A self-defeating idiocy

benfell

See updates through May 18, 2022, at end of post.

Note: A portion of this post was initially published as an update to two previous blog posts.[1] Those updates have been replaced with a note pointing to this post. This text has been revised and extended.


We are nearing a point where the concerns I have expressed in two posts, in which I have expressed concern that Vladimir Putin may escalate the war well beyond Ukraine and that he may need to go nuclear to do so,[2] may well come together. I am quoting at length from an interview with Sergey Karaganov, “associated with a number of key ideas in Russian foreign policy, from the so-called Karaganov doctrine on the rights of ethnic Russians living abroad to the principle of ‘constructive destruction’, also known as the ‘Putin doctrine,’” in the New Statesman:[3]

I don’t know what the outcome of this war will be, but I think it will involve the partition of Ukraine, one way or another. Hopefully there would still be something called Ukraine left at the end. But Russia cannot afford to “lose”, so we need a kind of a victory. And if there is a sense that we are losing the war, then I think there is a definite possibility of escalation. This war is a kind of proxy war between the West and the rest – Russia being, as it has been in history, the pinnacle of “the rest” – for a future world order. The stakes of the Russian elite are very high – for them it is an existential war. . . .

I would say yes, this is an existential war. If we do not win, somehow, then I think we will have all kinds of unforeseen political repercussions which are much worse than at the beginning of the 1990s. But I believe that we will avoid that, first, because Russia will win, whatever that victory means, and second, because we have a strong and tough regime, so in any event, or if the worst happens, it will not be the dissolution of the country or collapse. I think it will be closer to a harsh authoritarian regime than to the dissolution of the country. But still, defeat is unthinkable. . . .

We need victory. I don’t think that, even if we conquered all of Ukraine and all the military forces of Ukraine surrendered, it would be a victory, because then we will be left with the burden of a devastated country, one devastated by 30 years of inept elite rule, and then of course devastation from our military operation. So I think at one point we need a kind of a solution which would be called peace, and which would include de facto the creation of some kind of a viable, pro-Russian government on the territory of Ukraine, and real security for the Donbas republics. . . .

Well, escalation in this context means that in the face of an existential threat – and that means a non-victory, by the way, or an alleged defeat – Russia could escalate, and there are dozens of places in the world where it would have a direct confrontation with the United States.[4]

There are a couple of points here.

First, and as I’ve previously pointed out, given that the Russian Army is hopelessly bogged down in Ukraine, and that the prospect of Russian victory, at least in terms of initially stated war aims, seems near nil,[5] the country cannot take on the West by conventional means. That means unconventional means. That very likely means nuclear means.[6]

But, second, the New Statesman interview is important also for this: Karaganov persists in assumptions undermined in the event. And he clings to hopes that perhaps North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries will not defend each other, that the U.S. will not respond to the use of nuclear weapons with nuclear weapons, that the Ukrainian defense is not so determined.[7]

Although the Russians eventually managed to control Hostomel airfield [near Kyiv], the Ukrainians’ fierce resistance in the capital region forced a rethinking of an invasion plan that was based on an expectation the Ukrainians would quickly fold, the West would dither, and Russian forces would have an easy fight.[8]

Time, of course, will tell, and Karaganov may yet be proven correct on some or all of this, but for now it very much appears that his view reflects the same dogmatic thinking to the Ukraine invasion that was “ill-prepared for Ukrainian resistance, proved incapable of adjusting to setbacks, failed to effectively combine air and land operations, misjudged Ukraine’s ability to defend its skies, and bungled basic military functions like planning and executing the movement of supplies,”[9] in short, underestimated its enemy and proved unwilling to adjust to reality.

