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tl;dr some quick attempts to get inside the mindset at the Kremlin concerning events in the war, in the run-up to Putin's speech expected in a few hours. Everything below could be immediately and awkwardly falsified if he announces some desperate escalation like general mobilisation or a nuclear strike against a Ukrainian military target.
Ever since the Ukrainian successes in the northeastern campaign, I've been trying to get inside the mindset of the Kremlin to figure out what their likely response is.
One thing that is almost certainly true (and easily underestimated) is that they are in their own psychological bubble, and there is no elite team of intelligence operatives whose primary job is to give Putin objective analysis. Human minds don't work that way: we easily form fenced-off epistemic communities that downplay our shameful fears and play up our pride. You can even see this reading the reports of US decision-making throughout the Cold War, when interservice rivalry ran hot and the USAF nuclear strategy advisors were giving opinions based not on what was in humanity's interests or even the USA's, but instead what would get them the most planes and status compared to the army and navy. And of course, you can see it easily on reddit, even getting a rush of ideological whiplash as you flit from one politically aligned sub to another.
(What about people like Girkin? Well, he's a doomer, and an outsider, and his criticisms are mostly quite careful. As far as I've noticed, he talks about the conduct of the war, not the wisdom in initiating it in the first place; or he says that Russia should be more committed, without once questioning whether the war is winnable even with full commitment.)
Given all the above, I think a useful and necessary starting point for understanding Russia's position is to try to imagine what your view would be if Russia's strategic situation was a lot better than you probably currently think it is (this is one reason why contrarian posters are valuable to any subreddit that takes itself intellectually seriously).
What does this involve? Maybe it means you think that Ukrainian morale is weak. Maybe you think that the EU is less united than it appears, and winter will be harder than Europeans are prepared for. Maybe you think that the United States is being opportunistic and will drop Ukraine without looking back when the conflict starts to swing back Russia's way. Above all, you're probably convinced that there won't be another breakthrough like in Kharkiv oblast: that was a one off, heads have rolled, and now discipline and morale have been restored to the troops. Reinforcements are coming in, Iran is sending useful drones, and the forthcoming referenda will encourage a surge of volunteers from the DPR and LPR.
Let's say that you, like Putin, were in the grip of this relative sunny outlook. What would follow from it for your reflections on the wider strategy of the conflict?
Above all, I think you would be aiming to take the long view of things, because the fundamentals are on your side. Forget today's battles and next week's offensives - focus on longer-term military-industrial capacity, and associated active measures in the Russian and foreign populations. You probably don't want to risk a general mobilisation - that might compromise your longer-term war fighting ability - but you want to get as many new volunteers as possible, ideally from less economically active areas of the country. And finally, nuclear weapons wouldn't be on the table; after all, you're winning this war, albeit more slowly and less gloriously than you'd hoped. Why would you risk alienating friends and allies and giving NATO a chance to intervene?
But you might ask, at what point does this Pollyanna-Putin outlook begin to crumble? When does the filter bubble burst, and Putin has his Downfall-style meltdown? When Ukraine liberates Kherson? Lysychansk? Donetsk? Sevastopol? I think the only answer we can give here is that people in general are very bad at facing up to uncomfortable realities, and can keep themselves from accepting painful truths for their entire lives if necessary. Or think of psychologist's Leon Festinger's now famous work on cognitive dissonance on doomsday cults: when the doomsday prophecy fails, people will go to great lengths to avoid accepting that they've been duped. I expect Putin to go out the same way, with his final thoughts being confidence that Russia can still be victorious, even as he has an unfortunate fall from a window.
