On Sunday afternoon, the Kremlin's fully controlled news agency RIA Novosti published a video report in which Putin instructs his "consiglieri" Shoygu and Gerasimov to prepare strategic deterrent weapons (nuclear weapons) on special combat alert. In other words, he was making a veiled threat to the whole world. This is basically an implicit admission that the Ukrainian campaign has failed. If not militarily, then certainly politically.
To say that Putin has severely miscalculated is to say nothing. Only a few days have passed since Russia invaded Ukraine, but it is already quite clear that, whatever the outcome of the military campaign, the outcome of this move cannot be favorable to him - to Putin - even in the most favorable of circumstances. It can only be disastrous. The question is, how many people will he bring down with him? As they say, what Putin did is more than a crime. It is a mistake. A fatal one.
Firstly, on the situation in Ukraine on Sunday evening. On the eve of the fourth day of the war, none of the regional centers of Ukraine had yet come under the full control of the Russian army. Kherson is close to being considered captured, but even in the center of this area adjacent to Crimea, parts of the Ukrainian armed forces remain and are actively resisting, preventing the Russian army from expanding freely. The situation is complicated in Kharkiv, where fierce fighting is still taking place and the news coming in is very contradictory. Kyiv is still holding out, and one thing is clear: the blitzkrieg has failed.
It is difficult to judge the real situation on the front because this war has a peculiarity that is extremely unusual for wars. One side is not particularly keen to emphasize its successes. That is to say, Russian news do not begin with the phrases: Kharkiv or Kherson captured (or "liberated"); x number killed; x number of enemy soldiers taken prisoner. None of this is happening because the war itself in Russia is shown through Putin's prism of "reality".
That is to say, there is no war. At all. Even more so between Russia and Ukraine. What's happening is a not very significant "special operation", during which the heroic fighters of the DNR and LNR, with a little help from the Russian armed forces, are carrying out "denazification" and "demilitarization". Villages and other settlements with no meaning to anyone are reported to have been taken. Most people in Russia (and, unfortunately, in Latvia too) are not even aware of the attack on Kyiv and the scale of the general hostilities. The war is not the main story in the Russian official information space. It is one of many. And you definitely can't use the word "war", because, as we know, there has been and will be only one war - in 1945.
But then what are the sanctions about? As Dmitry Medvedev said at last Monday's meeting of the Russian Security Council, sanctions would be imposed by "them" in any case, because "their" main task is to prevent Russia from developing and increasing its influence. "They" simply do not like us because they envy how strong and powerful we are. Contrast that with them - the cowardly gayropean liberasts. This is what all the Kremlin propaganda channels have been trumpeting daily for the last eight years or so.
The only problem is that this time it was not the "gayropean liberasts" who stood against Russia, but the Ukrainian armed forces. The Kremlin's strategic plan was simple: a massive invasion from three sides. The Ukrainian army scatters to the winds, President Volodymyr Zelensky and the entire leading "junta" (as the Kremlin propagandists call it) scurry to their "masters" in Washington and Brussels, a man loyal to Putin is appointed the leader (nominally president) in Kyiv. One of the locals. One of the Ukrainians. A friend of Vladimir Medvedchuk, or even he himself.
But, incomprehensibly for Putin, nothing of the sort happened. Nobody greeted his army with flowers as liberators. There were no pretty pictures of thousands of workers demonstrating with placards "We demand the admission of Latvia Ukraine into the Soviet Union" that could be shown on Kiselyov/Solovyov TV. Somehow it all turned out that on Sunday Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov had to cancel Putin's pre-announced address to the nation and instead show the order to prepare nuclear missiles being passed.
But let us return to the political objectives of the invasion. Putin's rather unexpected and, for him, rarely emotional speech on the evening of the first day of the war exposed Putin's main mistake. He believed from the bottom of his heart that there were some kind of monstrous nationalists in power in Ukraine and that the majority of ordinary Ukrainians could not wait to be liberated from this hated power. He appealed directly to the Ukrainian army command - take power into your own hands at last, and we will easily work something out with you.
This idea must have remained in Putin's mind since the Belarus events when the Kremlin was debating whether to leave Lukashenko, who had lost the confidence of the people, in Minsk or to replace him with someone else. If Putin had said something similar then, the fate of the Minsk dictator would have been decided in an instant.
Putin obviously does not see the difference between the situation in Ukraine and that in Belarus a year and a half ago. He does not understand the meaning of democracy at all and does not even recognize its existence. Just as he does not recognize the existence of Ukraine as an independent state. In his world, someone determines the presidents everywhere. In the USA, it's the big money; in Ukraine, Latvia and other "so-called" democracies, it's the USA. This Putin narrative is popular not only in Russia. It is widespread in many countries, which is why there is a large enough number of Putin supporters all over the world who believe that he is "heroically" fighting the despised America in Ukraine.
These distortions of reality are a huge problem for Putin's Russia. Military observers see logistics as a major problem for the Russian army in Ukraine, but the distorted perception of the situation is no less of a problem. It is precisely because of this that the possible world reaction was not properly assessed. If everything had gone according to Putin's plan, with Zelensky and the "junta" having fled in the manner of Yanukovych, then the Western sanctions would have been as before, purely symbolic - just for a checkmark. But Western politicians were prevented from just, as one Latvian artist would say, "farting on the sofa" by the heroic resistance of the Ukrainians.
At first, it seemed that the West, as usual, would put its selfish, petty interest above everything and limit itself to the traditional "strong condemnation" and "deep concern", but the nice picture was spoiled by the masculine images of the Ukrainian defenders. Instead of lecturing the invaders about how wrong, backward, inhumane and uncivilized they are, the Ukrainians told them straight, bluntly - Русский корабль, иди нахуй!
If we are talking about sanctions, we must remember that they almost always have internal political motivation. Politicians and, in particular, big businesses do not want any sanctions. They only make it more difficult to "get things done". It is another thing if the people take to the streets and ask: what are your steps to stop the aggressor? In that case, politicians, with inwardly gritted teeth but outwardly smiling faces, have to take those decisions which, the repeal of or, better still, not imposal of which, would bring long queues of powerful lobbyists to their office doors.
The sacrifices of the Ukrainians are therefore not in vain. Every day that they manage to demonstrate their tough stance to the whole world forces the politicians to adopt heavier and heavier sanctions. If on the first day of the war it seemed that Sandris Metuzālis' skeptical prediction would come true: "By noon Russia should be kicked out of all international organizations, from the UN to the IIHF to the Ornithologists' Association. But I'm afraid that, unfortunately, none of this will happen...", today the situation is radically different.
In this situation, to continue singing the useful idiot song that we must be tolerant, inclusive and under no circumstances aggressive sounds more than trite. It is already obscene. But the German Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, dared to demonstrate once again on Sunday the dangers of far-left thinking. Ukraine should not be given weapons because we are against violence, while Russia should only be sanctioned in such a way that "ordinary people" do not suffer. That is, no sanctions. Fortunately, this is no longer a mainstream view, even on the Western left.
When I said in an interview with TV24 on Thursday that Russia should be absolutely isolated, completely, as if it did not exist at all, that probably sounded a bit extreme, but now this position no longer counts as extreme, because it is clear that it is the only way to deal with the crazed führer.