Beware, Vladimir Putin: Spring is coming. And when it does, you’ll lose most of the advantage you still have.
Before Putin invaded Ukraine, I could have described the Russian Federation as a midsize power struggling above its weight partly by exploiting Western divisions and corruption, partly by maintaining a powerful military force. Since then, however, two things have become clear. First, Putin has delusions of grandeur. Second, Russia is even weaker than most people, including myself, seemed to realise.
It has long been evident that Putin desperately wants to restore Russia’s position as a Great Power. His now infamous “there is no such thing as Ukraine” speech, in which he condemned Lenin (!) for giving his neighbor what Putin sees as a false sense of identity, made it clear that his goal goes beyond recreating the Soviet Union — he apparently wants to recreate the tsarist empire. And he apparently thought he could take a big step in that direction with a short and victorious war.
So far it hasn’t gone as planned. Ukrainian resistance has been fierce; the Russian military was less efficient than advertised. I was especially struck by reports that the early days of the invasion were marred by serious logistical problems — that is, the invaders had difficulty equipping their forces with the basics of modern warfare, particularly fuel. It is true that supply problems are common in war; but logistics is something that advanced countries should be really good at.
However, Russia looks less and less like an advanced country.
The truth is that I was being generous in describing Russia as a medium-sized power. Great Britain and France are medium-sized powers; Russia’s GDP is just over half of each. It seemed remarkable that such an economically lightweight state could support world-class, highly sophisticated militaries — and perhaps it couldn’t.
This is not to deny that the force ravaging Ukraine has enormous firepower and could even take Kiev. But I wouldn’t be surprised if postwar analysis of Ukraine turns out to show that there was far more rot at the heart of Putin’s military than anyone realised.
And Russia begins to look even weaker economically than it did before it went to war.
Putin is not the first brutal dictator to make himself an international pariah. As far as I can see, however, he is the first to do so while presiding over an economy deeply dependent on international trade — and with a political elite accustomed, more or less literally, to treating Western democracies as their backyard.
For Putin’s Russia is not a hermetic tyranny like North Korea or, in a sense, the former Soviet Union. Their standard of living is supported by large imports of manufactured goods, most of which are paid for by exports of oil and natural gas.
That leaves the Russian economy highly vulnerable to sanctions that could disrupt its trade, a reality reflected in Monday’s sharp drop in the value of the ruble, despite a sharp rise in domestic interest rates and draconian attempts to limit the flight of capitals.
Before the invasion, it was common to talk about how Putin had created “Fortress Russia”, an economy immune to economic sanctions, accumulating a huge war treasure in foreign exchange reserves. Today, however, this discourse seems naive. What, after all, are foreign exchange reserves? They are not bags of money. For the most part, they consist of deposits in international banks and property in debt of other governments — that is, assets that could be frozen if most of the world rallies in revulsion against military aggression from a rogue government.
True, Russia also has a substantial volume of gold in the country. But how useful is this gold as a means of paying for things the Putin regime needs? Can you really run a large-scale modern enterprise with ingots?
Finally, as I mentioned last week, Russian oligarchs have stored most of their assets abroad, making them subject to freezing or confiscation if democratic governments choose. You could say Russia doesn’t need these assets, which is true. But everything Putin has done in office suggests that he deems it necessary to buy the support of the oligarchs, so their vulnerability is his vulnerability.
Incidentally, a conundrum about Russia’s pre-Ukraine image of strength was how a kleptocratic regime managed to have an efficient and effective military. Maybe it hadn’t.
Even so, Putin still has an ace up his sleeve: Ineffective policies have made Europe deeply dependent on Russian natural gas, potentially inhibiting the West’s response to his aggression.
But Europe mainly burns gas for heating; gas consumption is 2.5 times higher in winter than in summer. Well, winter will be over soon — and the European Union has time to prepare for another Russian gas-free winter if it’s willing to make tough choices.
As I said, Putin might even take Kiev. But even if he does, he will have become weaker, not stronger. Russia now reveals itself to be a Potemkin superpower, with far less real strength than it appears.
Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves
