Why Ukraine should be encouraged by Putin’s bluster over its counteroffensive

The president and his military chiefs have sought to claim extreme Ukrainian troop losses, writes James Nixey – a sure sign that things were not going well for the Kremlin

A Ukrainian soldier in the Zaporizhzhia region (Reuters)

For years there has been a joke-cum-truism, well-articulated by the Twitter parodist ‘Darth Putin’, that you should “never believe anything unless the Kremlin officially denies it”. It’s a tried and tested rule of thumb. There is even an inversely proportional relationship between the speed of the Kremlin denial and the refutation’s distance from the truth. Immediate repudiation multiplied by Kremlin’s anger level equals lie.

So when President Vladimir Putin claimed to his propagandists (sometimes erroneously called Russian war correspondents) at a meeting this week that Ukraine was suffering ten times the losses of Russia in the former’s counteroffensive, this was surely a sign that things were not going well for the Kremlin.

Indeed, the apparent cancellation or scaling-down of the regular features of what passes for political openness in Russia – from May’s Red Square parades to the June ‘Direct-line’ phone-in with Putin himself (already pure theatre) – is a much better indicator of the Kremlin’s anxiousness.

In fact, independent (non-Ukrainian) confirmation shows that Kyiv’s forces have made gains at several points along the front line in the past 10 days. The Russians have taken further significant human losses, although this is of little concern to the Kremlin. In fact, both historically and today, the provision of ‘cannon fodder’ is a key Russian tactic.

This is not to say the Ukrainians are having it all their own way. They have of course taken serious losses too and Kyiv, in particular, still suffers regular missile and drone strikes. The Russians are without doubt well dug in, and defence has been shown to be a successful play in this war.

Both sides in this war are desperate. Ukraine because they know exactly what will happen to them if they lose this war. Russia is desperate for precisely the opposite reason: they do not know what will happen to them if they lose. Both are powerful motivations, though Ukraine has the edge.

Defeatism posing as pragmatism is commonplace in the West. Self-evidently there is a possible difference between what should happen and what will happen. We simply do not know what will happen. We do know what should happen. Or at least we ought. But the logic of that is that it is all to play for.

The ideal outcome for Ukraine with this counteroffensive is to collapse Russian positions along the front line, which causes a chain reaction along it and all the way north to Moscow. “Unrealistic!” cry some. Maybe. Maybe not. But the Ukrainians know they have to try. More than that, given the right assistance – principally military, but also financial and diplomatic – it is, in fact, not unrealistic at all. Uncertainty over the war’s outcome is entirely due to questions over the scale and long-term commitment of that assistance. Ukraine will win if it is sufficiently – okay, massively – supported.

In a Chatham House report to be published later this month entitled ‘How to end Russia’s war on Ukraine: Safeguarding Europe and the dangers of a false peace’, we present the dangers of scaling down ambitions, quick fixes, compromises and premature settlements. These are all clearly what the Kremlin wants. They are not what the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians want.

Putin’s or any other senior Russian government figure’s statements on the war must never be taken at face value. But from the latest Kremlin bluster, we should take encouragement.

James Nixey is director of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House