kravietz 🦇There’s much talking about #Russia possibly escalating into either #Ukraine, returning to Kyiv direction, or into #NATO, as absurd it sounds.
However, we thought the same in 2021-2022. The problem with Putin is in the the cage of axioms he has built for himself, by literal decades of multi-layered cognitive biases reinforced by positive feedback loops he created by kicking experts he did not like, and replacing them with yes-men.
In his own framework, Putin simply has no other choice:
- the phrase “Putin is Russia, Russia is Putin” is the first axiom; objectively, war is of course a huge threat to the Russian state, but at the same time the crowning achievement of Putin’s personal career
- “Putin’s power is sacred” is the second axiom, according to which Putin cannot lose… because he simply cannot
- a ceasefire in any form without the lifting of sanctions would mean Russia’s slow economic death – regardless of how Putin “sells” it in the media, everyone in Russia understands this
- a ceasefire involving a withdrawal from parts of the territory, which could result in a weakening of sanctions, would personally spell the end of Putin’s image
- Putin cannot withdraw from territories he himself declared annexed in 2022, with tales of ‘referendums’ and ‘constitutional enshrinement’, because it was his personal decision
- A major Russian offensive leading to some territorial success (e.g. the complete capture of the Donbas) – but it has been going on for a year and has only served to weaken the potential of Russian offensive forces; currently, the official promises are “the Donbas by the end of the year”, which is hardly realistic
- the Russian general staff have come to terms with the fact that Putin lives in a different world and his political goals are plucked out of thin air, but they suffer no harm as they earn millions, so they maintain the fiction
- the dominant narrative among the ‘siloviki’ is ‘we may have made mistakes, but we must see it through to the end’, because in the system of ‘sacred power’ built by Putin there is no room for anything else; the fact that ‘to the end’ might mean the end of Russia and/or Putin is simply not mentioned
- It is mainly the military personnel close to the front line who speak of the need to withdraw from the war before a catastrophe occurs, but no one listens to them because they are there to carry out orders, not to question them
Leaving aside the physical world, if we accept for a moment the framework Putin has imposed on himself, escalation is the only way out of this situation available to him – and perhaps the only one he knows.
The only question is whether this will be an escalation towards Ukraine or towards NATO (hybrid). The former will end like Volchansk; the latter involves more unknowns due to the as yet unknown reaction of NATO and the EU, and is therefore potentially more attractive to Putin.
I do not see this as an actual threat for EU or NATO, because with the right response, that Europe is 100% able to execute, this will bring the much desired “to the end” to Putin very fast.
What I see as a much bigger threat is large countries fearing “destabilisation of Russia” more than EU losing part of its territory to another Russia-controlled blackhole, however small.
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