Julia Ioffe criticized those who hope for Vladimir Putin’s removal or assassination by pointing out that at least as many collaborators were needed for Josef Stalin’s terror as there were victims and suggested that the same is true of Putin’s invasion, in essence that an entire Russian bureaucracy supports Putin’s aims.[10]

These were people who took active, violent part in [Josef Stalin’s] reign of terror against their countrymen, neighbors, and even relatives. They pulled the triggers and locked the gates. They administered beatings and burned bodies. They did not do it just because they were following orders, though many, doubtless, did. Many did it because they believed they were liberating the country from a fifth column. Many more did it because they personally benefited from the regime. The higher-ups got the apartments of the disappeared as well as their belongings; people lower down the rungs got more pay and more food at a time when millions went hungry. And many others believed in the system precisely because they benefited from it. Even when the system turned on them, they believed that there had been some terrible mistake. The railways to the Gulag were littered with notes to Comrade Stalin asking him to clear up this tragic misunderstanding.[11]

Ioffe’s analogy is not limited to ideology. What we see is that it extends to a rigidity of thinking that cannot adapt to conditions on the ground, a rigidity that is at least as responsible for the Russian failure to take Kyiv as the ferocity of the Ukrainian defense, the very same rigidity that seems to prevail in Karaganov’s thinking, and, I’m pretty sure at this point, a rigidity that prevails in Kremlin thinking.

In writing this, I have chosen the word rigidity, but I might as easily have chosen the words stubbornness or obstinacy. We might also characterize this thinking as self-righteousness. Karaganov insists, and we can assume he accurately reflects the upper echelons of the Kremlin in this, on Russian victory.[12] This would be, and certainly will not be, a victory based on an ideology, which I have previously addressed,[13] rather than reality. It may be a victory of grinding Ukraine to dust. It might even be a victory of nuclear weapons. But I strongly doubt it will even be victory. Because whether I call it rigidity or stubbornness or obstinacy or self-righteousness, it is idiocy, an idiocy which has already defeated itself and can only be expected to continue to do the same.

Update, April 11, 2022: I obviously disagree with Serhiy Leshchenko, whom Julia Ioffe interviews, about the possibility that Vladimir Putin will launch a nuclear war. Even if he is right that one man cannot do this alone,[14] Putin has plenty of sycophants at the Kremlin.[15] Surely, he can count on some of them being in the right place to help push that metaphorical red button.[16]

Leshchenko argues in favor of further U.S. support. Diminishing the risk of a nuclear World War III is part of that argument.[17]

But I would argue differently. I would argue that U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization dithering does not diminish the risk of World War III. You can argue that Putin needs a victory and that failure to achieve it in Ukraine will result in escalation.[18] You can argue that Putin’s ambitions extend far beyond Ukraine and onto NATO territory and that a Russian victory in Ukraine would merely whet Putin’s appetite for more. Neither argument diminishes the risk. And I still do not see a way that that risk is diminished short of Putin’s removal from power, which still seems wildly improbable.[19]

When war is inevitable, we might as well get on with it. And I think it’s inevitable.

Update, April 17, 2020: The fallacy should be immediately apparent:

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer, the first European leader to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in person since the invasion began, said he thinks the Russian president believes the war is necessary for his country’s security.

“I think he is now in his own war logic,” Nehammer said in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press”, portions of which were released Saturday.

“I think he believes he is winning the war.”[20]

Let us stipulate that Vladimir Putin is indeed “winning the war.” Let us stipulate that he succeeds, against all odds and a determined resistance,[21] in pacifying Ukraine. If you conquer a country for your own security, then you have to defend that country in order to preserve that security; its security becomes your security. If you view countries surrounding that country as a threat, hello North Atlantic Treaty Organization members, then you must conquer them as well. And so it goes, in an ever widening circle, all to preserve the security that Putin perceives essential.

