With the brazen invasion of Ukraine, it appears as though Putin may finally have lost his mind. To be clear this is an unmitigated and profound tragedy, and like all decent people my heart breaks for Ukrainians and, indeed, everybody affected by this senseless cataclysm. If I try to point out the thin silver lining which is our only meagre consolation, let it not be thought that I wouldn't prefer to have averted the whole ugly episode.
If there is a silver lining, it is suggested by the same facts which lead me - along with many others - to conclude that Putin has lost his mind. That is, the fact that this a monumental misstep on the part of the Russian autocrat, which will incur savage costs, costs which I don't believe he would have exposed himself to if he were sound of mind. The war is inhuman and criminal, and Vladimir Putin is the perpetrator. If there is any solace to be taken, it is that he will pay for his crime.
In the Theatre of War: The Coming Ukrainian Insurgency
It is difficult to imagine how Putin reached the conclusion that the cost of this invasion would be sufficiently justified by the gains he envisions in the context of his imperial fantasies. The most plausible explanation would seem to be that he underestimated the resistance which Ukraine's conventional military would put up, and was arrogantly heedless of the difficulty of pacifying the insurgency which will follow the eventual defeat of these conventional forces.
As Douglas London, "a retired, Russian-speaking CIA operations officer," wrote1 in Foreign Affairs:
"...if Russia pushes on to occupy much of the country and install a Kremlin-appointed puppet regime in Kyiv, a more protracted and thorny conflagration will begin. Putin will face a long, bloody insurgency that could spread across multiple borders, perhaps even reaching into Belarus to challenge Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko, Putin’s stalwart ally. Widening unrest could destabilize other countries in Russia’s orbit, such as Kazakhstan, and even spill into Russia itself. When conflicts begin, unpredictable and unimaginable outcomes can become all too real. Putin may not be prepared for the insurgency—or insurgencies—to come."
There is reason to expect a Ukrainian insurgency to put up a fierce and protracted resistance which will make this an enormously costly war for Russia, and in the long run may conceivably make occupation and pacification untenable. To begin with, Ukraine shares borders with four friendly NATO powers: Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia. This is critical for two reasons. Firstly, as London writes, “these long borders offer the United States and NATO an enduring way to support Ukrainian resistance and a long-term insurgency.” This they will almost certainly do. Indeed, “in all likelihood, a covert program to help organize the resistance to Russia already has communications infrastructure, intelligence collection capabilities, and operational plans in place. And the tactics developed to support defensive operations against an invader can transition to those aimed at hobbling an occupying force.”
And secondly, “as the United States learned in Vietnam and in Afghanistan..."
“...an insurgency that has reliable supply lines, ample reserves of fighters, and sanctuary over the border can sustain itself indefinitely, sap an occupying army’s will to fight, and exhaust political support for the occupation at home. Russia would also have to think twice before trying to chase insurgents across the border in Poland, for instance, since such actions could trigger war with NATO.”
Asymmetric warfare puts conventional forces at a severe disadvantage and forces them to bear hugely uneven costs:
“Russia’s military advantages over Ukrainian forces will diminish as the enemy it fights changes from an organized army to a decentralized and mobile resistance. Occupation forces will be subject to harassing attacks designed to both inflict casualties and undermine military discipline. An influence campaign replete with horrific images of carnage—of both civilian Ukrainian and Russian military deaths—will aim to sow antiwar sentiment in Russia and counter Moscow’s narrative that their forces were welcomed as liberators by grateful locals.”
Following the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014, and continually fanned by Putin’s aggressive and contemptuous posture towards Ukraine, “anti-Russian fervor and homegrown nationalism have surged in Ukraine. Ukrainians have spent the last eight years planning, training, and equipping themselves for resisting a Russian occupation.” During the same period, 400,000 Ukrainian personnel have served in the campaign against separatists in the East of the country. Crucially, the “dire state of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) in 2014 meant that the initial recruitment was very chaotic.2”
“For this reason, volunteer combatants – many of whom were not officially affiliated with the military – played a decisive role in the first months of the conflict, for which they received much recognition. This had two important consequences. First, civilian volunteers and activists remain key actors who enjoy greater trust among soldiers and veterans than the Ukrainian government to this day. Second, given that many of these volunteers were civilians before the conflict began, a wide variety of people joined the armed forces or volunteer battalions. Today, they make up a diverse group of ATO/JFO veterans.”