("What about you doglatine? Why are you so sure that Putin's the one in the filter bubble rather than you?" Answer: Well, I've been trying to make clear predictions throughout this conflict both online and to my circle of geopolitics friends - this post is in that same vein - and I'd say I'm fairly well calibrated so far in terms of events on the ground. Part of the appeal of making explicit predictions is to try to break yourself out of these epistemic lagoons in the first place. All that said, I recognise that of course I'm in a filter bubble, sometimes through deliberate choice (once the novelty value wears off, it's just not fun to consume propaganda you disagree with). But even if my intentions were pure, filter bubbles are all but inescapable. Usually the best you can hope for is to get good at spotting the early signs of a bubble collapse so you can make a clean exit with your life savings and a modicum of your dignity intact. But that's far easier said than done)
In any case, I am curious what others think.
This is definitely a side note to all the other things going in this thread, but I can't help but wonder how this will play out. I just received a notice from my German gas provider and the price per cubic meter has gone up x5, that's on top of a 60% increase in electricity price. Fortunately my wife works at a place where they're legally obligated to keep the heating on, I do WFH and am unusually cold-resistant and whatever else we'll actually consume fits comfortably in our budget, but not everyone has that privilege.
Across Europe, there will be a large number of people that will be unable to pay for some of the basics of life this winter. Assuming that they'll not just be content to lay down and die, this might have serious consequences starting from cascading economic consequences of non-payment of absurd utility bills to populist parties surging in support. Another thing to consider is that this winter we're still able to largely run off of Russian gas which filled our storage tanks over the summer. That won't be the case next winter.
If this was happening before Covid then I would agree. However post COVID I think this will not be such a problem. There are numbers of things that governments can do to decrease energy demand. They government offices, schools etc. can move into online mode again to save on heating, they can even motivate businesses to do the same. Governments can shutdown certain energy intensive industries temporarily like Aluminum production offering subsidies. They can close "nonessential" things like ski resorts - especially those which require energy intensive artificial snow.
Of course there will be considerable damage especially when it comes to competitiveness of manufacturing industry with certain countries that have energy independence. But if we lived through COVID we will get through this.
Arguably this will lead to higher costs. Home heating tends to be inefficient. So sending everyone home to keep warm will likely result in higher costs. And it's not like you can just turn off all the energy to government offices and schools. You're going to have to keep them above freezing throughout the winter.
Usually, during the workday, energy use at home drops. And that's without considering that most people don't turn down the heat. If energy prices are high, everyone is going to be locking that dial when they leave home.
By keeping schools, offices, and basically any place where people congregate, open and warm, you're going to see people turn down their thermostats and spend more time in public places, making it even more efficient.
Basically locking people down during an energy crisis is going to lead to increased demand for stuff to do at home, and supply is limited. That's going to push up prices even further.
They should be creating communal areas where people can gather, stay warm, hang out, and even eat. Commercial kitchens are far more efficient than residential ones. Restaurants are getting priced out by energy costs, but then we're just going to end up with more people eating at home, which means more energy consumption.
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I don't understand how moving things online saves energy. Now instead of heating 25 kids in one classroom, you have 25 kids in 25 bedrooms with the heater on. Same goes for basically any office space.
We have "survived" covid in large parts because all fiscal constraints were forgotten for 2 years and all Western governments engaged in massive scale money printing to stop any social unrest. This is of course not really possible anymore, as there is already massive inflation. "Close everything and pay people to do nothing" might seriously lead to empty shelves and worthless paper money this time.
Meanwhile the virus itself didn't put any actual constraints on healthy young/middle aged people (the demographic that does almost all the work) to go out and do actual physical work. Governments mostly just told them to put on a mask and continue with their jobs. Not having energy and materials on the other hand cannot be solved in such manners.
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Which is the worrying slogan I expect to see repeated (and added to) over the years.. the fact that governments can now expect people to tolerate and even support extreme interventions rather than call for the metaphorical heads of the decision makers who got them here is a precedent I didn't expect to become relevant so soon.
Would the EU countries have been as confident in endangering their energy supply if they weren't also confident that it would be tolerated? Will the policies which lead to an over reliance on Russia be overturned and the advocates discredited, or will the same wartime fervour we saw in the pandemic ensure that only bad people ask those kinds of questions?
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