As I have previously said, repeatedly,

Fundamentally, imperialist logic exists on a slippery slope. There is always a necessity, indeed, an existential necessity, to expand; such is, in fact, intrinsic to our system of social organization and a fundamental reason it is unsustainable, for at some point, even after all the wars of expansion that can be fought have been fought, there is nothing on earth left to expand into.[22]

So if indeed Ukraine is existential for Russia and the dissolution of the Soviet Union is catastrophic,[23] then by what logic does Putin satisfy himself merely with Ukraine? Why not the entire former Soviet Union, including NATO members Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania[24] and non-members Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Moldava, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Armenia, and Turkmenistan?[25] Why not all of the countries formerly behind the Iron Curtain, including Poland, East Germany (now united with the west), Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia and the Czech Republic), Hungary, Yugoslavia (now several countries), Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania?[26] Where does Putin stop? By what logic?[27]

We still have zero reason to accept that the war ends with Ukraine.[28] And if, more probably, Putin cannot fully subjugate Ukraine, then, particularly as more countries join NATO, worsening his security situation as he perceives it,[29] he still must have “something,” whatever that “something” may be in the context of his imperial ambition,[30] in the context of not only his but Kremlin ego.[31]

And because it is so manifestly apparent that Putin’s conventional forces are not up to the job,[32] that whatever he may tell Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer about “winning the war,”[33] he must know that the only way forward will be nuclear.[34]

Update, April 20, 2022: A coup[35] or popular uprising[36] remain wildly improbable.[37] The sense I have is that those expressing doubts, privately, for fear of repercussions,[38] are not among the hard-liners Vladimir Putin has surrounded himself with.[39] They are not in a position to seize power.

Almost eight weeks after Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine, with military losses mounting and Russia facing unprecedented international isolation, a small but growing number of senior Kremlin insiders are quietly questioning his decision to go to war. . . .

So far, these people see no chance the Russian president will change course and no prospect of any challenge to him at home. More and more reliant on a narrowing circle of hardline advisers, Putin has dismissed attempts by other officials to warn him of the crippling economic and political cost, they said.

Some said they increasingly share the fear voiced by U.S. intelligence officials that Putin could turn to a limited use of nuclear weapons if faced with failure in a campaign he views as his historic mission. . . .

The president remains confident that the public is behind him, with Russians ready to endure years of sacrifice for his vision of national greatness, they said. With the help of tough capital controls, the ruble has recovered most of its initial losses and while inflation has spiked, economic disruption remains relatively limited so far.[40]

The Bloomberg article[41] seems to me a little inconsistent. If we speak of a “historic mission,” can this be limited to Ukraine, let alone the Donbas region? Yet, we speak of the Donbas now as if it alone is Putin’s goal. Count me very much among skeptics who doubt this is the case.[42]

Update, April 21, 2022: Vladimir Putin’s missile test[43] is a blatant effort to further[44] rattle the nuclear sabre.[45]

In fact, the [the nuclear-capable Sarmat] missile, if deployed, would add only marginally to Russia’s capabilities. But the launch was about timing and symbolism: It came amid the recent public warnings, including by Mr. Burns, that there was a small but growing chance that Mr. Putin might turn to chemical weapons attacks, or even a demonstration nuclear detonation.[46]

So, on the one hand, we have Putin threatening the use of nuclear weapons if Russia feels its existence is threatened,[47] which is also his rationale for invading Ukraine in the first place.[48] And we have that while he has invaded Ukraine, he has not yet used nuclear weapons.

We also have a history in which Ronald Reagan intentionally appeared to be crazy to gain negotiating leverage with the Soviet Union,[49] a history Putin is surely aware of. But even if, as seems reasonable to believe, Putin is applying that precedent here, we cannot infer, at least from this, one way or another whether Putin will, in the end, use nuclear weapons. We can only say what the Russians themselves say: They have not ruled this out.[50]

Speaking at the Georgia Institute of Technology last week, Mr. [William J.] Burns, [Central Intelligence Agency director and] a former American ambassador to Moscow, said Mr. [Vladimir] Putin was “an apostle of payback” who believes the West “took advantage of Russia’s moment of historical weakness in the 1990s.” He added that Mr. Putin’s small circle of advisers would hesitate to “question his judgment or his stubborn, almost mystical belief that his destiny is to restore Russia’s sphere of influence.”[51]

We can argue about what, precisely, that means. But if we’re going to call a belief “almost mystical,” surely it means more than this:

