NP: What Does Russia Want?

[Mark Kohut]

 Why the war will go on.

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June 9, 2022
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What Does Russia Want?
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*This is a free edition of Peacefield, a newsletter that puts America,
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Before we plunge into the nightmare of reliving the January 6 insurrection,
I thought I would pause here and take a look at the Russia-Ukraine war.

The Russian war on Ukraine has passed the 100-day mark, which was about 95
days longer than Vladimir Putin expected it to last. The usual
retrospectives have focused, mostly, on “where we are now,” with charts and
lines and color-coded maps that explain the current state of the fighting.

This is understandable, especially because the situation today is utterly
counterintuitive, with the Russians taking huge losses and the Ukrainians
recapturing a lot of territory. But the Russians aren’t going anywhere;
they control something like 20 percent of Ukraine, and as retired
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling said recently
<https://emails.theatlantic.com/c/eJwdjUEOgyAQRU8jOw2MgrJg0U3vMTBjpVUximm8fanJz1-8xXvkLACNIKIDCSCNtKCkbU3DZHUbGNXYe62trTqZJ8Y845pjaEJaxOSYsB3Id73pgtaerOoZfRg7NloWn5jdlPN2VO2jgmdZUdCxr5y_af_8JYVtZ45rfWxX_cKFCxC7C-89UTxK9MIppTuXnT_nT80LxlncX0dyBhCMGqzEQcFQogoNEfAPFPlDhQ>,
we’re in for a long summer of slogging it out on the Ukrainian eastern
front.

Instead of providing more maps and labels, I want to ask a different
question: What does Russia, at this point, want?

The first thing to understand about this question is that there is no such
entity as “Russia” that “wants” anything. “Russia” at the start of this war
meant “Putin.” The invasion of Ukraine was his idea, a malevolent and
stupid scheme that was kept from all but his closest advisers. Now that the
war is a mess, Putin has to deal with the Russian public, Russia’s
governing elites, and the Russian military.

Let’s take each separately.

*Putin*

We know what Putin wanted at the outset: to conquer Ukraine whole, in a
quick victory, and append it to Russia in some sort of Slavic Christian
confederation that would look like both the Russian empire and the former
Soviet Union. Putin is no Communist, but he aches for the old U.S.S.R. He
yearns to be some weird combination of a tsar and a Soviet general
secretary leading a giant Russian-Soviet imperial blob against all of
Europe and North America.

When Plan A blew up in his face, however, it was clear he had no Plan B.
(This is why I worried
<https://emails.theatlantic.com/c/eJxdTkFuxCAQe01yI4IJ0MyBQy_9xwQmgi4bVoQ06u9L9ljJsi1LthwcAoQNxuRAAkgrEZTE2U4c0MyeSW0fqzGIg5YtMrVMe0t-8uU5RrdtweOKRmnNng2xlgsqhNVoY5TnMbvY2usY5s8Bvjqu65r-zfQ0BaajK1Uf0w93d5_pIm-K5RLno1LaWfhy5iBW7j0W--kzUxW-piPdfQuAynQzVue_awk91fKXYinvw82tZ34IflLK45tFCs4CgVULSloULFKCIhsC8B_b_1fl>
about a desperate choice to use nuclear weapons; when all else fails, the
magical power of a nuclear weapon might seem an attractive game changer.)

What Putin wants probably hasn’t changed. He wants Ukraine, and he will go
to his grave—which might happen soon
<https://emails.theatlantic.com/c/eJwdTsuOxCAM-5r2llFIW1oOHPay_5FCOrB9UAGj0f79siNZlm1Fsb01RH6jPlpCItRoSKEZ9EO8mQYnrLZ5nSZjuhFrEK4HXzW6h0tnH-y8OXQ8MhtBZzzRNKPx6zioRfvZT_1hQ6136Yavjr4bLnkf8ZJy8vP_RUuy3ClXfkrTscD9qvGCEt0OKQNngbfAKa0UaoIa4rVDEIilnffZup-cfDMj_nJI6TOr2vV17CAnx6P_MERvNTFptRjkRdGCSIq19yR_BkJRcQ>—thinking
he made the right call. The question now is what Putin will *settle* for,
and the answer is probably “nothing.” He will keep throwing men into the
fight while grinding away at Ukraine and sitting on Ukrainian territory.
Putin is not the kind of man to admit a mistake, and he’s not going to
start now.

