International politics and diplomatic negotiations have never been known for straight talk and honest exchanges. But the rise of autocrats – particularly Putin’s Russia and his three partners in the “axis of evil,” Iran, China, and North Korea – has accentuated this reality. Diplomacy is even more difficult to manage when no one tells the truth. Lies and deceit are common tools of the trade, and many of the world’s dictators came to power making false claims about their enemies being tainted by corruption. Once in power, the corruption of the emerging dictators becomes aggressive, protected by newly appointed officials who benefit from the dictator’s regime.
When autocrats in powerful states that have military and economic strength begin to operate in their post-truth world, international crises become even more complex than they have been in the past. One obvious example is the 1994 Budapest Memorandum signed by the United States, United Kingdom, and Russia, which guaranteed Ukraine’s security if it gave up the nuclear weapons that it inherited from the former Soviet Union. Obviously, this guarantee meant nothing to Putin, which is also true of other agreements signed by Russia but then ignored.
It is important to understand that our world’s leadership is now populated by a number of autocrats who are pathological liars. Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Xi Jinping of China, and Iran’s political and religious leaders, all employ professionals who shape their messages as instructed. Many of these publicity firms are located in the West and make significant profits for generating whatever their wealthy autocrats demand. This was described by Anne Applebaum in her famous essay that labels this network of dictators as “Autocracy, Inc.” (“The Bad Guys Are Winning,” The Atlantic (December 2021).
Putin’s current public relations campaign is an example of this audacious deceit. He is boldly predicting that Russia will be successful in the war in Ukraine, that the war has become a “stalemate,” and that Russia’s size and strength will outlast the effort of the West, particularly the United States – Russia’s primary enemy – and NATO. There are two possible ways of explaining Putin’s assertions about Russia’s positive position after two years of war in Ukraine. One is that he is being misled by his advisors and does not have access to accurate intelligence reports, because his national security council cronies are feeding him what he wants to hear. The number of obvious miscalculations that Putin made when launching the attack on Ukraine in February 2022 seem to support this judgment.
Putin’s mistakes in the early phase of the war in Ukraine illustrate one of the “Achilles’ heels” of autocrats – they have advisors who don’t truthfully tell the leader what is happening on the battlefield because of their fear of anger and retaliation. In Russia’s case, Putin’s advisors fear his ability to quickly eliminate their stolen wealth, often worth billions of dollars.
But I think there is more to the story of Putin’s mistaken policies. He and his cronies are struggling to survive his dangerous decision to attack Ukraine, and they are desperate to find a way out of this crisis that now threatens the survival of his regime. Not sharing the truth and hiding Russia’s severe losses by hiring gifted Russian and western public relations firms to spread Kremlin’s lies about their current situation in both Russian media and western news sources is a major strategy of the Kremlin, but it is not working.
In my study of the Russian-Ukrainian war, I have accumulated numerous examples of Russia’s losses, in some cases massive losses, which Putin never talks about or acknowledges. Here are ten examples largely unreported in the Russian press, and even major western newspapers, which often repeat the Kremlin’s story lines about a stalemate in Ukraine. Over two days during the last weekend, 130 battlefield engagements took place with more than 2,000 causalities and the loss of 60 billion dollars’ worth of equipment destroyed. This does not sound like a “stalemate” to me.
Russia’s war casualties – solders and equipment: A U.S. intelligence assessment recently shared with Congress reports that Russia has lost 87% of its total active-duty ground forces and two-thirds of its tanks since invading Ukraine. According to this analysis, Russia has lost 315,000 causalities on the battlefield, 2,200 of 3,500 tanks, and 4,400 of 13,600 infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers. As of late November 2023, Russia has lost over a quarter of its pre-invasion stockpiles, while failing to make any major territorial gains in Ukraine since 2022.
Putin is a war criminal and has been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes related to the unlawful transfer of children from Ukraine to Russia. This arrest warrant is the first ever issued for a leader of a major political power. It means he can no longer freely travel and is largely confined to countries where his fellow autocrats are in control or where smaller countries are seeking some possible Russian funding. An American diplomat said “This makes Putin a pariah. If he travels, he risks arrest. This never goes away.”