That means getting the West to back away from Russia’s borders. And it means stopping NATO’s expansion, which may soon spread to Finland and Sweden, where a senior American defense official was visiting this week to discuss possible accession to the Western alliance.[52]

Rather, it much more likely means this (figure 1):

Fig. 1. Historic Russian empire, from the New York Times, possibly March 6, 2014, fair use.[53]

Certainly, such a “historic mission”[54] must entail more than the Donbas,[55] and, given the underwhelming performance of Russian conventional forces to date,[56] he must turn to unconventional means, including the nuclear.[57]]

Update, April 22, 2022: If anyone really believed that Vladimir Putin would settle for the Donbas,[58] it seems Russia now wants all of southern Ukraine in order to reach Transnistria, a breakaway region of Moldava that Moscow already controls but where Moscow nonetheless alleges that repression of Russian-speakers is occurring. And yes, you’ve heard this one before: It’s the same excuse Putin used to invade Ukraine.[59] It is evident that there is absolutely no requirement that Putin’s excuses make any fucking sense whatsoever.

Moldova last hit my radar as a possible target for Putin’s imperial ambition early in March.[60]

Update, April 26, 2022: The question that is now before us is, if you think you are already at war with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,[61] and you are warning of World War III,[62] how long before you start acting accordingly?

“Everyone is reciting incantations that in no case can we allow World War III,” [Sergeĭ Lavrov] said in a Russian television interview.

Lavrov said he would not want to see risks of a nuclear confrontation “artificially inflated now, when the risks are rather significant.”

“The danger is serious,” he said. “It is real. It should not be underestimated.”[63]

Such talk is variously dismissed as ‘bravado’ or as a concession of weakness or defeat.[64]

Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said he too regarded Russia’s scaremongering as a sign of weakness.

Russia has lost its “last hope to scare the world off supporting Ukraine,” he wrote on Twitter after Mr [Sergeĭ] Lavrov’s interview, adding: “This only means Moscow senses defeat.”[65]

But we must not forget that the Kremlin has repeatedly said it views its invasion of Ukraine as responding to an existential threat.[66] If the Kremlin indeed feels it has nothing to lose, then it might well act accordingly.

So now the question really is, do the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin really believe the nonsense that they have peddled? Or is this really just imperial ambition? Or are the two somehow confounded, as Russian empire seen as existentially essential to Russia’s survival? So far as I know, no one knows the answer to these questions.

Update, May 10, 2022: I had associated Max Boot with neoconservatism, so it’s more than a little surprising to me that he wrote this:

[Vladimir] Putin is now in a strategic quandary that should be familiar to Americans after our misbegotten wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq — only many times worse. Russia has launched a “war of choice” based on bad intelligence (such as the assumption that Ukrainians would welcome the Russians as liberators). The war is going badly, but once troops are committed, emotions run high and national prestige is on the line. Both escalation and withdrawal are too painful to contemplate. The easiest thing to do is to continue doing what you’ve been doing, even if there is scant hope that the results will get any better.[67]

Afghanistan and Iraq were, or are, flatly, wars of neoconservative ambition, imperialism, if you will; neoconservatism arose as a reaction to, among other things, the antiwar movement that sought to get the U.S. out of southeast Asia.[68] Boot’s argument is that it required a change of U.S. leadership to get the country out of each of those wars (it took Richard Nixon more than one term to extract us from Vietnam, so I think I’m unlikely to be alone in doubting this example) and that the same is required, even if unlikely, in Russia.[69]

Boot doubts that Vladimir Putin will use nuclear weapons because “that would be the action of a madman who fears that the end is near. Putin’s troops are carrying out unspeakable war crimes, but he is far from Hitler-in-the-bunker territory.” And Boot sees in a relatively subdued (read, less bellicose) Victory Day celebration, where Putin did not escalate the war on Ukraine, signs of recognition of reality rather than insanity, as Boot puts it, that “while Putin is isolated [but apparently not in Hitler-in-the-bunker territory] and prone to miscalculation, he is not insane.” Boot’s claim that Putin “far from Hitler-in-the-bunker territory” must stand against evidence, evidence that Boot recognizes,[70] that the Kremlin sees or at least portrays the war in Ukraine hysterically in existential terms.[71] We can certainly hope that Boot is right at the same time we recognize that this chain of reasoning seems tenuous.

