The Only Way To Remain In Power

Putin has one last hope.

This week's news makes it clear enough to assess the current strategy of the Kremlin in the war in Ukraine. The Kremlin has finally admitted that the Russian army is incapable of defeating the AFU on the battlefield and the army is now faced with the task of simply holding their positions as long as possible on occupied territories because the Kremlin still hopes that economic problems will break Europe and it will stop supporting Ukraine.

General Boldyrev gave evidence of the recognition of the impossibility of a military victory with his that the war would not end in the next six months, and for the Russian military it is now fundamentally important to "fight to the death on the taken boundaries". This statement perfectly matches the information that the Important Stories news publisher received that “now the task is to compact and secure the frontline,” which is being done with the help of mobilized troops, filling the defence line with people without any military training. At the same time, the Russian leadership does not hide the fact that those mobilized for them are nothing more than cannon fodder, predicting losses by spring at the number of about 100,000 manpower. By the spring, the Ministry of Defence hopes to replace the losses with trained conscripts. Thus, there is no talk of any offensive in the next six months, and the only task facing the army is to hold out as long as possible in the captured territory.

The Kremlin still believes that at some point the West will decide that supporting Ukraine is too expensive, and it will still make a concession to Moscow. These expectations were reflected in the speech of Tolstoy, the Deputy Speaker of the State Duma, on French TV: “Do not forget, Russia is the largest country, and we fought twice with Europe. Russia finished the first one in Paris and the second one in Berlin. Therefore, when I said that Kyiv was our goal during the SMO, I was still modest. You, the Europeans, will pay for the support of Ukraine with your economy, souls “to spite Putin” once a week, inflation, the price of gas, electricity.”

Of course, one should not focus on the historical value of Tolstoy's statement, but it clearly demonstrates the expectations of the Russian authorities: they no longer believe in the success of the Russian army on the battlefield, and the whole calculation is based only on the fact that the “small-hearted” Europeans will get tired of economic hardships and will be ready to bow to Putin and ask him for cheap gas. However, to all appearances, Russia will not be able to hold on to the achieved boundaries in the winter, nor to see the Europeans fall to their knees before Moscow under the weight of economic problems.

It remains unclear why, with a predicted loss of 100,000 manpower, the Russian military leadership expects to keep the occupied territories. Russia did not prepare for the winter campaign, because back in the middle of summer, it expected to end the war in Ukraine in the autumn. In Russia, they are confident that in winter, due to weather conditions, there will only be positional battles, and therefore even an estimate of 100,000 may be incorrect.

Ukraine and its allies began to prepare for winter in the summer, thanks to which the Armed Forces of Ukraine are well prepared for winter battles and, as a result, they have such a strategic advantage that they did not have even in the autumn when the Kharkiv region and Kherson were liberated. The fact that Ukraine is planning an offensive in the winter is no longer a secret: as soon as the cold sets in (and this will happen in a week) and the soil freezes, the Russian army, which is without proper support, will also freeze. As a result, Russia may not be able to keep the bare steppe in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, which is completely unsuitable for defence, especially without green vegetation. The loss of these regions will be a full-fledged military disaster for the Russian army, which will completely violate the plans of the Kremlin.

The expectation that the Ministry of Defence will be able to train conscripts by the spring is also surprising. The only things they teach in the Russian army are to make beds, get dressed in 45 seconds and sweep hardstands. I doubt that these skills will help the conscripts fight the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Not to mention the fact that the motivation of the conscripts will be much lower than that of even today's mobics, many of whom voluntarily went to the draft boards.

Thus, it can be stated that the expectations of the Russian leadership are very far from reality and may be broken in the next two months.

No less naive are Russia's expectations regarding economic problems in Europe. Let me remind you that back in the spring, the Kremlin believed that it had created an economic and food crisis around the world, hoping to use this as an important lever of pressure on the West, but in the summer these expectations faded significantly: commodity prices fell to levels that preceded the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Due to military defeats, most notably the loss of Snake Island, and pressure from Turkey, Putin was forced into a grain deal.

The Kremlin stopped blackmailing the world with the threat of food problems, and in the autumn Putin's attempt to withdraw from the grain deal ended in failure. Putin no longer mentions the economic problems in the U.S., which he happily squealed about back in the spring: the U.S. economy in the 3rd quarter emerged from a technical recession, and inflation there has been steadily decelerating for the fourth month in a row and will definitely continue this trend in the future. Thus, by the end of the year, blackmail by the economic crisis of the whole world narrowed down to a small hope that it would be possible to put the squeeze on at least Europe.

However, the Kremlin is not in a position to draw conclusions from its previous “successes” and predict the situation; it is able to hope for good luck. The improvement of the economic situation in Europe – the increase in gas supply, the decrease in gas and electricity prices, as well as the slowdown in inflation, which I expect already in early 2023, will be another unpleasant surprise for the Kremlin's seatholder. That is why I cover “boring” economic topics in such detail on my channel, which, in fact, determine the outcome of this confrontation no less than the situation on the battlefield.

Thus, the Russian strategy for the next six months is doomed to failure: it is based only on the fact that only Russia is an active player, while the rest of the confrontation participants are static and do not take any action. Events continue to indicate that we'll see the climax of the war between Russia and Ukraine this winter, after which Putin will be forced to seek retreat as the only way to remain in power.

Aleksei Tikhonov, Telegram