Mick Hartley

Marc Bennetts in a weekend essay in the Times – What ends first: Ukraine war or Vladimir Putin?

When President Putin ordered the Russian army into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Moscow prepared for a swift victory. “A new world is being born… Ukraine has returned to Russia,” read an article by state media. Written in advance with the expectation that Kyiv’s forces would crumble, it was published accidentally on the third morning of the war by the RIA Novosti website — and then quickly removed.

More than four years on, instead of the blitzkrieg Putin was counting on, the war is a deadly quagmire for the Russian army. On Thursday, Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine marked its 1,569th day, making it longer than the First World War. Is there any sign of an end in sight?

Advanced combat drones have transformed modern warfare over these four years, but the rodent-infested trenches on the sprawling front lines are grimly reminiscent of last century’s killing fields of Flanders and the Somme. So are the scenes of slaughter. During a recent visit to a Ukrainian military base, a commander showed me a video of the aftermath of a successful battlefield strike by his forces.

The body parts of Russian troops were strewn across a field. I caught a glimpse of what appeared to be someone’s intestines dangling from a charred tree like grotesque fruit. The commander, inured to violence, was more concerned that I would overhear his men using X-rated language than by the images of torn and mangled corpses.

The Kremlin does not reveal its casualty figures. Mediazona, an opposition website, and BBC Russia have used social media posts by relatives and other open sources to identify just over 225,000 Russian soldiers who have been killed since 2022. Probate registry data suggests the true death toll is at least 352,000, they have said. British intelligence puts it at close to half a million, about ten times Moscow’s fatalities during its wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya combined. Tens of thousands of soldiers have also returned home missing at least one limb.

Putin, a former KGB officer who grew up on stirring stories of Soviet army heroics, prefers to ignore such horrors. On June 5, he dismissed an offer from President Zelensky for a face-to-face meeting to end the conflict and insisted that his troops would emerge victorious on the battlefield. “Work, brothers!” he said in a message to Russian soldiers.

Putin can’t turn back now: he’s committed. I doubt he has the mental capacity to ever admit mistakes. Look at the bastard. Years of intrigue and ruthless power-building, surrounded by sycophants, and steeped in Russ fascism. Just evil.

So what next? All opposition has been silenced. The only voices we hear are those pushing a more extreme agenda.

Putin has rivals for the title of most extreme Russian ultra-nationalist in town. Although Russian forces have razed entire towns and cities, killed and tortured tens of thousands of civilians (we may never know the true death toll) and abducted thousands of Ukrainian children, some hardliners say the Kremlin should escalate. Even the FSB, Khodorkovsky said, did not “respect Putin”, and saw him as a “weakling”.

Yuri Baranchik, a pro-war blogger, told a radio station in Moscow that Russia should aim to kill not only Zelensky and senior Ukrainian army and political officials but their wives and children too. Such “personal losses” were, he said, the only way to stop Ukrainian drone and missile strikes against Russia.

As Putin approaches his 74th birthday, talk is increasingly turning to what comes after he dies or is otherwise incapacitated. Although there is no evidence that his health is failing, this is a transition Khodorkovsky said the West should begin preparing for. He urged western leaders not to “frighten” Russians by telling them they were all responsible for the war and would all be held accountable, or they risked losing vital support when the time came for change. “Of course, there will be no getting away from this. But there’s no need to say this now,” he said.

Despite fears in the West that Putin’s successor may be even more confrontational, Khodorkovsky believes things cannot get worse and that pressure from China will stop any Russian leader from using the country’s vast nuclear arsenal. “Putin’s regime will collapse with his passing. And then the question arises, will the regime that rises from its ruins be the same or better?” he said. “It can’t be worse. What could it do? Start a big war in Europe? We have that already.”

Hmm. Let’s hope.

I recommend Marc Bennetts’ recent book, by the way – The Descent: Witnessing Russia’s Spiral into Madness under Putin. He was the foreign correspondent for The Times and The Sunday Times in Moscow for some 25 years before being forced to leave.