Why Putin Still Thinks He Can Win

Things genuinely are not going well in most of Russia right now. The German news site DW recently asked Russian readers to tell them what life is like. The responses were not surprising.

A DW subscriber in Moscow’s Pechatniki district described a recent attempt to refuel late at night, covering around 40 kilometers (24 miles) in search of stations with supply.

“If there is gas anywhere at all, there’s a massive queue of 50 to 100 cars,” he said. “We decided that waiting until 3 or 4 a.m. only to head straight to work was a terrible idea, so we went home to sleep. We’re on half a tank for now, but by the end of the week we’ll either have to hunt for fuel or stand still. Lately, we use the car almost exclusively for trips to the dacha to see our elderly parents.”

“Now you have to hunt for gas at night. You don’t always get lucky. Often there’s no gas at all. If there is, it’s a two-to-three-hour wait,” said another subscriber.

One thing an increasing number of people are doing is pulling their money out of banks.

“Fuel shortages, drone attacks… Basic trips to Turkey have become unaffordable,” said another subscriber. “People plan nothing, withdraw cash, and buy dollars. There are no hopes for a bright future or a change of power. Everyone lives for today. Drinking has increased significantly — even in Moscow.”…

“People are mad as hell and blame the West for all their troubles. Life has become far poorer, duller, and more dangerous than before the war,” noted one subscriber. “People either shut down or cut off any conversation about life and the war immediately. Almost no one is left putting on a brave face or posturing.”

The banking situation has been called a slow-motion bank run by some observers.

In the first half of August, Russians withdrew $3.4 billion (286.4 billion rubles), according to central bank data cited by the Washington Post. That’s after $7.3 billion was withdrawn in July and $4.5 billion in June.

“Drones are flying. Things are burning down. Nervousness is growing. And people’s everyday wisdom may be kicking in that they need to have cash under their pillow and not somewhere in banks where it may never be returned,” a former finance official told the Post, adding that banks have much of their capital tied in loans elsewhere.

…the stampede out of lenders this year is on track to nearly double the $24.7 billion pace that was seen in 2022, when Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine.

There is a fear that Putin could soon raid bank accounts or pension funds in order to keep the war going. Russian oligarchs have already seen $51 billion in assets seized last year.

There were reports that CIA Director Ratcliffe’s visit to Moscow was about laying out the U.S. view that Russia was heading for a steep decline if it didn’t call off the war, and yet there are no signs that Putin is interested in doing that. He seems to believe that if he stays the course things will get better for him or at least much worse for Ukraine.

His troops have slowed on the battlefield. His spending on the war has ballooned beyond expectations. His population is increasingly fearful of what’s next. And his ability to project control has been undercut by Ukrainian strikes across Russia, with e-commerce warehouses, oil refineries and other facilities going up in flames on a near daily basis…

But Mr. Putin has shown little indication that he intends to stop fighting or believes his predicament is too gloomy to bear…

“In his assessment, Russia needs to do just better than Ukraine,” believing that Kyiv “is going to crumble” eventually if he just holds on, said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin…

Mr. Gabuev said the imbalance may be convincing Mr. Putin that he is gaining a critical advantage, despite his increasing challenges at home. The Russian leader, he said, will seek to “break” Ukraine this winter by decimating its civilian infrastructure and military production facilities.

There is a real risk for Ukraine. Putin is churning out ballistic missiles which Ukraine has little or no ability to stop right now. If Putin can ramp up his production and get help from North Korea, he really could do a lot of damage to Ukraine’s economy before winter. Ukraine is working on missiles to counter these threats but they won’t have any domestic source before the end of this year. Europe is planning to supply them as well but again, not this year. Simply put, the empire will strike back and it could be very significant.

And yet, Ukraine’s drone production is already ramping up and Putin is unlikely to catch a break himself before winter. How many months of long lines and paying to import gasoline can he manage? Moscow also gets very cold in the winter and it will be impossible to wait in gas lines overnight without freezing to death.

There’s a story out today saying that Putin believes the U.S. has been weakened by the war with Iran and that may be playing into his sense that he has a chance to finish the war this winter.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s mysterious trip to Moscow this week was preceded by fresh U.S. intelligence indicating that the Kremlin sees the United States as weakened by the Iran war, offering Russia an opportunity to escalate action against American interests and allies in Europe, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The details of Ratcliffe’s talks with his Russian counterpart remain secret, but one of the people told The Washington Post that the CIA chief warned Moscow against ramping up its war against Ukraine, arguing that such a move would backfire. This person and others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the subject’s sensitivity…

Ratcliffe told Russian officials that if Putin significantly escalated the war in Ukraine, it would push Trump toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, this person said.

I sincerely hope that was part of the conversation, but there is a real sense in which the war with Iran is not only depleting our stockpiles and creating a risk of inflation at home, but also raising world oil prices which help keep Putin’s war afloat. I support what Trump is trying to do in Iran, but at some point he may have to make an unenviable choice about which authoritarian country he wants to see defeated more. Putin may be right that we aren’t in a position right now to see both Iran and Russia lose at the same time.

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