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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.
I think any analysis that focuses on the internal mental states and thoughts of other people is doomed. It's a mistake I made myself just prior to this conflict, in which I could not envision what could possibly motivate Putin to invade Ukraine. Suitably chastened, I'll restrict my analysis to the best facts we have, which at current point are:
1: Ukraine has held. You can blame western weapons and aid if you want, but the point is the Ukrainian people have used that aid to hold off the Russians. All the military aid in the world didn't do shit for the Iraqis or Afghans, because they had no nationalistic impulse to bind them together. Ukraine is finding and founding their national myths for the future, if they survive.
2: With the recent offensive, the Ukrainian military has proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that they can run a competent conventional military offensive operation, which isn't nearly as simple as civilians might think. What's more, it has worked at least to some significant degree. Once again, you can blame western weapons or badly trained Russian troops, but both those things are realities.
Early on, I was fairly pessimistic about Ukrainian chances in a stand-up war with Russia, and I think the fundamentals do still favor Russia. But we are seeing the cracks in this consensus idea. Yes, Russia could mobilize fully, but will their economic and political system withstand the strain? Yes, they could nuke, but that doesn't solve their problem. They're trying to annex this territory, after all. What is becoming clear is that without committing significantly more resources to the fight, Russia is not on track to defeat Ukraine outright. We don't know if Ukraine can continue their offensive, or repeat their success, but the idea that Russia can ignore their military capability is now dead. Beyond that, speculation can take a man anywhere he wants to go.
I think you always need to try to think how other people are thinking. I believe the Great Don Vito Corleone said something like that along with The Art of War.
I will admit to being wrong on Putins mental state. I thought he was a cold but rational master strategist. Perhaps he was once that and in old age he’s slipping.
I thought Russian elites want to live in the west once they have money (still think this is largely true) and Putin was largely one of those people.
I thought Russia would largely be happy atleast the elites with making money selling commodities to the west.
One thing is the worlds gotten weird since COVID. Far more irrational decision making. So many weird things. Academics not being willing to break certain ideological lines. News that seems purely propaganda. Riots in American cities over largely fake stats. Republicans having a legitimate riot - largely expected something like the boring normal gop tea party protest. China seems to be killing themselves with zero COVID. San Francisco and Chicago giving up their livable pro-business governance with an agreement they pay public sector workers well and turning into poop city and in Chicagos case unlivable actual murder/theft on the business class.
Honestly sometimes it just seems like lockdowns rotted everyone’s brains.
In Putin's case, I blame oil prices giving him delusions of Russia being great again, or at least having the opportunity to project its power with minimal consequences. That led to the South Ossetian war, which scared many Ukrainians, but probably not enough to make them consider joining the EU/NATO if oil prices had remained high. The 2014 invasion of Ukraine happened to occur at the end of the 2011-2014 oil price spike, right before the 2014-2016 dip. That intervention would presumably have gone easier for Russia if oil prices had remained high for a decade or more. That intervention created a series of entanglements that Putin cannot free Russia from without losing face on a regime-threatening scale.
January 2022-February 2022 saw crude oil prices return to a little above their trend levels. Maybe Putin thought that, if he could act when oil prices were at the start of a 3-5 year boom, this would give him the room to sort things out in Ukraine. Of course, he also underestimated Ukrainian resistance, but a lot of rational and well-informed people did that. I mean, I did that, and I'm the smartest, most well-informed, and most handsome person I know.
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