But can he sustain his own “forever war
<https://emails.theatlantic.com/c/eJxdTstqxDAQ-5rk5jCe-DUHH3rpf4ztMXHr3SyJS9m_33SPBUkgJIRKJMRScW4RAREcEGqg1S1SyK5ZWFefrCWaDIxNeHS-j5aXvN_mLQpjcLlkA6IhVe0FeDUVvGawwZq5x22MxzmtHxN-XrjL79llDDnO5d_clT6Es9QmvfyZi0mXFMgERbkmZZwTxb565T0BBkkQAl21-Yj569hLO6-XT972_f1vxPTTv5XcuPX5raqV6JDR6UDAQWMAQM2uFJQXmaNQlA>"
on his border?

*The Russian public*

As I once wrote, we Americans live in a time of mass psychosis
<https://emails.theatlantic.com/c/eJxdjktqxDAQRE9j72xarW8vtMgm99CnjZXIY2MphLn9iFkOFAVVBY_KnhDzhnPxCIhggFAASbNyJi0TB7HZqDXRpKDvHHoNj17Sms5j3j1bUlJvKYkUjbPSWSGy0lskpYSkNFe_9361SX5N-D304P9WuXe-2_qBG-vFIfFWuOYRjCCAqAxEkDYCIFjUjvWYjtDacrVn2s9W2ijm26ef-8wjKHiG_TzfB7uPf_V34SOUOr99KdkbDGiEIwhOoBtgEUzOyC_9B1HT>,
where millions of people believe perfectly ridiculous things and act on
them as if they are true. This is, in part, because the worst people among
us are in control of large propaganda outlets that create entirely separate
realities. Think of Fox News, where it is always the day after a stolen
election and the drag-queen caravans are coming to force your children to
learn critical race theory.

Russian media make the Fox News hosts look like propaganda amateurs.

The Russian public is being fed a farrago of madness that defies
description for anyone who has never seen Russian television. Russian
hosts regularly
talk about nuclear war
<https://emails.theatlantic.com/c/eJwdTsuOgzAQ-xq4DUomJCWHHHrZ_xjIILLLo0qGIv5-00q2D7ZkOwaPGGdsU0CFqJzyqJU3ruPorZmY9PwYrfW-6ZUsTLLSLmnqpmNrlzA9VG9drziSs0ZbO6veO4Mex96aeWjXsIi8SmOeDf5UXNfV1ZpIab1HpiKfourns5REOxQhYZA3vFeKaUsZXqekHTa6P1kWINjPaWXKcFWOp8DFQJkhM8Ub5ICYuM1h-s1HTKXevmk5ju9hCeO5_gFvdb79KqQYHBI6PXhFg8ZBKdTkYkT-B-7XW1A>,
including nuking the ocean so that Britain drowns in a tsunami
<https://emails.theatlantic.com/c/eJwdT0GOwyAQe01zo4KhzYYDh73sPwZm0rAlZAVDq_5-aSXLlizZssk7AFphSh40gJ61A6Odnc9M7mojo1m_wvXq3OmiZWOUjEVSPMdjnzaPOlzCitatFINbgrGaIOjZLpaiuaxT9pvIXzvZ7xP8DDyfz_OoIUz5FRibvIuGX3trCYtqgsJKHqrFylyaamnveXikiJvUHiUdRR2r6neFhVSqnN_6SKhKj5mxKqnpduM6MtJ6wT1N1cffelBq48ULt-P47Bcfer4r3sea6cMqkZ8BYTaL07gYWLQGgzMR8D9UfWNk>.
(They have a particular animus for “Anglo-Saxons,” probably out of a sense
of itching guilt at how many rich Russians have stashed their money—and
their children—in London.)

