Tomás Chlebecek Sick Man of Eurasia: A Bitter End to Superpower Self-Delusion Since 1905, moral bankruptcy has been a trademark of regimes ruling modern Russia, but Putin has recently brought it to another historic low. Default and economic bankruptcy will probably follow in due course. Since 2014, Moscow has been at war – not just with Ukraine, but with the post-Cold War liberal international order. Contrary to common perception, it has been a strategic failure ever since, and is now turning into a debacle of epic proportions. Foolish, Dangerous and Failing Despite a major initial success – the bloodless annexation of Crimea – the following war in the Donbas soon turned into an endless quagmire. Instead of a swift and decisive military action, based on support by the Russian-speaking population of Eastern Ukraine, Moscow has managed in eight years nothing more than to take control of just a third of both the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. As local thugs became the face of pro-Russian governance following hard-fought battles with outnumbered, outgunned but determined defenders, the war for hearts and minds of Ukrainians was quickly lost forever. Until then, Ukraine was mostly the country Moscow still accuses it of being: a failing state, possessed by kleptocratic oligarchs and foreign interests, destined for internal strife. Today’s Ukraine has changed beyond recognition, paradoxically thanks to rationally inexplicable Russian enmity. For no good reason, Moscow has erased 350 years of recent common history and created a sworn enemy from a friendly and dependent neighbour. Through adventurism and the willingness to assume strategic risk, Putin has embarked on pursuit of bizarre imperial designs, divorced from both reality and Russia’s actual means. The Soviet Union and Tsarist Russia were doomed, due to their structural weaknesses and economic unsustainability. Why did Putin gamble the future of his nation? For distorted memories of perceived past glory that, in fact, never was... Fatal Miscalculation Ukraine has developed – with significant material and training assistance from the United States, Britain and Canada – one of the strongest, most creative and battle-hardened armed forces in Europe. Not surprisingly, the majority of service members and volunteers have rotated through combat deployments to the Donbas. Despite their shared history and equipment, the difference between the two sides, including their leadership, could hardly be starker. No one could have expected that Ukrainian resistance was not fierce and steadfast in spite of its technological inferiority and delayed mobilisation, only taking place under fire. That makes Russia‘s abysmal intelligence and military failures in its own backyard historically unprecedented – but not inexplicable. In a thugocracy, there are no guardrails. Colossal Catastrophe As a result, everything that could conceivably have gone wrong, went wrong – and worse. Given the incomplete military reforms and extensive use of conscripts, Russia has tried to wage a hybrid multi-pronged campaign. A lightning ‘police action’, employing a large but still too small land force with insufficient air and naval support, has been complemented by joint long-range fires. They embarked on practices similar to their previous military efforts in Afghanistan (1979–1989), Chechnya (1994–1996, 1999–2009), Georgia (2008) and Syria (2015-). Russia failed spectacularly from day one, suffering incomprehensible human and equipment losses, exceeding decades of combat during these conflicts in mere weeks. Its abysmal planning, command and control, communications, logistics and sustainment capabilities have contributed to a truly remarkable inability to adapt in real time. Poor leadership across the board, and lack of a professional NCO corps have revealed grossly inadequate combined arms capabilities, a severe lack of tactical prowess, and shocking morale issues. Endless instances of evident massacres, war crimes, executions, rapes, forced deportations, ethnic cleansing and looting, as well as wholesale destruction of civilian infrastructure and cultural heritage, have tainted Russia forever. They are consistent not just with the recent past, but with its historical track record, demolishing Stalinist myths. On land, Russian attempts at Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy already failed in April, as well as the thrust to Kharkiv in May. Parallel air and naval efforts have fared even worse, unable to suppress air defences and attain functional superiority, while suffering embarrassing fiascos. Quite surprisingly, even precision-guided munition fires recorded dubious effectiveness, despite the first-ever combat use of hypersonic missiles, significantly depleting the Russian inventory. Its vaunted cyber and information capabilities have been under-performing as well. At a time and place of its choosing, Russia has been waging a pre-Gulf War, Soviet-style series of operations, not an integrated multi-domain or even joint campaign, turning into a war of attrition. Instead of projecting strength and power, Russia is being publicly humiliated, revealing the true state of its military and leadership, full of overwhelming incompetence and corruption. Devastating damage to its coveted superpower status and soft power is permanent. Regardless of the actual tempo of its energy export phase-out by the West, it will be pushed several decades back in time, and become a satellite of China. The accession of Sweden and Finland to a reinvigorated NATO will change the geostrategic situation, not just in the Baltic, but also inside the EU. Putin has already lost the war strategically and, as a result, Moscow will be diminished militarily, politically and economically. For that, he will go down in history. A national security, defence and naval analyst based in the Czech Republic, Tomás Chlebecek is a regular contributor to Mönch Group publications. 62 · MT 3/2022 Strategic Focus
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