On February 22, 2022, the Russian military crossed the border into Ukraine. The human toll increases with no end in sight, while the world stopped watching.
It has been over one year and four months since Russia crossed the border into Ukraine
The war Russia started against Ukraine has endured for 485+ days. The day was February 24, 2022. That is, despite the official word from the Kremlin was that Russia was not going to cross into Ukraine, and some governments actually believed this narrative. There were many of us who were skeptical about that non-invading narrative and, unfortunately, we were correct. After hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost, countless families and billions of dollars in aggregated costs, this conflict continues to be a senseless tragedy.
One person could unilaterally finish this war versus millions of people involved, trying to do the same.
In case it is not obvious- and despite the fighting and destruction- Russia already lost this war that they started against Ukraine. It is not a matter of if, but when this unsustainable conflict comes to a full stop. I wrote this assertion in previous articles, and the costs associated with this war will take every day Russian citizens many generations to repair. Does the current Russian President even know this fact? He is reportedly surrounded by yes man/women. That being the case he might be as misinformed as most of the people under his government.
There is one person in this world who can stop this war TODAY, and that is President Putin. Obviously, the war has been enduring for more than 14 months so we could deduce he is not onboard with that course of action. That leaves the millions of people in Ukraine to try to change his mind in any way that they find possible because they are bombarded and attacked every day by Russian forces. Of course, Ukrainian response has been kinetic against any Russian forces inside Ukraine.
The Russian upper echelons must have realized the obvious for a long time:
If Russia “wins” – quite the opposite, they are not winning. All the damage they have done to Ukraine and Russia will take generations to fix. And this damage includes all the territories Russia annexed Crimea to the entire Dombas area in Eastern Ukraine. Not just the cost of infrastructure, but all the families, the farmland, the roads, the bridges, the houses, the energy plants, the crumbling economy, and even the trust of those “liberated” people will not be an easy task to fix and reconciliate. And as I said it will take billions, if not trillions of dollars to fix with a broken economy, both in Ukraine and Russia to cover for all those costs. And that is even if the actual outcome of the war is recognized by the international community because of all the war crimes. The fact is that the general legal consensus around the world is that this war was illegal in the first place. So, no matter how you see it, it is not a win. Any gains are incidental at best because of the sheer destruction. And I am oversimplifying this catastrophic failure.
If Russia “loses” – Spoiler alert, they already lost. It is just a matter of time before it reaches the inevitable point of no return. When this moment arrives, Russia will have to pay for all the damages connected as a consequence of this invasion. And that simple sounding word is actually exponentially loaded. First off, because all those costs they would have to fix- if they would consider this a “win” (previous paragraph)- still need to be covered. The difference is that it won’t be on Russia’s timeline. Most Russian citizens who consume more outlets than the “official media” have already known this since last year. And they also have known that dissent was not welcome in their country. In other words, Russia is being destroyed from the inside out. Every day this war costs billions of dollars to the Russian economy, which is more than entire families or even villages would earn in a lifetime. Remember, Russia has a much smaller economy, and the cost of living and job salaries are significantly lower than in the West.
That means that Russia’s incumbent President advisors should have already realized the same thing that I just stated. I am oversimplifying of course, but the writing has been on the wall since last year – very early after the war started in fact. So, what recourse do they (Putin’s cabinet) have in order to prevent being punished for ill advising their leader? Simple (but flawed solution); blame somebody else- particularly the West, to include NATO.
But that’s the problem, and reason why I said that it is a flawed solution. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) intent is to prevent instability to the Allied countries regions. Nobody is seeking to attack Russia or the Russian people. Ukraine is receiving aid to defend their sovereignty because this war was illegally started by Russia. If Russian forces stop (for good) attacking Ukraine, then the fighting will stop.
Unfortunately, we have seen, and it has been widely reported that any time there was a “truce” or a “cease fire” as a humanitarian corridor, even those evacuees have been targeted and killed. What recourse does Ukraine have then? Well, they cannot trust any low in battle. After all, Ukrainians are fighting for their lives, their land, and livelihood. Russians are fighting for a narrative that has been morphing over time.
Let’s revisit Russian’s official narrative very quickly, and this is not an all-inclusive list but should give you an idea of what has been reported as the official word from Russia with respect to Ukraine.
- Before the war, Russia’s official words were that they will not attack Ukraine.
- Meanwhile, Russian and Belarusian forces were doing a bunch of military drills around Ukraine.
- Russian and Belarusian narratives said that these military exercises had nothing to do with Ukraine.