Does anyone believe this lunacy? Educated and urban Russians don’t buy it,
not least because they still know how to access information from outside of
Russia through these things called “phones” and “the internet.” But those
urbanites aren’t Putin’s target audience. Putin, instead, needs only to keep
educated Russians scared and quiet
<https://emails.theatlantic.com/c/eJwdjkFuxCAMRU-T7IjAEMALFrPpPZzgNLTJEAGjqLcvM9LX-3ob-8eAAHGDMQWQANJKBCVR24kjznplUptb5hlxMLLtTO2gZ0vrtOZz3IOjDZlXa7bZofd6jh6M0hrcgkaxGo-wt3bVQT8G-Oq573t6XmXK5bvb-2Uvqd9wHUp6g7afsl3Kq9ZEgkrh2qo4c2Fxldy6caljCetPyTHVvuyP9pw_m1pYXsev4JPSMX4oUgwWCKzyKMkr8FKCIhsj8D_A_kw6>
while he generates support (and draftees) from the older, more rural, less
educated Russians who are the backbone of his rule.

(A movement that relies on the rural, less educated, older, least informed,
and most nationalistic citizens? Where have we seen this before?)

So, for the time being, yes, the Russian public will not only endure this
war, they’ll actively support it—but only if it doesn’t touch them
directly. Sanctions hurt, but they can blame the West for those; the actual
fighting needs to stay far away. Putin seems to know this. In his Victory
Day speech, he swerved away from mass mobilization, which I thought he
might trigger
<https://emails.theatlantic.com/c/eJxdjsGuhCAMRb9GdhiogrJg8TbvPwrFwHs6GsAx_v0ws5ykubdteptD1gDQAixZEABCCwNSmEH3gYwafEC5TE4pY7pR1Biwrvioyfd-31hsGeedA-kMkhpGSQ4JcJm8k-gxEFttrPUo3fDTwW-r67r6rzdtmyhgaY7Zx_QMrXvDNBOqyXHW9ODlCMFHvuHNDX8mX_d8c2pTPktJ2O40mGl8p1i2_i_vlEqDvjHu-we3Wneu_zxsmFb2UZ7IakDQcjYCZwmzECBRE0F4AeETWA8>
as a means of escalating the war. My guess is that Putin realizes the
limits of public support, and knows that as long as the war is a big
television event and Russian boys aren’t being dragged into the army, the
masses will go along with it.

Especially if the boys who* are* dragged into the army are ethnic
non-Russians from the provinces
<https://emails.theatlantic.com/c/eJwdjsFugzAQRL8m3BaZJSb44EMu_Y-NvS7bGBvZpih_X4o0ehrNYfS8NYg-YCcWFaKalMFBmXHq2Rs9OqYhPF5aG3O7q7YwtUipietdXrvFKufCK9x5dhQUu2nUXmunnQkhjOxdF-3S2lZv4_OGX2eO4-hDoeQY7_8f58TpRJRfhsRHPfsloocHfPKevmHLuQAlD6HkFVZJuUgTrnDqQNlrFUrQSs5bhbfEyB4kwf4uJIm7Yt1PyV7q6f-hJefLvNnXHt_AK0nsLoJ4OyHhNMxG0TzgrBQONHmP_AfMal7U>
and not the children of the elites.

*The Russian elites*

No one in the lofty reaches of Russian business or government wanted this
war. The financial elites, obviously, had no interest in a scheme that
would cost them billions and set Russia’s economy back 30 years.

