Vladimir Putin has headed Russia for 14 years, during which he has muzzled his few political opponents, gained control of state television, and created a “power vertical.” In his Kremlin office, he is surrounded by fellow kleptocrats, whose shared goal is wealth accumulation and power. Any thoughts of national well-being come in a distant third. They wrap themselves in the cloak of nationalism, and they offer “bread and circuses” paid for by oil revenues. The business class, unprotected by a rule of law, flees Russia at first chance. There is no hope of durable economic progress.
Putin is the first world leader trained in and with a mindset for subversion, diversion, black ops, masking of operations, and outright lying. He, along with the Russian people, was humiliated by the Soviet collapse. He understands that a bad economy can be compensated for by military expansion and other tricks. His decade-long anti-American tirades have created a sturdy base of hatred of the West, particularly among pensioners, skinheads, ultra-nationalists, and anti-Semites. His propaganda machine, likely more potent than Goebbels’, can drum up patriotic frenzy, which the few liberal protesters cannot counter.
Putin’s covert and overt attacks on Ukraine fit perfectly into his KGB mindset: Western democracies are weak, restoration of empire deflects attention from arbitrary kleptocratic rule, and we can always stop if we encounter real resistance. We can live with a bad economy, and I can play one opponent against another with my energy levers.
Putin’s foreign aggressions take place one step at a time, testing the level of resistance before the next move. The Georgian and Crimean campaigns were covert special operations with the use of regular troops only at the end, if necessary. The ongoing attacks on southeastern Ukraine have so far been conducted by black ops officers and agents aided by local mercenaries and the few true believers. Putin would like to take all of southwestern Ukraine using only covert operations, but the large territorial mass will probably require some of the 40,000 or so regular troops amassed along the border.
Russia, swallowing one half of Ukraine using special operations alone, would represent, in my view, a landmark in military history, thanks to Putin’s KGB background, training, and worldview.
Putin’s answer to “Why Georgia? Why Ukraine?” is simple: “Because I want to and no one will stop me.”
Europe and the West do not know how to deal with an unconstrained tyrant who cut his teeth on the Soviet KGB. If they fail to learn how, Putin and Russia will soon hold sway over virtually all the former Soviet Union from the Baltic States to the Chinese border and then on to the sea routes and natural resources of the Arctic. States in this vast territory will either be formally ruled by Moscow or will know to make no significant decisions without Russia’s consent.
