[Putin’s overreach in Ukraine]


Citation from a volume by Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history at N.Y.U. and the author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present,” a book which also covers Putin and Trump. From the volume:

 

When Mr. Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022, he “already had it all, down to the gold toilet seats in his absurd palace in Crimea,” as Margaret MacMillan put it. He had eliminated rivals, had jailed dissenters and was a main energy supplier to much of Europe. He paid no significant price for his imperialist aggressions in Georgia in 2008 or Crimea in 2014, with the Crimean annexation giving him a nationalist high and boosting his popularity.

But Mr. Putin had become insecure. He was fearful of internal dissent, as evidenced by his escalating repression of Alexei Navalny, and fearful of Ukraine’s democracy over the border. While older Russians supported him, a Levada poll in February 2021 indicated that nearly half of respondents ages 18 to 24 said the country was heading in the wrong direction.

The invasion of Ukraine was supposed to secure Mr. Putin’s place in history as the leader who revived a version of the Soviet empire. Instead, the war has exposed the depth of Russian institutional incompetence, tarnished the president’s reputation and left Russia more reliant on other autocracies. Facing large-scale deaths of its soldiers, the country has had to recruit fighters from North Korea, Cuba, Syria and African nations to supplement its forces in Ukraine. With the war consuming almost a quarter of Russia’s liquid assets in 2024, Moscow’s economic dependence on China will probably deepen. 

This blow to Mr. Putin’s image and Russia’s global stature has brought some domestic destabilization, from the Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny in June 2023 to increased disaffection and public criticism from elites. Dozens of prominent Russians have perished in suspicious circumstances since the war started, and Russia’s youths are deeply skeptical of the conflict and the government’s messaging around it.

“Putin did overreach going into Ukraine,” a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, said last year. “This is a disaster for their economy. He’s just slaughtered some of the young people,” he added. “His autocracy at home and imperialism abroad has set them back decades.”

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