Putin’s Purge – USA Gov Policy

One question quietly being asked in Washington this week is Who is in charge in Moscow? Russia’s Minister of Defense, Army General Sergey Shoigu, apparently suffering from a sudden but unidentified heart problem, has disappeared. Putin’s top envoy, who previously helped Russian President Medvedev develop the architecture for the country’s economic reforms, resigned this week and has fled the country citing the war against Ukraine. He is refusing to return to Russia until Putin stops the war. More than eight generals and other top Russian military commanders have died with many thousands of soldiers killed in action inside Ukrainian territory. News coming in from the theater reports that over 800 Russian armored vehicles and tanks have been destroyed by Ukraine’s forces defending the country. Russian troops, according to military analysts, simply are left to forage for food as their stomachs are as empty as the gas tanks of the army’s armored vehicles.

Military planners in Washington are surprised by Moscow’s lack of logistical planning with some asking: “Is anyone left in charge in the Kremlin?” Reports coming in from the field suggest the Russian military will begin running out of its food supplies within a few days. Ukrainian defense forces recently destroyed a rail line from Belarus that Russia had intended use to resupply its troops. Videos verified as real are surfacing this week depicting Russian tanks pulling up to Ukrainian gas stations to fill their machines with fuel.

As Russian troops grow hungry and weary, get pushed back farther from the capital, and human loses mount, Putin is said to grow more cantankerous and desperate. Defense One reports that a NATO military officer said Wednesday that between 30,000 and 40,000 Russian troops have been injured with between 7,000 and 15,000 killed. Putin’s spokesman, in a startling interview given earlier this week, calmly confirmed that Russia is willing to commit to a first use doctrine to employ nuclear weapons in the battlefield. President Biden on Wednesday said that Washington also is growing concerned that Putin faces a window to win that is closing, as the war is dragging into the muddy spring planting season.

It makes the Russian leader more dangerous and unpredictable. Biden said the US believes Putin is preparing to use chemical and biological weapons in order to win the war before that window closes. Analysts shared that events match a pattern where Russia blames the West for something before committing the same action. Russian forces have bombed civilian shelters, schools, a maternity hospital, shopping malls, and apartment complexes and deliberately killed many civilian noncombatants. The US on Thursday officially declared that Russian forces have committed war crimes. NATO leader Jens Stoltenberg said this week that “Any use of chemical weapons would totally change the nature of the conflict, and be a blatant violation of international law and will have far-reaching consequences.” Russia has a history of using these types of weapons of mass destruction in Grozny, Chechnya, Aleppo, and Syria. If such weapons are released inside Ukraine they could contaminate NATO Member states and would be viewed as an attack against the Western alliance.
Again, who is charge in Moscow and who is advising Putin now that his long-time confident Shoigu is gone. The general was in charge of the Army and some political ideology. Putin appears increasingly isolated from his other aides. He has purged some of his military commanders who questioned his actions. The oligarchs who help keep him in power are unhappy about their financial losses and freedom due to the sanctions. Russian security expert and writer Andrei Soldatov says: “Putin cannot control every road and every battalion….” Putin tends to trust his former KGB colleagues. He has surrounded himself with many that he has known over the years. But, according to one analyst, “It’s not as if we can say with complete confidence who is calling the shots and who took the decisions.” With Russian nuclear forces on high alert, and intensifying threats coming from the kremlin, the risk of a mistake sparking a regional or world war grow more likely. Hopefully, sane forces in Moscow will be willing to compromise before Putin launches a “Hail Mary” that will set the world on fire.

Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Department

Photo: Pixabay

Quick Analysis

Putin’s Saber Rattling

Earlier this week, President Biden reversed his 2022 decision, authorizing the provision of antipersonnel land mines to the Ukrainian government. It follows an earlier Administration authorization to allow the use of an advanced American missile system capable of striking as deep as 100 miles inside Russian territory. The US election season may be ending, but both Russia and the West show no indication of stepping down the conflict. Russian propaganda continues to swell as the Kremlin increases its threats to use nuclear weapons against the West. Last week Andrey Sushentsov, program director of the pro-Kremlin think tank Valdai Discussion Club (VDC), published an article on growing nuclear tensions in the region. Official Russian language in the last few years has been threatening. Since the US election, rhetoric like that in the Sushentsov article, has approached the level of nuclear blackmail. The VDC article’s main theme centers on Russia’s intent to directly confront the West militarily if the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) becomes involved in Russia’s conflict with Ukraine. “On the one hand, these threats are intended to frighten the West, but on the other, Russian propagandists themselves are starting to believe in the inevitability of escalation,” according to Ksenia Kirillova of the Jamestown Foundation. On November 11, Sushentsov wrote that “The conflict will reach a completely new level, with unpredictable consequences for Europe and the entire world.” Kirillova points out that Putin’s distorted image of the world is divorced from reality and is causing the Kremlin to issue demands that are impossible to fulfill. Financial and other Russian resources needed to support Putin’s war are growing scarcer at the same time. This week the Kremlin announced a reduction of payments to its soldiers. Recently North Korea acknowledged it was sending soldiers to fight in Ukraine as Putin is running out of bodies to use as cannon fire. The war is not going well for Russia. One question floating around the Washington intelligence community is whether Putin will act out of desperation before President-elect Trump assumes office. In recent months the Russian propaganda machine is spewing out materials from fairly reputable analytical platforms inside the country. Kirillova says that “Kremlin ‘experts’ do not conceal that such threats are only intended to break the West psychologically, as they themselves are not prepared for full-scale nuclear war.” Despite Russia’s lack of preparation for an all-out war with the West, the expanding nuclear rhetoric carries with it an increase in the threat of a full-scale war in multiple theaters of operation. In June 2023 a founder of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Sergey Karaganov, called for “delivering a pre-emptive strike of retaliation” on Poland to force the West to surrender. In the previous month, Dmitry Suslov, a direct of research programs at the policy center proposed organizing “a demonstration nuclear explosion” aimed at intimidating the West. In September, President Putin announced a reappraisal of Russian nuclear doctrine after speaking earlier in the year at the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum and jokingly calling Suslov a “scary person.” Pavel Baev, writing in the European Daily Monitor, says “Putin intends his announcement to mark an escalation of nuclear brinkmanship and influence the proceedings of future Ukrainian peace efforts.” Putin is expanding the list of environmental conditions that are acceptable for using a nuclear weapon and incorporating it into Russian military doctrine. Baev adds that “The ups and downs of Russian brinkmanship are disconnected from the kinetic battles of the war, correlating instead with Ukrainian peace offensives, such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s first peace summit in Bürgenstock, Switzerland.” Despite the increase in vitriolic language, in a You Tube video published a week before the US presidential election, Karaganov openly assured the West the primary goal of the escalation is to break the American spirit and that of the West, not outright nuclear war. By Election Day in the US, with political prognosticators predicting a win for former president Trump, Karaganov changed his tune and called for an increased role in nuclear deterrence. Kirillova points out that Western concessions to Russia are unlikely to reduce the risk of nuclear escalation. The distorted reality inside the Kremlin continues to push that President-elect Trump is an adherent of “world government,” that Ukraine will create a nuclear weapon, and Russia must prepare for a nuclear conflagration to achieve its ambitions for a new world order. President-elect Trump has indicated he will not agree to concessions that destabilize Europe, the Middle East or other regions. Going forward a strong US foreign policy may be the most stabilizing course the West can count on to restrain Putin and his intent to rebuild the Russian empire. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept. Illustration: Pixabay

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