The intelligence and military elites, for their part, spent years blowing
sunshine up Putin’s skirt about their great contacts in Ukraine, how they
could have Kyiv in the palm of their hand, and how the Russian armed forces
have used the billions of rubles they’ve been given to improve their combat
capacity, but no one wanted to test those claims, because everyone knew
they were nonsense. (In fact, some senior intelligence officers are now in
hot water, and by “hot water” I mean “prison.”
<https://emails.theatlantic.com/c/eJw9T8FuwyAU-5rm9ip4KSQccugO235g0q4v8GhoU5iANtu-frSHSZYlS7Zlu8kgOo9dmFAgCi0MSmF6vWdnVG-ZpB9mpYzZHURdmOpKsQa7t-naLdOgbM-o8XDwdhQkB0WDVmzI-3kWSN06LbV-lV1_3OFrw7Zt-62cH_Gm1nBnm-6c6cRN5lspgeB2yRQiw0qVS4XIW4HHOBAKZN98lrL7t0fwZYbkfbCc4dQaI5wprFA4Vo6WwacMNTOVFOHjt7-_07UK9R0-cbDx7WXp8mTPOblQ2scfWlJ6vqvTfFsvwNdW1j0Zgps0Emo5GkGjxFEIlKSdQ_4DWoFqBw>
When Ukrainians didn’t throw flowers and Kyiv didn’t collapse, Putin blamed
his spies, because he had to blame someone whose name wasn’t Putin.)

Putin fired a shot over the heads of these powerful men and their families
when he vented about the rich Russians
<https://emails.theatlantic.com/c/eJwdTkuOhCAUPI3uMPBUlAWL2cw9QB7KNM0jgDFz-2E6qdQnlUrKaQXgPIxBAwfgkisQXM1yQqfW-UAj_GbXValh4e1C06JJLRzTQe_x0spb73fcPdptQ-UMN5tTs1-WBaUVyxj11Vquw_w1wHfH8zxTtnWicvaU8KkX3eW_oBJd13y3kFgML0yVUc6UMLXKGrEzmW5q6BpDOlkfs4K5YK2B0lj08VPIhdqP_pqL6HOxaXvHF8O3CXH8MAtOSzAgxa642QXsnIMw0jnAPyk6WDg>
who cannot live without foie gras and who will be spit out of the mouths of
real Russians like bugs. (I am not exaggerating. He said this.) *Get on
board*, he was saying. *I know where you live.*

And so they have. While some have left the country and a handful have
spoken up in protest, most of the Russian elite got the message. The most
recent example of this craven surrender to Putin’s madness is Dmitry
Medvedev, himself a former president of the Russian Federation. Medvedev
was once the hope of people—say, like me—who thought that he might be the
transitional figure away from Putinism.

Fat chance. “Little Dima,
<https://emails.theatlantic.com/c/eJwdjrGOwyAQRL_GdETLOhBvQXHN_ccalsAdDpZDivx9cKTRm9EUo4meEGNCVTwCIjggNECzu0gkOwdhk26rtUTTFXoW7pUfvYRLaJvK3qw2LdaFqwCDI3HOJEjAMZGVdb6p6nPv-3Oafyb8HUrtkHJ_7K2W8D5HRodgzDCgM58IWeTQr13X0nsVHcvGo1aHD39Hi-U5vrw5t_Z90f36qv9aNi5VfalL9A4ZnVkIeDG4AKBhFyPKB4n4SM4>”
as he is sometimes called due to his short stature, has decided to go all
in. He recently said
<https://emails.theatlantic.com/c/eJwdT0tuhTAQOw3sBoWhBLLI4m16jyEzlJRPUBIe4vZNn2RZsiVbNluDyDPW3qJCVFoZbJXpdCNs-s4JtfMw9b0x1ZfKi1De6MjeNS7s9WJZxgFn5whpHsT0Wrc4kunNTBN3TtWbXXI-U9W9KvwuuO-7KTVMfnsmoZT_i4rPu8_xgV34LSxvmEPcJUK8UvJ0wBkleZYjQ6Ingd824AB0PHnxxw_kADutAtcayR8lkIB9ovMUinW07jeGosuDh5YQPtuzna5tBdnLkvrD4NlqJNTtaBSN5YhS2JJmRvkD1_hiEQ>
of the Ukrainian people:

*I hate them. They are bastards and scum. They want death for us, for
Russia. And as long as I’m alive, I’ll do anything to make them disappear.*

You don’t usually see this kind of flat-out endorsement of genocide, but
there it is.

