The war in Ukraine – The madness of gambling in the time of Putin

–

With intuition in the mind of a player, the Russians now recognize their own president, Vladimir Putin. The war in Ukraine has long since become a game, a game of fate, where for the Russian president there is absolutely everything. For now it’s all or nothing for Putin, after introducing a partial mobilization Wednesday, holding “referendums” in the parts of the Ukrainian counties he controls.

Let’s talk about Donetsk, of which Putin controls only half, and Luhansk, where he controlled the entire county, until the Ukrainians continued their military advance in Kharkiv, and slightly in Luhansk in recent days. About half of these eastern counties that Putin controls since 2014. And we’re talking about Zaporizhzhya and Kherson counties in the south, which Putin took part in in the first weeks of the invasion this winter.

The starting point is that Putin has lost, and that after all defeats he increases his efforts to regain everything he has lost, so that he is eventually left with a bigger gain in the end. And we are seeing new aspects of the Russian president. Until Wednesday, Putin had alternative exit strategies from the war in Ukraine. It would be humiliating for him, yes, and perhaps in the peace talks he would only be able to keep what could be controlled by Donetsk and Luhansk when the invasion began.

But instead so he’s betting on pretty much the same thing that didn’t work out in this war. Because instead of elite soldiers who were often killed or wounded in the first phase of the invasion, he is now mobilizing what appear to be random young men, who without much training, and even less motivation for this war, will face highly motivated Ukrainian soldiers. who are constantly getting better training and more modern weapons from their friends in the West. Furthermore, Russia appears to have run out of modern weapons and ammunition.

Putin, as in all his time that the Russian leader has always assured in the past that he has several exits from which he could crawl out in case of rain, is now linked to one possibility, namely the victory on the battlefield over the Ukrainians. There are no alternative strategies. Russia is plunging into ever more total war. If the 300,000 soldiers to be mobilized are not enough, a confidential paragraph of the mobilization order says, according to rumors, that up to one million men can be mobilized. And for the record, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu recalled that Russia can mobilize 25 million men.

The Russian president it had a clear internal political strategy with this war, which despite mobilization still calls it a special military operation. The strategy was to send a relatively small number of soldiers to war, mainly soldiers from poor and distant provinces and forced recruits from the occupied territories. And to keep the war as long as possible for the rest of the Russians.

With the mobilization order this strategy is abandoned. Now the effort has been greatly increased, the whole of Russia is directly involved in the war, and across the country there are now scenes where mothers, girlfriends and weeping wives greet their children and men who are going to war. They cry like it’s the last time they see each other. Because maybe that’s just how it will be. Somewhere between 5,937 and 43,000 Russian soldiers died. The first number is Shoigu’s number, the second is the August number of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi. American and British intelligence are more oriented towards Ukrainian numbers than towards Russians.

To the player Dostoevsky – who wrote his novel after intense personal experiences – the bet was money. For the Putin player, human life is at stake. But the starting point for Putin is as negative as it is for Dostoevsky. Because where Putin has lost, in Kiev, on Snake Island, in Kharkiv and in international diplomacy, he only bets more. He can’t do anything else.

–