- Russia had a meeting with all cabinet members shortly before the invasion stating that Ukraine was mistreating ethnic Russians in the Donbas area and that they needed to be rescued. Nobody in President Putin’s cabinet dissented with him at that time.
- Russia’s official word was that it was not going to be a military operation against Ukraine.
- Russia entered Ukraine with tanks and military equipment on February 24, 2022, to start their “Special Military Operation.”
- Russia’s presence was not welcomed by the Ukrainians and military conflict ensued, yet the Russian government official word was that they were welcomed with open arms.
- Russia said that they were not going to do a referendum to annex Donbas (which is the area invaded in Ukraine), then they changed their tune and said that they were going to do so because the people in Donbas wanted to be Russian.
- Russia made a referendum and held “elections” to try to annex Donbas and make it part of Russia. It was reported that people who dissented were severely punished or killed.
- Russia said that they were fighting Nazis in Ukraine and the West. NATO and the West are obviously not Nazis, by the way.
- Russia prosecuted anybody who dared call their “Special Military Operation” a “war.” It was and has been a war. Eventually Russian President
- Putin, himself, called it a war but that took several months.
- Russia said that NATO was fighting them directly. They could not prove that, otherwise we would have been fighting World War III a long time ago. NATO is not fighting Russia.
- Russia mobilized 300,000+ conscripts and sent them to the front lines, even though the law said that conscripts do not go to war right away. A bunch of them died almost immediately after getting to the front lines.
- A lot of Russian oligarchs who disagreed with the Russia government started suffering very bizarre accidents that ended their lives.
- The Russian-aligned Wagner Group mercenary leader started to have very overt dissention with Russian’s military brass.
- The Wanger Group leader went public and said something along the lines that Russia was never actually fighting Nazis and that this entire war was all a pretext to demonstrate Russian military prowess, but it has essentially failed.
- The Wagner Group leader was very close to Moscow and potentially was going to conduct an insurrection, yet the Belarussian dictator mediated the disagreement and now this mercenary leader is allegedly being exiled to Belarus.
There is a lot more, but I hope this gives you an idea. In the future, I might do a full article or even write a book about it to give you a more comprehensive timeline.
The source for this image was found in the public domain search for the Russian-aligned Wagner Group in Ukraine fighting against Ukraine
The Wagner Group problem
For anybody who is not aware, the Wagner Group is a private Russian-aligned militia group that has presence in a bunch of troublesome spots around the world. The mercenaries hired under this group range from professional military-trained men to convicted criminals who were released from jail to fight for Russia. Yes, really. And fighting along this group was supposed to be a way for these convicts to redeem themselves. Unsurprisingly a lot of them died in troves not unlike cannon fodder. In either case the Wagner Group has been fighting alongside and in place of the Russian military in many battles across Ukraine.
Some Wagner Group defectors have reported the gigantic level of war crimes committed by many mercenaries and, unfortunately, war crimes also have reportedly been committed by the Russian military as well as the Ukrainian military. All war crimes are unacceptable. And, in reality, all perpetrators should be prosecuted to the greatest extent of the law. Unfortunately, the consequences of the crimes is what normally is left, and the perpetrators get lost in the shadows- sometimes with impunity.
The problem with mercenaries is that they do not have the same level of “rules of armed conflict” accountability during some conflicts. That does not mean that they cannot be prosecuted for crimes during their cooperative operations. What I am saying is that the language in the rules is different for military forces than for paid combatants. I will not get too much into those details because that is a whole other, and complicated topic on its own. I might write a dedicated article about that at some point. Meanwhile if you are curious, you are always welcome to do some research about that topic as it is, both, fascinating and very complex.
But getting back to this article, even the head of this mercenary group himself was a convict at some point. He was able to gain notoriety as his group assisted the Russian policies in several countries around the world to include many areas in Asia and Africa. Getting into the Ukraine-Russia conflict would have been a no-brainer. The Russian military was struggling from the onset, and the Wagner Group took a sizable part of boots-on-the ground operations.
Unfortunately for the Russian military leadership, the achievements in the battlefield credited to the Wagner Group shed a light on the gigantic shortcomings of the actual Russian Armed Forces fighting against Ukraine. The Wagner Group leader has not been shy about mentioning this fact in videos that have gone viral. This was not unexpected; the Wanger Group’s confidence rose and became “too big to fail” in the perception of this mercenary leader. And this was in many ways a consequence of the underperforming Russian military forces during this war.