Boot’s assessment of Putin rests on Putin’s apparent recognition that a general “mobilization [with a declaration of war rather than a ‘special military operation’] would bring more problems than it would solve” and that “the war is not going his way.”[72] That’s two data points against a boatload (the Moskva, perhaps?) of delusional crap[73] that Putin continues to justify his war with,[74] even if we set aside Putin’s simultaneously ludicrous and terrifying hubris of a “historic mission.”[75] Again, we can certainly hope Boot is right, even if we think his evidence is selective.

Update, May 16, 2022 (revised May 17): More and more, the story of the Russian invasion of Ukraine has become what was, at its outset, dismissed as hopelessly delusional, about a Russian defeat and potential humiliation,[76] potentially leading Vladimir Putin to go nuclear.[77] The trouble isn’t just that a face-saving solution for Putin would, in effect, reward him, but that it will fail to convey the message that he and Russia must never do this again.[78] Humiliation will be the one and only thing that Putin understands.[79]

And this isn’t just about Putin, as serious as his case is. It is also about those toxically masculine right-wingers who celebrate Putin’s example, who elect the likes of Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán to high offices, who embrace the notion that “might makes right.” Bullying must be defeated by abjectly and undeniably humiliating force; it is the only thing that works.

An example of this can be seen with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s objections[80] to Finland and Sweden seeking to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in response to the invasion,[81] in which Sweden in particular has been insufficiently cooperative in Turkey’s efforts to repress separatist Kurds and both countries have restricted arms sales to Turkey in response to those efforts. Erdoğan likes his empire and wants to keep bullying Kurds to keep it. It follows that Erdoğan has also been much friendlier to Russia than much of the rest of NATO, resisting pressure, for example, and like his Hungarian counterpart Viktor Mihály Orbán, to join sanctions against Russia.[82] Bullies like bullies, which is also why India won’t even condemn the Russian invasion,[83] and they are intractable. There’s no way to persuade them to behave except through the one thing they respect: sheer, brute force.

Update, May 18, 2022: With her use of a “wood chipper” analogy, Julia Ioffe sets up a binary between two possibilities: The first is Ukrainian victory over dismally-performing Russian troops. The second is a slow grinding away of Ukraine, which apparently Russia can (in quantitative terms) sustain indefinitely, slowly feeding the country to “[Vladimir] Putin’s Wood Chipper.” My sense of this article[84] is that Ioffe, while brilliant and indispensable in understanding Kremlin psychology and in offering insight into the Russian people, is perhaps overreaching in military matters.

It remains the case that the Russian military has performed astonishingly abysmally, failing even at basic tasks of warcraft.[85] And it remains the case that Putin has declined any “off-ramp” and is now boxed in, unwilling to admit defeat, unable to claim victory, unwilling to declare war (as opposed to a “special military operation”), unable to make significant gains without doing so and potentially facing serious consequences if he does.[86] It’s important not to give an incompetent and delusional madman more credit than he deserves. His failure remains a failure. His calculation remains, to put it ludicrously mildly, a miscalculation. His persistence is nothing even remotely like victory. He is, in fact and as I have been saying since January, an idiot and he fucked the hell up.[87]

All that said, there are at least two fallacies in play here: First, binaries are often false dichotomies. And second, as this war has amply demonstrated, quantitative capability is not qualitative capability. I doubt as a practical and political matter that Russia can hold out as long as Ioffe’s experts imply. But it also remains the case that the West’s response has failed to dissuade Putin. There is some question, even if there is as yet no sign of the West relenting in its support for Ukraine, whether the West will in fact relent. There is also no sign that Ukraine will be able to dislodge Russia from Ukrainian territory.[88] Putin’s persistence could yet pay off. I think it is more likely, not necessarily probable, but more likely that Ukraine prevails after a long and horribly destructive war.