It’s not possible to determine the precise number, but the large number of recent veterans means there is a large number of Ukrainians with military experience in addition to the 209,000 active duty personnel who make up the country's armed forces3. The regular armed forces are also bolstered by the Territorial Defence Force became a separate branch of Ukraine's military on the first day of this year4. It was intended to be made up of 10,000 military professionals leading 130,000 civilians, but this goal increased to 1.5 - 2 million in the face of the Russian military build up on the border. A poll conducted by the Ukrainian Institute for the Future found that 56 of Ukrainians wanted to volunteer for the force, but given the limited window of time the force had to get on its feet before the Russian invasion was unexpectedly launched, it is far from certain what shape it was in, and what numbers it represented, at the outset of the war.
It is also worth noting the existence of Ukraine’s National Guard. With an “authorized strength of 60,000, the NGU was created in combat conditions in the wake of Russia’s intervention in the Donbas region.” Along with the TDF and the regular armed forces, this accounts for Ukraine’s full military strenGth, in conventional terms. But the coming insurgency - which will follow the breakup of military command - will draw not only from the scattered surviving personnel of these combined forces but from a large pool of hastily armed and loosely organized civilians.
Within hours of the invasion beginning, preparations for the insurgency were evident. In Kharkiv5, Kalashnikov rifles and crates of ammunition were unloaded and distributed to civilian volunteers. Speaking to reporters, one of the newly armed civilians said, “We are waiting for the Russians and will welcome them to hell.” The same day, the news site Ukrayinska Pravda reported6 that 10,000 assault rifles were handed out to civilians in Kyiv, as Russian forces approached the city.
By the fifth day of the invasion, a serious and organised resistance was shaping up. The unpropitiously named Coffee or Die Magazine reported7:
"In virtually every village and town along the road, groups of civilian volunteers (men and women) are filling sandbags, digging trenches, and making protected emplacements and pillboxes. Workers operate heavy machinery to move concrete barriers into place and build earthen berms to impede the movement of vehicles. Welders are also at work fashioning anti-tank hedgehogs from metal pipes."
Defence units have taken down road signs throughout the countryside with the names of villages and towns, and the countries reservist Territorial Defence units are manning checkpoints along the roads leading to towns and cities.
President Zelensky has called for international volunteers to join the defence of Ukraine, and at least 60 separate British citizens have answered his call.
But launching and sustaining a formidable insurgency depends on the spirit of the people. By all indications, however, the spirit of the Ukrainian people, and their will to resist, is great. The courage and fighting spirit of Ukrainians was well surmised by Melinda Haring, writing in Foreign Affairs:
“Twenty miles off the coast of Ukraine in the Black Sea, lies Snake Island. On the day of the invasion, a Russian ship approached the island and demanded that the 13 border guards stationed there lay down their weapons. They declined to do so and were all killed. Snake Island is miniscule, little more than a grass-covered rock in the ocean, and yet its defenders refused to be cowed. Why, ultimately, will Russia fail and Ukraine prevail? Because of courage like that.”
The incident she recounts struck a chord with many people and has been reported widely. She didn’t mention that when the Russian warship instructed them to lay down their arms, the reply which came from Snake Island was, “Russian warship: go fuck yourself!”
Unrest on the Home Front: Keep the Home Tires Burning
At the same time, his ill-conceived war may cause Putin a world of pain domestically and politically. This is another factor which causes me to think he has finally lost it: Putin has historically been a shrewd and calculating political actor, a skilled manipulator of people and events. In a stark departure from his heretofore reasonably predictable behaviour, the Ukrainian excursion shows Putin throwing caution to the wind and mindlessly pursuing a pet fixation. As the Russian anarchist group Autonomous Action said in a recent statement8:
"Putin has always been a politician who balances the interests of security forces and oligarchs. Now the president has stepped out of this role, having gone on an independent voyage through the boundless sea of senility. We are ready to bet a bottle of the best whiskey that in the near future, Mr. President might experience a coup from his own inner circle."
He seems not to have expected the Western powers to respond as harshly as they have or to impose such drastic sanctions. If he did expect it, it would only further call into question his capacity for rational assessment of risk and reward. The near-total isolation of Russia politically, culturally, and most of all economically, the severity of the impact of sanctions on the Russian economy, are going to make life very difficult for Russians and badly fan the flames of discontent. And in his arrogant disregard for the blowback Russia is facing for his aggression, he has uncharacteristically gone out of his way to offend not just the Russian masses but, even more surprisingly, the Russian oligarchy he is in the habit of courting.