According to many reports, defectors, and even ex-military Russian citizens, The Russian military has long been a façade of power projection, but very hollow at its core. And this is not necessarily the fault of every day Russian military personnel. According to these accounts, corruption, lack of training, falsification of actual accomplishment, or even exaggeration on capabilities and limitations for independent units have been the norm. And even if the Russian military takes a 180 degree round turn right now, they are still very far away from fixing the damage that this would have caused in their doctrine. Years away, in fact.
What do I mean by that? Look at the facts- several flag-level officers (such as generals) have been killed on the front lines. What does that really mean? It means that their most senior officers need to be in theater- possibly in a tactical situation- to command. That is very, very bad. Because that means that their seniors (below Flag level) and junior and mid-level officers are not ready for prime time. And the same is true about their non-commissioned officers (NCOs). So, if the mid-level and junior officers as well as the enlisted are not ready at this point either, then they won’t be ready- period. This is not the type of experience you earn while bullets are flying over your head. It takes a lot of multi-dimensional experience to prepare a highly professional military force. The performance of the Russian military in Ukraine has demonstrated they are not quite there.
In other military around the world- for example NATO- junior officers, NCOs, and even enlisted military personnel are trained to readily assume the next higher position at all times. Getting a military person ready to do that does not happen overnight. The level of training, doctrine, and more importantly experience does take time to settle, be assimilated, before becoming part of that person. Dirking from a firehose might let you fit all that water inside a body, but it would not be advisable (because that would kill the person by drowning). Same with military training and experience. NATO sailors have ingested the entire contents of the water hose- but it was not blasted onto them, it was sipped at a controlled pace.
Forcing the Russian military forces to drink from a water hose at full blast at this point will inevitably drown their forces (analogically speaking). So, when it comes to the Wagner Group, some among their cadre might be a bunch of people with some combat experience. Not sure what level of military experience these mercenaries have. Because remember, the fact that if a person is ex-military, or that they were, in fact, at the front line at some point does not automatically mean that they were very skilled warriors. If they were in combat that means they survived, firstly. Some of them might have been very heroic, some might have been lucky not to perish. But presumably, if they joined this group, it is because they had at least some basic chops when it comes to combat experience.
But remember what I mentioned before, this group was also recruiting from prisons. Even though that fact was denied at first, the truth eventually came to light. This is not surprising. A lot of professional military-age men in Russia were not alright with this war in the first place. For example, we all saw a mass exodus of Russian men when the “partial mobilization” was announced. And again, even though the President Putin said that this was not going to happen (the mobilization) it did happen. Then he said that it would only be people of certain age groups and, then again, there were a bunch of age groups that were under the recommended fighting age sent to the front lines and many of them did not return.
The Wagner Group has been touted as “heroic” in Russian official media, and this of course was bound to be a double-edge sword. As the babushkas (Russian grandmothers) are fed all kinds of misinformation, this Wagner Group acted as, both, an ally of the Russian military as well as some sort of folk heroes as far as the way they were depicted while serving alongside Russian uniformed personnel. You know, like patriotic volunteers except that they get paid a lot more than an actual Russian soldier, particularly conscripts. And, apparently, the Wagner Group also relies heavily on the Russian’s military logistical support, which includes ammunition. How do we know? Because the head of Wagner was complaining very publicly on video (which went viral) about shortcomings on logistics and ammunition.
Several times, the Wanger Group has threatened to leave the front lines if the Russian military did not meet their demands for supplies. As I said, the mercenary group have not been shy about publicly condemning shortcomings in the Russian military brass, and until very recently they would talk back to any high echelon except for President Putin, himself. But this last time, President Putin was also put on notice, and that is the potential insurrection the Wagner Group leader almost conducted in Russian territory.
The Mercenary in exile
President Putin went public, saying that he would prosecute any dissenting force against their military force and that included the Wagner Group. From the shadows emerged the Dictator from Belarus to “mediate” between Russia and the mercenary group. And the last thing I heard is that the leader of the Wagner Group is now in Belarus. I am sure we will hear more about it. The news cycle has been saturated with this developing story.
Personally, I am not surprised. If you hire a mercenary, it is well known that they are less interested in the ideology than the actual compensation for “services.” They are a private company which are there to make money, and if they gain support from their actions, all the better because that means “more business.” The huge miscalculation on the Russian brass is that this mercenary group likely has a lot of intel on any verified shortcomings the Russian military is unable to secure.
