A few days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I did a post called The Vaunted Russian Military and the Invasion of Ukraine where I gave some examples of Russian armies vastly underperforming, beginning with the Soviet’s disastrous invasion of Finland in 1939, in the so-called Winter War. A week later I did a post called Hitler and Putin (and Xi) where I said Putin’s Russian forces would likely be defeated in Ukraine and that, hopefully, this would free Russia from Putin’s hold on power. In this post I’ll outline what I think will be the actual catalyst that will lead to Putin’s overthrow. Putin’s biggest fear is, or should be, the Russian military forces when they return from Ukraine.
Dictators like Putin do not hold power based on the will of the people, but through the support of the military. By military, I mean both internal and external security forces. Internal security forces like the police, sheriffs, and FBI in the United States. External security forces like the Army, Navy, Marine Corp, National Guard, and Border Patrol. This is why in dictatorships like North Korea, China, and Russia today, the internal security forces are almost as large, if not larger, than the external security forces. This is also why Dictators always disarm their people first and create monopolies for themselves on the use of force within their countries.
Dictators like Putin do not like but really do not fear internal protests like mass gatherings and marches. Dictators don’t fear their subjects’ democratic aspirations. Dictators know how to suppress such movements and do so regularly. One of the most striking examples was the Chinese Communist Party’s brutal slaughter while putting down the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. Although not so dramatic, Putin has had his own experiences in successfully crushing internal protests and dissent, including opposition political parties, in the last 20 plus years.
Dictators like Putin also don’t fear external condemnation. Through a monopoly on the dissemination of information, Dictators perversely use external threats to their grip on power into a tool to galvanize internal support, especially among those in the military. If a Dictator can characterize criticism or condemnation of their own rule into a perceived attack upon the country as a whole, the Dictator can use these external criticisms as an enhancement of their own legitimacy. This is why the Chinese Communist Party always characterizes criticism of their rule as an insult to the Chinese people. For this reason, sanctions are not likely to be a deciding factor in toppling Putin. The Russian people are used to hardship and will endure bravely and stoically for a cause they believe in, even the unprecedented sanctions placed on their country for the invasion of Ukraine. They must believe though in the cause.
Putin has and will have a hard time proving to the Russian people that the sanctions are unjust. One of the greatest miscalculations Putin made in this whole debacle is that ethnic Russians living in Ukraine would welcome the opportunity to live under his thumb. This simply has not played out as ethnic Russians in Ukraine have largely sided with Ukraine, not Putin. Evidence of this is the great difficulty Russia has faced even in cities with large Russian populations close to the Russian border, cities like Kharkiv and Mariupol. If even Russians in Ukraine do not believe Putin came to liberate them, in Putin’s cause, how will Putin continue to justify the invasion to everyday Russians? The three Russian cosmonauts entering the International Space Station wearing the colors of the Ukrainian flag is not a mere coincidence and one more piece of evidence that Russians do not believe in Putin’s cause.
The most critical threat Putin is facing now is neither the threat of a popular civilian uprising at home nor the threat of external condemnation through sanctions. What Putin faces now is the knowledge by the Russian forces in Ukraine that those Russian forces, many of them conscripts, were sent into combat under false pretenses, ill-trained, ill equipped, ill led, and to kill and be killed by a people they have no reason to be fighting. Those Russians fighting in Ukraine know for a certainty Putin’s cause is not just, or in Russia’s best interests.
One of the most telling examples of the thoughtlessness of the whole invasion in my mind is the anecdotal evidence that at least some Russian troops were sent into combat with MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat) that had expired in 2015 while Putin’s friends, the oligarchs, race to save their luxury yachts worth tens of millions of dollars. The security videos taken in Ukrainian grocery stores being looted by Russian soldiers looking for food is telling as well. It cannot be lost on the Russian people that the kleptocratic oligarchs who have enriched themselves through the Putin’s dictatorship have little to no regard for the sons of Russia sent to die to ensure Putin and the oligarchs’ continued accumulation of spoils.
The Russian people, including Russian soldiers, with likely few exceptions did not and do not want to be fighting the Ukrainian people, and certainly not targeting Ukrainian civilians and killing Ukrainian women and children. This is why Putin must continue to lie to his own people not only about the purposes of the war but also its progress and consequences to Ukrainian civilians.
When those Russian forces in Ukraine return home, and at some point they must return home, no amount of internal security will be able to hide the true nature of Putin’s war. No well-crafted words from Putin, or Minister of Foreign Affairs Lavrov, or state television, will be able to cast doubt upon the fact this war was ill conceived and unjust, and an utter disaster for the Russian people as well as for the Ukrainians. The Russian people will have no doubt that the only ones this war was meant to benefit is Putin himself. The Russian people, including returned soldiers, will blame Putin and the oligarchs who profited from his dictatorship. This is when Putin will be at his most vulnerable. This is what Putin should fear most.