Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was a huge mistake – and Moscow needs to realise this

By all objective measures, Vladimir Putin’s war has already failed spectacularly. It’s just a matter of convincing him of that fact, writes Borzou Daragahi

Western disunity and disarray was likely another factor that weighed on Putin’s cost-benefit analysis for launching the war (EPA)

What does Vladimir Putin want in Ukraine? A month into a war that has devastated the country, triggered a massive refugee crisis across Europe and driven up global food and fuel prices, and it’s still not certain what Putin’s ultimate aims actually are, or how long and aggressively he plans to pursue them.

In the latest signalling, Moscow has said it only wants to focus on the eastern Donbas region of the country after launching attacks nationwide, but that it could still decide to seize the capital.

Some say it’s almost useless to try to parse a mind like Putin’s and figure out why he decided to launch an invasion of Ukraine.

“You have a personalised regime dependent on one person,” says Olga Irisova, editor-in-chief of Riddle, a journal focusing on Russian affairs. “It is difficult for anyone to figure out what this person thinks. It would mean we would have to look into his head and read his mind.”

Instead of focusing on why Putin made the decision to invade, it may be more useful to analyse how he did it by examining the mechanics that led up to the conflict. Putin’s lunge into Ukraine was preceded 18 months earlier by an unprecedented uprising in its neighbour Belarus, after the country’s ruler, Alexander Lukashenko, allegedly stole presidential elections.

Lukashenko, a Putin ally who has been in power for 28 years, used brute force to subdue peaceful protests, earning him sanctions and isolation from the west, and forcing him to become even more subservient to the Kremlin.

This geopolitical shift allowed Putin to place troops just a few hours drive from the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and about an hour to the industrial city of Chernihiv. Belarus is currently being used to treat wounded soldiers flooding in from the front, and there are worries Lukashenko may order troops into Ukraine.

Western powers opposed to Russian militarism would do well to zero in on Belarus’s role, and consider more aggressive ways of toppling Lukashenko than just sanctions, thereby taking the country out of Putin’s calculations once and for all.

Another little-noticed factor in Putin’s decision-making was the deployment of Turkish-made Bayraktar drones by Ukraine against pro-Russian forces in the eastern Donbas region in late 2021. The drones began tilting the balance of power in Kyiv’s favour, and Putin must have realised his sloggy Cold War-era machinery and doctrines were no match for these stealthy, asymmetrical tools. He likely knew he had to hurry or else risk losing the Donbas.

The combat drones have been a thorn in the side of Russian forces, taking out armour as well as – reportedly – several battleships at harbour. Putin must hate drones. So Ukraine’s allies must speed up shipments. But so far, only Turkey has provided Ukraine with the weaponry – at least publicly.

Western disunity and disarray was likely another factor that weighed on Putin’s cost-benefit analysis for launching the war. He likely calculated that the world was too distracted to come up with a coherent and unified response to any invasion and that Russia could bear the costs.

“It was perhaps a reading of the international situation,” says Hanna Notte, a Russia specialist at the Vienna Centre for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation. “There was the expectation that Joseph Biden would be weak and focused on China, that Germany just had elections, as well as a dissatisfaction with how things were shaping up in Kyiv.”

The calculation proved wrong, as the west mostly coalesced around Ukraine. Even Russia’s partners – China, India, Iran – abstained in the UN rather than voted against measures condemning his invasion.

But to avoid any such future misunderstandings, western countries would do well to get their own houses in order. That means cracking down on Putin bootlickers within Nato and the European Union such as Hungary’s Victor Orban or the Bulgarian political establishment by denying them financial resources so long as they kowtow to the Kremlin. It also means squelching illicit Kremlin financing of European political parties and organisations.

It means publicly humiliating Putin’s western enablers the same way Polish mayor Wojciech Bakun confronted pro-Kremlin Italian politician Matteo Salvini. “I have no respect for you,” he told him in front of the television cameras.

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Putin said he wanted to “de-Nazify” Ukraine. Presumably this means ridding the country of surging anti-Russian attitudes that have grown in the eight years since he first attacked Ukraine. Instead, Ukrainian national identity has grown to extraordinary heights, with everyone from shopkeepers to social media influencers pitching in to mass produce molotov cocktails and even Russian-speaking Ukrainians of the east and south swearing fealty to Kyiv.

Putin said he wanted to “demilitarise” Ukraine. Instead the country is being flooded with weapons, and citizen soldiers are becoming adept at firing off stinger missiles and rocket-propelled grenades. In a poll, 69 per cent of Ukrainian men and 27 per cent of women said they were ready to take up arms against the Russians. These are the building blocks of the bloody and prohibitively expensive years-long insurgency should Putin defy the odds and take over Ukraine or even large swathes of it.

Putin said he wanted to push Nato back further west. Instead, tens of thousands of additional Nato troops are being deployed to eastern flank countries in the Baltics, Poland and Romania, and western nations are all upping their defence spending in a response coordinated against Russia.

“Even if he is successful in taking Kyiv – removing the Zelensky government and replacing it with handpicked pro-Russian quislings – Moscow’s troubles could be just beginning,” wrote Milton Bearden, the ex-CIA officer who helped Afghans defeat the Soviet Union in the decade-long war that precipitated the collapse of the communist regime. ”As in Afghanistan 40-odd years ago, Putin would likely face a relentless, heavily armed insurgency, covertly backed by a western coalition similar to the one that pushed the Soviets out of Afghanistan.”

By all objective measures, Putin’s war has already failed spectacularly. It’s just a matter of convincing him of that fact.