So now we know where the Russian elites stand. Their strategy is the
time-honored approach of Kremlin survivors: They’re going to swear
allegiance, tough it out, and hope that The Boss dies soon.

*The Russian military*

This leaves the last wild card, the Russian armed forces. Are they willing
to keep walking into a buzzsaw, losing men and materiel for incremental
territorial gains?

The answer, so far, is yes.

The Russian military has a lot to prove now. The army that to this day
prides itself on being the men who terrified Adolf Hitler to the point of
suicide have lost a war to a country a third their size. They had every
advantage an invader could want: They controlled the timetable; they
surrounded their prey on three sides; the enemy capital was in easy
striking distance; the enemy leader was an untested political rookie with
no military experience.

And yet they walked into a disaster and took more casualties in a few
months than the United States took in *20 years* in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Not only were Russian soldiers poorly trained and equipped; they were (and
are) led by officers who don’t care about them. Some of those officers
have paid
the ultimate price
<https://emails.theatlantic.com/c/eJwdTkFuxCAQe024EcGwEDhw6KX_mMCwoSGhIkRRf1-0km3Jkm05egcQE7DsQQAIIxxI4ZSZKTqtAqFMy6q1c9NL9I2wFzx7DnOoB9s8rA61oEVqt9iERGEVIaKWKr3GkGXFb73_XpP6muB74HmeuSVqZa7tPTwO3nvDfBJv93VlPPmbTmpY-J5LoTgCSlq7SLDz1o_Cmg8_rcZ8jUd_uNX6-dL9eped04G5sI_yHL0BBCOtE2hHXwiQaGIE-gcA2kxS>,
of course, because the Russian command system is so rigid and clumsy that
almost any problem up near the actual fighting needs the intervention of a
general officer.

A few months ago, the British tabloids reported that the Russian defense
minister, Sergei Shoigu, had a heart attack
<https://emails.theatlantic.com/c/eJwdj7FuxCAQRL_G7rAAHwYKijSpI90XrGE5k8M4gnWs-_uQk0Yz0itGM8FZKUOUY3KSS8kXbqXgdl4mDFbNHkFEvSpl7XDjtCFQhkLJT_7Yx835CEoovkZt9axFhDkapcyqjOAhaD9mtxH9tGH-GORn13VdU4CUX3u3XjKdz04LXq0H1N6ckQmuhZE33dHXSak0FjBi8cj2VFIjrOyO9YGJ3bcjPU62Q2vpF1nfV4kBEfgnKwexAnRWyMzD2bBNG-15rM5_1yOk1h-9YDuO9xdy65mfDP93jW9nKbhFglyEsRyMkIZzKWAJQeIfAoRkjQ>.
That doesn’t seem to be the case, but after this kind of performance by the
Russian armed forces, what Russian military leader *wouldn’t* have a heart
attack?

The Moscow rumor mill has long bet on Shoigu as a possible successor to
Putin, but nothing fails like failure. Shoigu and Russian Chief of the
General Staff Valery Gerasimov now must prove that they can overcome years
of graft and incompetence and show some gains in Ukraine. Even if they
wanted to extricate their men from this disaster—and they probably do—there
is no clear path for them to advocate for a cease-fire.

I want to offer one other observation about the performance of the Russian
military. You may wonder why the men of the Russian military, cheered on by
Russians back home, have acted like such savages against their Ukrainian
“brothers and sisters,” a people much like themselves, to whom they are
bound by history, proximity, and family ties. They have engaged in the full
panoply of war crimes, from rape to pillage.

I can only offer two impressionistic conclusions after years of watching
both the Soviet Union and Russia.

