{"id":11564,"date":"2022-02-28T15:09:29","date_gmt":"2022-02-28T15:09:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/2022\/02\/putin-stuck\/"},"modified":"2024-11-21T00:13:22","modified_gmt":"2024-11-20T21:13:22","slug":"putins-war-is-stuck-beware-the-rising-risks-pavel-k-baev","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/2022\/02\/putins-war-is-stuck-beware-the-rising-risks-pavel-k-baev\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin\u2019s War is Stuck, Beware The Rising Risks- Pavel K. Baev"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Data on the\nconcentration of Russian troops was solid; the diplomatic offensive executed by\nMoscow was deliberately disagreeable; yet, many experts (myself including) refused\nto accept the proposition on the coming war as \u201cinevitable\u201d. Denials streaming\nfrom the Kremlin were never convincing, but President Vladimir Putin\u2019s\nreputation as a shrewd pragmatist still clashed with the forecasts that he\ncould commit a blunder of such monumental proportions. In the matter of five\ndays, if not already in day one of the full-blown hostilities, it has become\nclear that the scale of obstacles and damage goes far beyond the unduly\noptimistic risk-calculus in Moscow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every student of Clausewitz (who has a place of prominence in Russian strategic culture) knows that wars rarely go according to plans; this one, however, never had a chance to register a success. <\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Every student of Clausewitz\n(who has a place of prominence in Russian strategic culture) knows that wars\nrarely go according to plans; this one, however, never had a chance to register\na success. Its basic assumptions on own strength and enemy\u2019s weaknesses are too\ndeeply flawed, and Putin\u2019s underlying proposition that Ukraine is not a real\nstate, but just an \u201cartificial construct\u201d that would collapse under direct\npressure, is inevitably proven wrong. His courtiers were afraid to say a word\nof disagreement, but the top brass should have known better than to kowtow to\nthe Commander-in-Chief. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu is the only person in\nthe Kremlin court with own reputation and support base, and he saw plenty of\nman-made disasters in his previous job as minister for emergencies. General\nValery Gerasimov, the chief of the General Staff, gained fame for his\ntheorizing on \u201chybrid wars\u201d, but he knew that Russian army has only limited\nexperience in and capacity for fighting a large-scale conventional war. Both,\nhowever, opted to report readiness for conquering Ukraine, and now have to\nanswer for the setbacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Putin\u2019s track\nrecord in power projection experiments tells us anything about this\nextraordinary crisis, it is that he is set to double the stakes and blame the\nWest for the severe consequences. The latter is partly true, even if the main\ncause of the derailment of Russian war plans is the fierce resistance of\nUkrainian army as well as civilian population. Putin has clearly miscalculated\nthe strength of NATO unity and the US leadership, expecting only modest\nsanctions and plentiful lamentations. Now he has to respond not only to the\ndebilitating distortion of Russian financial system, but also to such punishing\nmeasures as the possible closure of the Turkish Straits to the Russian Navy.\nThe response quite probably would involve curtailing or even complete stop to\nthe supplies of Russian natural gas to Europe, but this is hardly going to\nundermine the NATO resolve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Putin\u2019s stakes in\nthis unwinnable and unnecessary war cannot be higher, and he needs to\ndemonstrate decisive success in the shortest possible time, before the heroic\nUkrainian resistance and expanding Western engagement with it undercut the far\nfrom solid domestic support for the aggression. The Kremlin has taken the\nability to suppress all anti-war protests for granted, and repressions can indeed\nbe intensified, but nothing resembling a \u201cpatriotic mobilization\u201d can be\norchestrated. This may turn out to be the most serious of miscalculations, and\nthe only way to negate it available for the war cabal in Moscow is to deliver\nsomething resembling a victory, first of all in Kyiv and Kharkiv. Massive use\nof airpower is necessary for breaking the defenses in these major urban\ncenters, and this upping of brutality is certain to bring more outrage in and\npunishing measures from the West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pushed in the\ncorner, Putin may resort to desperate manoeuvres and opt for brandishing his\nmuch-advertised nuclear instruments, first of all non-strategic weapons. A\nstrike remains in the domain of unthinkable, but deploying nuclear warheads to\nCrimea and moving them on board of combat ships are steps that could be\nexecuted already in the next week. Western politicians and Russia\u2019s neighbours\nto the South and East need to take measure of the risks that until the outbreak\nof the first major war in Europe in 75 years appeared too high to contemplate.\nThe most immediate task is clear: to help Ukraine to defend its sovereignty and\nterritorial integrity. The Ukrainian stand for the right cause, and every day\nthat the defiant yellow-blue flag keeps flying over Kyiv brings their victory\ncloser. Putin\u2019s regime is unlikely to survive the humiliating defeat, and this\nsets up the next, and perhaps even more difficult task: to ensure that this\nbreakdown would not signify a catastrophe for Russia and an unmitigated\ndisaster for the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Pavel K. Baev, Dr., Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO)<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Pavel K. Baev is a Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO). He is also Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for the U.S. and Europe at the Brookings Institution (Washington D.C.), Senior Associate Researcher at the Institut Fran\u00e7ais des Relations Internationales(IFRI, Paris), and Senior Associate Research Fellow at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI, Milan). His research interests include the transformation of the Russian military, the energy and security dimensions of the Russian-European relations, Russia\u2019s Arctic policy, Russia-China partnership, post-Soviet conflict management in the Caucasus and the Caspian Basin, and Russia\u2019s Middle East policy, which is supported by the Norwegian Foreign Ministry. He writes a weekly column in Eurasia Daily Monitor<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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To cite this work:<\/strong> Pavel K. Baev, \u201cPutin\u2019s war is stuck, beware the rising risks\u201d, Panorama<\/em>, Online, 28 February 2022, https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/blog\/2022\/02\/28\/putin-stuck\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Copyright@UIKPanorama.<\/em> All on-line and print rights reserved. Opinions expressed in works published by the Panorama<\/em> belongs to the authors alone unless otherwise stated, and do not imply endorsement by the IRCT, Global Academy, or the Editors\/Editorial Board of Panorama. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Data on the concentration of Russian troops was solid; the diplomatic offensive executed by Moscow was deliberately disagreeable; yet, many experts (myself including) refused to accept the proposition on the coming war as \u201cinevitable\u201d. Denials streaming from the Kremlin were never convincing, but President Vladimir Putin\u2019s reputation as a shrewd pragmatist still clashed with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":8985,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[512,486,507],"tags":[656,760,621,644],"class_list":["post-11564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crisis-in-ukraine","category-opinion","category-russia","tag-english","tag-putin-en","tag-russia","tag-ukraine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}