The difficulty here remains that where Russia’s conventional forces may be stymied, its unconventional—I continue to think nuclear—forces are untested. If the Kremlin really sees that this war, whether it chooses to call it one or not, as existential, whether really for Kremlin political survival or Russia’s survival, Putin may very well decide he has nothing to lose by pushing that big red button.[89] It might be difficult, again in quantitative terms, to see how going nuclear improves Russia’s military situation,[90] but it might, indeed, be a desperate Putin’s only hope, however slender and even at the cost of however many lives, for a face-saving way out.

  1. [1]David Benfell, “Nuclear survival,” Not Housebroken, March 30, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/03/13/nuclear-survival/; David Benfell, “Where does Vladimir Putin stop?” Not Housebroken, April 4, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/03/04/where-does-vladimir-putin-stop/↩
  2. [2]David Benfell, “Nuclear survival,” Not Housebroken, March 30, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/03/13/nuclear-survival/; April 4, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/03/04/where-does-vladimir-putin-stop/↩
  3. [3]Bruno Maçães, “‘Russia cannot afford to lose, so we need a kind of a victory’: Sergey Karaganov on what Putin wants,” New Statesman, April 2, 2022, https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/ukraine/2022/04/russia-cannot-afford-to-lose-so-we-need-a-kind-of-a-victory-sergey-karaganov-on-what-putin-wants↩
  4. [4]Sergey Karaganov, quoted in Bruno Maçães, “‘Russia cannot afford to lose, so we need a kind of a victory’: Sergey Karaganov on what Putin wants,” New Statesman, April 2, 2022, https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/ukraine/2022/04/russia-cannot-afford-to-lose-so-we-need-a-kind-of-a-victory-sergey-karaganov-on-what-putin-wants↩
  5. [5]William Booth, Robyn Dixon, and David L. Stern, “Russian generals are getting killed at an extraordinary rate,” Washington Post, March 26, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/26/ukraine-russan-generals-dead/; Larisa Brown, Charlie Parker, and Richard Spencer, “Ukraine forces ‘counter-attack’ as Russia loses estimated 7,000 troops and 230 tanks,” Times, March 18, 2022, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ukraine-crisis-world-war-three-may-have-already-started-warns-zelensky-f5fs72vq5; Larisa Brown and Richard Spencer, “Struggling Russians ‘plant mines’ and dig in for a long war,” Times, March 21, 2022, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/retroville-mall-a-symbol-of-new-kyiv-is-destroyed-by-cruise-missile-0znsr9zc9; Robert Burns, “Russia’s failure to take down Kyiv was a defeat for the ages,” Associated Press, April 6, 2022, https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-battle-for-kyiv-dc559574ce9f6683668fa221af2d5340; Helene Cooper, Julian E. Barnes, and Eric Schmitt, “As Russian Troop Deaths Climb, Morale Becomes an Issue, Officials Say,” New York Times, March 16, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/16/us/politics/russia-troop-deaths.html; Mark Galeotti, “How does Putin extract himself from this nightmare of his own making?” Times, March 5, 2022, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-does-putin-extract-himself-from-this-nightmare-of-his-own-making-v2ktvw08g; Michael R. Gordon and Alex Leary, “Russia, Failing to Achieve Early Victory in Ukraine, Is Seen Shifting to ‘Plan B,’” Wall Street Journal, March 20, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-failing-to-achieve-early-victory-in-ukraine-is-seen-shifting-to-plan-b-11647824374; Jon Henley, Pjotr Sauer, and Shaun Walker, “‘Ukrainians are not naive’: Zelenskiy voices doubt on Russian military withdrawals,” Guardian, March 29, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/29/ukraine-russia-peace-talks-istanbul-war-kyiv; Richard Kemp, “The Russian army has run out of time,” Telegraph, March 22, 2022, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2022/03/22/russian-army-has-run-time/; Dan