Russia’s tax system has been paralyzed by cyber units of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence. The entire database and its backup copies have been destroyed and Russia might not be able to rebuild its tax system, certainly not quickly. How does a country operate without accessible income and tax records?
Ukrainians are now hitting targets inside Russia, and they do not need Western systems to accomplish this. One third of Russia’s missile enterprises are located near to their borders with Europe, and Ukrainians have created drones and used them effectively against these Russian factories that manufacture rocket fuel and electronic equipment. In addition to attacking factories in Russia that produce surface-to-air missiles as well as small arms, the Ukrainians have also targeted the Russian gas and oil sector in Oryol, Krasnodar, and Bryansk. Very few western news sources have reported on these attacks, as well as utility breakdowns caused by Ukrainian strikes that are forcing Russians to experience the bitter cold weather that Ukraine has dealt with for two years.
The Russian navy has suffered serious losses to their Black Sea fleet by Ukrainian forces that do not even have a substantive navy. Fifty days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, one of the Russian Navy’s most important warships – the Moskva - was hit by two Ukrainian-made Neptune anti-ship missiles and sunk. This humiliating loss, followed by the loss of another missile-armed ship last weekend, Ivanovets, was hit by six Ukrainian missiles that “sent it to the bottom of the Black Sea.” These losses, together with missile attacks on the headquarters of the Russian navy in Sevastopol, have forced the Russian navy to move from its command centers to Russian ports further east. This has freed up the western part of the Black Sea, which prevents Russian efforts to blockade Ukrainian-controlled Black Sea ports. Tons of Ukrainian grain are now being shipped to Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
After decades of neutrality since World War II, Finland joined NATO in April 2023. Putin’s aggressive foreign policy has backfired and resulted in more than doubling NATO’s pre-existing border with Russia by adding 830 additional miles. Once Finland became a NATO member, it signed a Defense Cooperation Agreement that gives the United States access to fifteen Finnish military installations and allows American forces to store equipment and weapons on Finnish soil.
More than one thousand international companies had closed their businesses in Russia by the eighth week of the war. According to a study by the Yale School of Management in June 2022, many others will follow, and this means thousands of young business workers, especially IT-qualified employees, became unemployed. Many have fled to western Europe and former Soviet republics where they have found employment, with little prospect of a return to Russia, even in a post-Putin era.
Russia’s foreign reserves totaled $630 billion in January 2022, but Russia no longer has access to half of these funds, which are held in foreign banks and are now under sanction by the United States and its European partners. These sanctions, plus the removal of Russian banks from the SWIFT banking system, will also make trade slower and complicate access to needed computer chips. Russia has become increasingly isolated economically, as it was under Stalin’s regime.
Because of Putin’s aggressive invasion of Ukraine and threats to its allies, Europe initiated moves to end its dependence on Russian oil, followed by breaking its dependence on Russian natural gas. Professor Kathryn Stoner has made it clear that under Putin’s disastrous leadership, Russia has proved to be an unreliable supplier and Russia’s “European market is gone not just for now but forever.”
Russian-controlled Crimea has been severely weakened by Ukrainian armed forces. The invasion and annexation of Crimea to Russia in 2014 became a major factor in enhancing Putin’s popularity, which was highlighted by the 12-mile road-and-rail bridge constructed by Putin beginning in 2014 and completed in 2018. This symbol of Russian dominance, and its critical importance in serving as an important supply channel for Russian forces in southern Ukraine, has been partially destroyed by two Ukrainian attacks and may soon be totally destroyed.
Putin is convinced that the West, especially the United States, is weak and is caught in the political complications of supporting both Ukraine and Israel, while struggling with the immigration crisis and the related need to block the country’s porous southern border. Being blind to his own country’s staggering losses – and there are many more than the ones I briefly outlined here – will result in future miscalculations. Giving Ukraine the weapons it needs right now to drive the invaders out of their country will lead to the beginning of the end for Putin’s failed empire.