The key strands of the case against further US aid to Ukraine are as follows: “If Russia is unstoppable and Putin is backed by most Russians, why not surrender to the inevitable? Let Russia keep 20% of Ukraine’s territory so the bloodshed stops. With Donald Trump at the helm, we can avoid war and work with Russia again.”
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain thought along similar lines when he agreed in 1938 to let Hitler annex the German-speaking regions of Czechoslovakia. Hitler looked unstoppable, having already annexed Austria and reoccupied the Rhineland. Chamberlain promised peace in our time. Seven years later, the Fűhrer killed himself as Allied armies trampled across a ruined Germany?
Vladimir Putin in 2024 also looks unstoppable. China sells him dual-use technology; Iran, drones and missiles; North Korea, munitions and infantry; the BRICS+ nations, moral support; India China and Turkey, rivers of cash for oil.
If the West treats Ukraine as a lost cause, Putin will be celebrated as another Peter the Great, or Stalin. Putin will escape the International Criminal Court and Russia will not be billed the trillions it owes for harm done to Ukraine, and Putin may win assurances Ukraine will never join NATO.
But what if all this masks a failing regime and a collapsing home front? There are increasing signs that Putin’s Special Military Operation is destroying Russia as well as Ukraine.
Many Russian observers now assert that Russia cannot win this war. And, increasingly, they trace all problems to the boss in the Kremlin. Andrei Kartapolov, chairman of the Duma Committee on Defense, declares that “black days have begun for Russia.” State TV host Sergei Mardan says, “Enough of the lying. Victory is not in sight.” Olga Skabeeva, the “Iron Doll of Putin TV,” states that “our Special Military Operation hangs by a thread.” Reporters, she admits, have been “forced to hide the truth.”
Vladimir Solovyov, long known as a leading Kremlin propagandist, says Russia’s “victory is now impossible and it is time for a retirement” — Putin’s. Novelist-philosopher Mikhail Veller agrees the war is leading to “Putin’s self-liquidation.”
The priority Putin gives to the war effort is causing suffering. More military spending means less funding for health care, science, education, and the maintenance of infrastructure. It brings on more inflation, eye-watering interest rates, more infighting among government ministers and members of the Duma, more repression of free thought and expression; and, since mid-2024, no YouTube, BBC, or Voice of America.
Young brides with babies are told not to worry if their husbands are killed at the front, because widows receive bundles of cash. Inflated prices compel many families to spend one-fifth of their incomes on fuel. The demographic crisis worsens as rising mortality intersects with declining fertility, and, as many of Russia’s best and brightest flee abroad, and as many as 700,000 soldiers are killed or wounded.
A noted mathematician, physicist, and oceanographer in the Russian Academy of Sciences explained these issues. Born in Moscow in 1940 to a family of Tatar-Bashkir intellectuals, Robert Iskanderovich Nigmatulin is not afraid to speak frankly.
He denounces Russia’s centralized decision-making — rubber-stamped by a parliament controlled by Putin’s United Russia Party. Decisions requiring scientific expertise are made by “lawyers, economists, sociologists, and translators,” he says while Russia lacks scientifically trained youth and the professors to teach them.
Wrongly assuming that Russia could buy whatever is needed on the world market, Moscow cut funding for science, health, and education. Hospitals and medical centers have been shuttered across the country.
To return to Russia’s mortality rates of 1991, Nigmatulin says, the country would have to double the share of GDP spent on healthcare, otherwise, it will continue to suffer 200,000 or more excess deaths every year.
Russia’s economy is now on a level with Argentina but below that of Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, or Belarus. “We invest, but nothing is produced, We are the most ineffective country on earth at investing,” he says. “China cannot help us. We are stuck in a blind alley. We must acknowledge that every policy of our president is negative. His ministers are incompetent. Every time they speak, they begin by praising the president.”
Russia is in the grip of a cult of personality — a mythology that now surrounds Putin as it once did with Lenin and Stalin.
To be sure, Ukraine and its Western partners have their own serious problems. The question is which side will crash first in this war of attrition?
If there is a chance that Russia could implode soon, is it the right time to pull the rug from under Ukraine? What straw might break the Kremlin’s back? Shouldn’t the West increase aid to Kyiv while letting it fire Western weapons at military targets inside Russia and beyond Kursk?
There is no time to dither. Snow is coming. Millions of Ukrainians face a winter with little or no heat. Their lives, as well as world security, will be shaped by America’s actions and inaction.
Walter Clemens is an Associate at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University, and a Professor Emeritus at the Department of Political Science, Boston University. He wrote Blood Debts: What Putin and Xi Owe Their Victims (Washington DC: Westphalia Press, 2023).
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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