Lamothe, Alex Horton, and Karoun Demirjian, “Ukraine’s military adapts tactics after enduring Russia’s initial invasion,” Washington Post, March 5, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/03/05/ukraine-military-strategy/; Eric Levitz, “Putin’s War Looks Increasingly Insane,” New York, March 4, 2022, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/03/putins-war-looks-increasingly-insane.html; Matthew Luxmoore, “Russia Refocuses on Ukraine’s East After Month of Heavy Losses,” Wall Street Journal, March 25, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-refocuses-on-ukraines-east-after-month-of-heavy-losses-11648243627; James Mackenzie, Natalia Zinets, and Oleksandr Kozhukhar, “Russia getting bogged down in Ukraine, Western nations say,” Reuters, March 17, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/shells-hit-theatre-sheltering-ukraine-civilians-biden-calls-putin-war-criminal-2022-03-17/; Justin McCurry, Samantha Lock, and Luke Harding, “Russia targeting cities as strength of Ukraine’s resistance ‘continues to surprise’, UK says,” Guardian, March 6, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/06/biden-and-zelenskiy-discuss-more-aid-for-ukraine-as-russian-attacks-intensify; Ashley Parker et al., “‘No off-ramps’: U.S. and European officials don’t see a clear endgame in Ukraine,” Washington Post, March 11, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/10/ukraine-end-game/; Nebi Qena and Yuras Karmanau, “Russia shifts focus to try to grind Ukraine’s army in east,” Associated Press, March 28, 2022, https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-putin-kyiv-business-europe-7386a5893a3b43bad7e438cfe45468c2; David Remnick, “The Weakness of the Despot,” New Yorker, March 11, 2022, https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/stephen-kotkin-putin-russia-ukraine-stalin; Dan Sabbagh, “Is an outright Russian military victory in Ukraine possible?” Guardian, March 17, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/17/is-an-outright-russian-military-victory-in-ukraine-possible; Liz Sly and Max Bearak, “Russia pulls back from battered Kyiv region in major shift of war to east,” Washington Post, April 2, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/04/02/russia-ukraine-east/; Liz Sly and Dan Lamothe, “Russia’s war for Ukraine could be headed toward stalemate,” Washington Post, March 20, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/20/russia-ukraine-military-offensive/↩
  6. [6]David Benfell, “Nuclear survival,” Not Housebroken, April 6, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/03/13/nuclear-survival/↩
  7. [7]Bruno Maçães, “‘Russia cannot afford to lose, so we need a kind of a victory’: Sergey Karaganov on what Putin wants,” New Statesman, April 2, 2022, https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/ukraine/2022/04/russia-cannot-afford-to-lose-so-we-need-a-kind-of-a-victory-sergey-karaganov-on-what-putin-wants↩
  8. [8]Robert Burns, “Russia’s failure to take down Kyiv was a defeat for the ages,” Associated Press, April 6, 2022, https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-battle-for-kyiv-dc559574ce9f6683668fa221af2d5340↩
  9. [9]Robert Burns, “Russia’s failure to take down Kyiv was a defeat for the ages,” Associated Press, April 6, 2022, https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-battle-for-kyiv-dc559574ce9f6683668fa221af2d5340↩
  10. [10]Julia Ioffe, “The Death of Putin,” Puck News, March 8, 2022, https://puck.news/the-death-of-putin/↩
  11. [11]Julia Ioffe, “The Death of Putin,” Puck News, March 8, 2022, https://puck.news/the-death-of-putin/↩
  12. [12]Bruno Maçães, “‘Russia cannot afford to lose, so we need a kind of a victory’: Sergey Karaganov on what Putin wants,” New Statesman, April 2, 2022, https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/ukraine/2022/04/russia-cannot-afford-to-lose-so-we-need-a-kind-of-a-victory-sergey-karaganov-on-what-putin-wants↩
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3 thoughts on “A self-defeating idiocy”

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