First, brutality and cruelty is bred into Russian soldiers. Unlike the
American military, where officers and NCOs (the sergeants and chiefs) think
of the men and women under their command as their charges and
responsibility, Russia has an old-school hierarchy in which younger
enlisted men are at the mercy of veterans
<https://emails.theatlantic.com/c/eJwdjsFuwyAQRL_GvmEt65iYA4dc-h9rWGJaCBFgWe7Xl0YavTmMdnac0YjO4xgMAiIo0ChBz2pip5fZMkl_35ZF6-EGbWdqkV4t2MnmNO5mY72iZK-kBZLgl36D_uatBaU3a8do9tbedZgfA351nec59ZqUq81nC4nrf1MP-nfoBtgh7x2OLTkW5BsXkUIMjcolCvtcktjpN7ye4h3peXAV5ag10EtQSZcgpWfQYzH2u2QXah9-0Z7zZ3Iz2xF_BCcKcfxQBGcUEiq5aqBV4gqAkpRzyH8IIlop>,
and the veterans are under the command of senior officers who keep their
distance and expect to be treated like royalty. It’s too deep a problem to
go into here, but this is a problem ingrained in Russian military culture,
and it predates even the Soviet experience.

Second, and more worrisome: For many Russians, life under Putin is
miserable, and Russian military life is especially miserable. What we’re
seeing now is the gleeful murder and destruction of innocent people by men
who are taking out their own misery on others. The Russian military were
never going to be greeted as liberators, but they never saw themselves as
liberators anyway. They saw themselves as getting even with people who were
happier than they were, which is why instead of “liberating” the
Ukrainians, Russian soldiers raped Ukraine’s daughters and stole anything
that wasn’t nailed down, including the plumbing
<https://emails.theatlantic.com/c/eJwdjsGOhCAQRL9GbpimEQYOHOay_9FCG1kdnQgucb9-3UkqdajkVV4KHjFNKHJAQAQLHhV4bXtO3ujIpKbHaIz33QB1ZqorbTXHPu4vMQc3ORwm7cakRjtEFYG01pAYgcw0GLGGudZ36fSzw687rbV-41Ya8_L_cU_HWUomeS4H5Y3lL6-8leWS77PmTS5X_pHqAYDeiiPE72NPudwyF837_tGoYTzXRfKL8io-LXMKFgmtch7IKXQ3r8imhPwH1WVLnA>
.

So what’s the good news?

There isn’t any. This war will grind on and take many more lives. As I
wrote in this newsletter
<https://emails.theatlantic.com/c/eJxdT0FuxCAQe01yI4LJQuDAoZf-A5ghoWGTFRBV6euL9lRVsixZlm0ZrQHACGOywAG44gYEN7OaCI2cAzkRFy-lMcODt41cy-5oKUzhfI6bRQyLkUF6P6OSyjxIRqG9h9lrFaIas91ae9Vh_hjgs-Og75qpNSp1-lfX3Re5QDFRxi4U6EiBiDstQHMOwkm9LLFbe6o1HSsVVq91pdoqu_bi0kHshzIddb9ZICTWd0pqZ7l7aCw2fJUTU-1Xbred5_tEs_7KO6OnS3l8M0toFThQQps_4woR6Bd9dGGw>,
it is not for us to tell the Ukrainians to quit. The Russians are sitting
on a fifth of their country. Ukraine is a democracy and a friend of the
United States, and Ukrainians have a right to fight on for their
independence and the liberation of their occupied territory. We and the
rest of the free world have an obligation to support them in that fight.

But even if the Ukrainians were to offer a cease-fire, it’s hard to imagine
Putin accepting one. This ongoing slog is now the closest thing he has to a
strategy after his initial attempt at a fait accompli failed, and he is
going to keep murdering Ukrainians for their insolence and take as much of
their land as he can grab.

So what does “Russia” want?

Putin wants to stay in power, the Russian public wants their constant sense
of inferiority soothed by nationalistic television fantasies, the Russian
elites want to stay out of prison, and the Russian military wants to prove
they’re not a bunch of incompetent stumblebums.

This isn’t going to end soon.
------------------------------
News!
[image: bullhorn]
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