretelling a tightening grip on Russia’s financial jugular, their success in rallying support also is solving Putin’s guns-or-borscht dilemma. Whatever Russia’s foreign exchange and energy reserves, win or lose, its economy is fated to suffer big time.

With his circle of advisors culled of independent voices, cowed or complicit, can Putin alone decide to walk back his self-made disaster? Will rising protests among Russians matter to a president who has made crushing opposition his domestic political job one? Diplomats in European capitals, as well as in Washington, would say the door is always open to negotiations, as has Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The question is, does Putin understand that in Ukraine, and perhaps in Russia itself, he can lose for winning? Today in Moscow, as in Hitler’s Reich Chancellery and in Stalin’s Kremlin 80 years ago, the answer can only be found in the mind of one man.

Kent Harrington is a former senior CIA analyst who served as national intelligence officer for East Asia, chief of station in Asia and as the CIA’s director of public affairs. His website is http://www.kentmichaelharrington.com/