A split is forming in Russia’s military

HALIFAX—I suppose when you think you are the second coming of Peter the Great, you can convince yourself of anything. While world leaders, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, were at the United Nations calling for an end to the bloody and senseless war in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin thumbed his nose. The Russian president called up 300,000 reservists in his country, making clear that they would join their battered and beleaguered brothers in a war where Russians have recently been mauled by a highly motivated and better equipped army. Nothing rouses the fighting spirit like foreign invaders stealing your territory, torturing, raping, and killing your civilians, and laying waste to your cities and towns; all of it unprovoked. As if that were not enough, Putin also rattled Russia’s nuclear sabre again, declaring that he would use his weapons of mass destruction if any sovereign Russian territory were threatened. It is not clear whether he is referring to territory seized by the Russians in the early going of the war, or Crimea, which was annexed in 2014. The Ukrainians are demanding its return. In making these announcements, Putin has planted both feet in a bear trap. U.S. military experts who study developments in Ukraine with a lapidarian’s eye think that conscription will lead to more reversals on the battlefield. Does Russia even have the capacity to take such a large number of men and turn them into soldiers overnight? The Americans don’t think so. They say these new conscripts will be ill-trained, poorly equipped, and demoralized—which is a pretty good description of the ragged Russian units already in Ukraine. Putin has even taken to using mercenary convicts to shore up his battered forces. Russia's war on Ukraine, 2002. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons One of the reasons for the poor morale amongst Russian troops already in Ukraine is the fact that in some fevered delusion of Napoleonic prowess, Putin is now apparently personally directing his generals in the war. No modern, professional army operates like that. Command and control in combat is a vital component that goes out the window when the leading politician of a country makes himself the boss-hog general. Putin simply doesn’t know his ass from a bomb-crater when it comes to conducting a war. The results in Ukraine are making that painfully clear. When Putin sent his invaders into Ukraine, most observers thought the Zelenskyy government would fall in a few days. There was a time when Russia controlled roughly 20 per cent of Ukraine. Now, with continuing Western support, the betting is that Ukraine can not only reclaim lost territory, it may even be able to win the war. As for the threat to use nuclear weapons, if Putin is still rational, he will understand that the person who lifts the lid on that Pandora’s Box won’t see anything good happen. Russia is not the only country with tactical nuclear weapons. The West would be under tremendous pressure to ride to the rescue if Putin actually used his most fearsome terror weapon on Ukrainians. What he has done looks more like a panicked bluff than a realistic plan to achieve a reversal of fortune in the war. But there is a real possibility that the war in Ukraine will not be decided on the battlefield of the world’s bread basket, but in the public squares of Russia. When was the last time you saw men, women, and children taking to the streets to oppose Vladimir Putin? That is exactly what they have been doing in Moscow and St. Petersburg. More than 1,800 of them have been detained, half of that number are women and children. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, pictured addressing the UN Security Council on April 5, 2022, where he accused Russia of genocide. Screen capture courtesy of NBC News Now Why are they in the street, knowing that their lives could be blown out like a candle, by a regime that doesn’t tolerate opposition? In a country where people keep falling out of windows, the sudden knock on the door could come at any time. They are in the street because they have heard the news from the front, where thousands of young Russians have been killed or wounded in this misbegotten and mismanaged war. According to the Ukrainians, who lost 9,000 military personnel in the first six months of the war, Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s forces have killed or wounded 45,000 Russian troops. The message in Russia is getting clearer: Putin’s “special military operation” is not a patriotic effort to liberate Russians or to “de-Nazify” Ukraine. It is Putin’s folly, a dreadful meat grinder that mothers in Russia have come to see as a threat to their families. That’s why 18 different regions in Russia have actually called for Putin’s resignation. Sadly, dictators don’t resign, they get even. But these everyday Russians who have taken to the streets to oppose the Ukraine war at great personal risk have some powerful allies standing just in the shadows of the Ukraine war and all that it has cost Russia. Thanks to Putin, oligarchs who were fabulously entitled before the war, have seen their assets seized. These former princes of commerce are now the pariahs of politics. And they know exactly who brought about the loss of privilege. And then there is the top rank of the Russian military, who have born the brunt of Putin’s rage at the failure to topple Zelenskyy. They know that Putin has an inner circle of hard-liners, generals who will support the leader’s delusion du jour, no matter how ridiculous. But beyond that privileged inner circle, a split is forming in Russia’s military. There is disagreement about how the war has been conducted; and even, perhaps, whether it should ever been launched in the first place. This informal alliance of civilian protesters, aggrieved autocrats, and disgruntled generals has the makings of a bigger threat to Putin than anything that is happening on the battlefields of Ukraine. I doubt he will fall out of a window or down a flight of stairs, as so many oligarchs and Putin critics have. But the world could wake up one morning to the news that Putin has simply been removed for destroying his own country. Michael Harris is an award-winning journalist and author. The Hill Times

A split is forming in Russia’s military

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A split is forming in Russia’s military

There is disagreement about how the war has been conducted; and even, perhaps, whether it should ever been launched in the first place.

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