Even before the effect of international sanctions could be expected to be meaningfully driving general unrest, Putin seems to have underestimated the backlash against the war itself that would come from the Russian population. As Zoya Sheftalovich's prescient analysis9 in Politico Europe notes:
"Russians, doped up as they are on RT and TASS and Rossiya 24, are also suddenly seeing their favorite singers, tennis players and actors speak up about what is now a hot war. They’re seeing photos of bombed apartment blocks dead children. They’re seeing this isn’t going to be a walkover.
There’s a genuine danger to Putin that he has greatly underestimated the breadth of opposition he could now face with a war against a people whom most Russians don’t see as an enemy. He’s not just facing metropolitan protesters. He’s also humiliated his spy chief in public, lost his oligarchs billions of dollars and could well have to deal with thousands of traumatized mothers. For a paranoid former spy, always alive to risks, he now appears extraordinarily confident that no one from this growing base of foes can threaten him."'
The mood shift in Russia is profound, and it is difficult to overstate its significance. The Autonomous Action statement notes that "the Russian reaction to the war in Ukraine is completely different from what happened here in 2014 [when Russia seized Crimea after the Ukrainian revolution]."
"Many people, including celebrities who worked for the government, are demanding an immediate end to the war. The removal of Ivan Urgant, the leading Russian TV star, from the air is noteworthy."
Not only ordinary Russians and celebrities are speaking out, but unprecedentedly so are members of the political and economic elite. The Moscow Times reported10 that on Sunday, the fourth day of the war, "Alfa Bank co-founder Mikhail Fridman, whose parents live in the Ukrainian city of Lviv, called the war in Ukraine 'a tragedy' and said that the 'bloodshed' must end'." Metals tycoon Oleg Deripaska called for peace negotiations the same day.
On the very first day of the war, "Tatiana Yumashev, the daughter of Putin’s predecessor Boris Yeltsin and a driving force behind his appointment as president in 1999, joined celebrities, artists and ordinary Russians in changing her Facebook profile picture to a black square, captioning it 'No to war.'"
"She was joined by a range of other well-connected figures, including the daughter of oligarch Roman Abramovich, the son-in-law of Defense Minister Sergei Shoygu, and the son of RosTech chief and longtime Putin friend Sergei Chemezov."
On top of this, three Communist Party members of the State Duma have spoken against the war.
Sheftalovich's conclusion sums up Putin's domestic situation well:
"Soon, ordinary Russians will start to feel the chilling effect of those Western sanctions.
Russians know how to suffer, of course. They are used to it. Famine, war, death — these are not hypothetical, far-away, historical things. Even those born as recently as in the ’80s remember being cold and hungry, remember empty shelves and petrol pumps. But during those Soviet years, Russians were suffering for what many saw as the great good.
Will Russians suffer for Putin and his cronies? Will they suffer for a man who lives in a golden palace, and who hasn’t been seen for days?"
‘The Coming Ukrainian Insurgency’, Douglas London, Foreign Affairs, February 25, 2022.
‘The Long Shadow of Donbas: Reintegrating Veterans and Fostering Social Cohesion in Ukraine’, Julia Friedrich and Theresa Lutkefend, Global Public Policy Institute, May 2021.
‘What kind of resistance can Ukraine mount?’, Stephen J. Flanagan and Marta Kepe, Defence News, February 27, 2022.
‘Ukraine’s new military branch: Citizens protecting their neighborhood’, Igor Kossov, Politico Europe, February 13, 2022.
‘The Kharkiv Resistance Has Already Begun’, Jack Losh, Foreign Policy, February 24, 2022.
‘Putin’s Blunder’, Melinda Haring, Foreign Affairs, February 25, 2022.
‘Dispatch: Ukraine Fortifies its Entire Territory as Russian Assault Stalls’, Nolan Peterson, Coffee or Die Magazine, February 28, 2022.
‘Russian Anarchists on the Invasion of Ukraine: Updates and Analysis’, Crimethinc, February 26, 2022.
‘Putin’s Miscalculation’, Zoya Sheftalovich, Politico Europe, February 26, 2022.
‘Some of Russia’s Elite Oppose War in Ukraine’, Oleg Deripaska, The Moscow Times, February 28, 2022.