Putin’s war on Ukraine is based on a catastrophic mistake

In an interview with DW, British historian and professor emeritus at University College London Mark Galeotti explains why the West didn’t believe Russia would invade Ukraine and how he views war in 2023.

Deutsche Welle: There have been four wars since Vladimir Putin became Russian president: Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, Ukraine So why do you think the West was surprised by the Russian invasion?

Mark Galeotti: I think it’s because of the size. There are only three years of Putin’s rule from late 1999 to the present in which Russia has not been involved in one war or another. Yet there have always been limited ones.

Putin essentially always picked targets he thought he could easily defeat. And the main misconception was that he failed to appreciate the extent to which Putin convinced himself that Ukraine would be an easy victory, and not actually, as it turned out, a catastrophic miscalculation.

You say that you, like many others, were surprised by the decision to invade. Do you think it has something to do with Putin’s isolation during the pandemic? Is his information bubble getting too dangerous or too small?

To explain this, let me return to my earlier assumption, which is that until we watched the televised meeting of the Security Council the week of the invasion, the probability was only 30-40%. Just because it didn’t make sense.

Up until that point, in many ways, Putin was winning. He had assembled this huge force on the borders of Ukraine and the presence of this force, without crossing the borders, was causing great damage to the Ukrainian economy. And it also led to a wave of Western leaders traveling to Moscow, putting Putin in the position he likes to be in, while begging him not to start a war.

There was also pressure on Kiev to make concessions. She was winning all the way. Now we know much more about the extent of the misunderstanding, about the extent to which Putin convinced himself that Ukraine is not a real country, that Ukrainians will not significantly resist, that their so-called “junkie” – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky – he will either run away or be caught.

All these fundamental calculations or miscalculations were really at the heart of this war. And it also generates a clear picture of the extent to which Putin has created a system where it is disadvantageous for people to tell him the truth. It becomes clear to what extent his scouts all around him were telling him not what he needed to hear, but what he wanted to hear.

Speaking of intelligence, you’re an expert in the Russian secret services. Why do you think they misinformed him? Are they not as good as they make them look?

I think there are still, sadly, good opportunities for intelligence gathering. There are certainly smart analysts out there. But when I think back to 2015, I remember a conversation with a former foreign intelligence officer who said that seven years ago. Even then he said, look, we have learned that no unwanted news is brought to the king’s table. In other words, it is politically dangerous to tell Putin things he doesn’t want to hear.

This culture of isolating the president from uncomfortable truths has emerged. And most of the time it doesn’t matter because he’s not someone who really controls every single detail of running the country. There is a huge body of technocrats and officials, some of them very effective, who run the affairs of the country. What matters is where there’s a key decision that’s going to make, initiate, push, and could drag the whole country into this kind of disaster.

Would you say that Russia has failed to achieve its military goals?

Absolutely. Frankly, the only question left is what the defeat will be like. Putin still hopes that he can outlive Ukraine and the West by signaling that this is a war that will last a long time, that he can, if necessary, continue to throw Russian manpower into the conflict.

Challenge the West, saying: do you keep sending billions of dollars, euros and pounds to Ukraine to keep going when, frankly, you know, we can do it as long as we want?

This is really his last hope to try and get something that he can present as a victory politically. But the point is that they failed to capture Kyiv; they really failed to extend their control over the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. They have the Crimean Corridor, but it’s already under threat. And they had to retreat from Kherson.

This is not a story of momentum from the Russian side. Exactly the opposite. And as we look ahead, Ukraine increasingly has a modern 21st century military, thanks to all the help from the West, while the Russian military has degraded in many ways, it is reverting to a late Soviet army fighting semi-trained soldiers with weapons manufactured in the 70s of the last century. This does not mean underestimating the ability. Russia is a big country; it has a huge defense industrial complex; she can continue this war, but frankly she won’t be able to launch big offensives that really push the Ukrainians back for a long time.

We see how Russia is trying to push prisoners to fight for Russia in Ukraine. We see people like Yevgeny Prigozhin with his gang of Wagner mercenaries fighting in Ukraine. What does this tell us about the state of the Russian military?

Well, we should note that Joseph Stalin recruited many prisoners from the Gulag system, so again, this isn’t entirely unprecedented. But he says two things. The first is that you are right about the desperation for “manpower”. There is another potential source of additional soldiers, and that is conscripts into the military. But Putin is aware that this would be politically disastrous and lead to mass desertions.

So there is a political challenge to find new soldiers who can be launched on the front lines. And it is a sign of desperation that they turn to the prison system. But more broadly, I think what we are seeing is a long-standing informal alliance of, say, the Kremlin and organized crime taking a new form, because we are also seeing, for example, organized crime being used as a tool beyond the borders of Russia.

What are your predictions for 2023? Could this war end next year? And if so, how?

It could be over. And it will really depend on whether the Ukrainians can make significant headway on the battlefield. At the moment, there is no real basis for negotiations as Ukrainians are feeling nervous. They would like to negotiate from a position of strength if they wish.

Putin is desperate to get this through and hopes that in the spring there will be perhaps 150,000 additional reservists being trained in Russia and Belarus, and that by adding these he can bolster his line in Ukraine.

But the point is again, this is a war that has greatly defied expectations in the past. I assume that the Ukrainians, who not only surpass their Russian counterparts in terms of fighting, but also in terms of thinking, will plan new major offensives. And I think that only if they can prove they will win on the battlefield will they have any chance of seeing the Kremlin hear it has to speak in some meaningful way.