The Wagner Group has been very vocal about the lack of efficacy the Russian military has overall. And of course, their track record in Ukraine shows these glaring problems. And it still begs the question, was Russia’s President actually cognizant of all these shortcomings? I am repeating this because as the President Putin is surrounded by yes men/women, he is very likely given a resumed version of the ground truth. And, unfortunately for him and Russia, that means that his decisions are likely also limited to these very narrow set of data points.
According to the leader of the Wanger Group, the reason why this Russia-Ukraine quagmire started is because somebody in the Russian military brass wanted to show something to the Russian President (and the world) that is not real. The Russian military is the second largest in the world, but sheer numbers are not enough if the human factor and professional development of the entire group is subpar. And we have seen a gargantuan loss of Russian lives over a conflict that was ill conceived in the first place.
This was exposed even more so by the leader of the Wagner Group. I would presume he is watching his back. The dictator in Belarus is very much aligned with the President Putin. It would be wise to advise anybody in the Wagner Group to avoid any three, or higher, story buildings as to not accidentally fall from a balcony. That type of accidental death seems to be the most common “coincidence” for any Russian citizen who has been at odds with the Russian government.
Whatever the ultimate fate the leader of the Wagner Group will ultimately endure, there is a common trend. This was not unexpected if anybody has been paying attention to what has been going on in the world stage. Bringing mercenaries to help a fight because the actual military was not proficient was bound to ultimately backfire. Especially because, previously, official media had touted this group of mercenaries as patriots and in essence indispensable for the war effort. It does not take a PhD to realize that this relationship was going to be volatile at best, or potentially lead an insurrection at worst.
For more context read my previous articles on this important conflict
Ukraine-Russia Conflict 302 days later
Ukraine-Russia Conflict 334 days later
Ukraine-Russia conflict a year later
So, what now?
That’s the trillion-dollar question. This outcome is not good for President Putin nor for the Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin. Does it make it better for Ukraine? Well, that’s yet to be seen. The Russian military is likely not going to depart their position because of this. However, this does tax the forces as even the Russian version of their national guard was likely mobilized to protect the Kremlin. As far as news reports are concerned at the time while I am typing this, nobody really knows where President Putin is at this moment.
What pundits, journalists, analysts, and anybody with an opinion are saying is that President Putin does have a huge problem in his hands. This is also- as I mentioned earlier- a huge miscalculation. And although the Kremlin is no stranger to controversy since Soviet times, this is not going to help the Russian government’s image around the world. This does show glaring vulnerabilities. Some more obvious than others.
The biggest one that I can see from my vantage points- and I will cite the previous articles on this series are as follows- the human factor was missing within the calculations made by Russian leadership at all levels (especially at the lower levels). Every day Russian people are actually super nice, but they know better than to speak up about something that they designate as “provocative.” In fact, the best way to codify when they don’t want to get themselves in trouble is by them stating that “they don’t know anything about politics.” And of course, that is with a dismissive tone as though they don’t want to be asked anything else. Why do you think that is? The answer is obvious. Because they are well aware of negative repercussions. However, if somebody is pro-government, they will be very vocal about it and their stories meant to justify their approval tend to morph and show clear inconsistencies.
It has been reported that Putin did not call-out the Wagner Group by name but called it something along the lines of a “Rebel Group.” That is the problem with propaganda- no matter how tight a made-up story tries to be, the math will not add up somewhere. Also, this gives an opening on the understanding of how the command and control is unbalanced in Russia. Which means that if this is an obvious discrepancy, there are likely a lot of other larger problems that are just out of sight. In other words, Russia is collapsing from the inside out. And to make it crystal clear, this Russian collapse is not being caused by NATO let alone the US; instead, the Wagner Group is home-grown in Russia and has fought under the Russian flag.
I will likely write another article about this. For now, I am sure that Ukraine is going to seize the opportunity to gain any leverage based on this glaring Russian instability. That also means that Russians who do not subscribe to the current regime’s doctrines might feel emboldened to speak up or act in a manner not seen in the last two decades. Some experts assert this to be the “beginning of the end” to the Putin presidency. I am not convinced this to be the case, but it is definitely a huge hit against his brand and leadership stance. The question is, what would Putin do if he feels cornered? And that can be a very loaded question. And further, if he does get deposed, who will fill that power vacuum? And that vacuum can be even more startling.
I’ll finish by saying that as predicted the only people who would finish this conflict by taking control over Russia would be Russians themselves. And evidence of that attempt happened, in part, Saturday. Once we receive move reports by journalists around the world, we might get more clarity on what to expect next. In the meantime, I am keeping my eyes open, much like the rest of the world. HLC