Brian M Downing
Russia’s Ukraine war will end in humiliating defeat. The severity and day are uncertain but the cause isn’t. Putin’s army, from top to bottom, has performed abysmally – worse than imaginable for a country claiming major power status.
The Russian leadership, or key parts of it, will recognize the need for fundamental army reform. Reformers will face conflict over who will direct changes in so powerful an institution.
The need for reform
It’s Putin’s fault. He handpicked the generals and ministers who rebuilt the army after communism fell. The appointees selected officers based on loyalties, awarded contracts to slipshod firms, and filled combat units with poorly-trained, ill-disciplined bands of youths.
Grigory Potemkin, Catherine the Great’s minister, supposedly built facades of cheerful villages for his Empress’s enjoyment as she sailed down the Dnieper to Crimea. Putin et al built a Potemkin army that puts on impressive parades but can’t fight.
Officers, from frontline units to generals just below Putin’s coterie, are realizing how bad the military is. They may have sensed this long ago but the Ukraine war is making it clear. They are humiliated by the debacle and ashamed of the deaths of young soldiers entrusted them.
Russia has faced the need for military reform since the days of the tsars. Peter the great and Alexander II tried to modernize the feudal army but were ultimately thwarted by entrenched nobles. The Decembrists attempted a coup to reform all Russia. They failed, and many were executed. Notably, reformers came from the top in the Kremlin and from below in the officer corps.
There are three scenarios.
Putin blocks reform
Denying the need for reform is any leader’s instinctual response and first line of defense. Though responsible for the army’s dismal showing, Putin may see the Ukraine disaster as due to inept and disloyal officers. The answer, then, will be harsh purges and strict controls ensuring only “correct” personnel are promoted, officers who demonstrate fierce determination to avenging the Ukrainian defeat and unwavering loyalty to Putin. This isn’t reform. It’s enshrining the status quo and determination for vengeance..
Organizations have the same instinctual response and first line of defense. A large portion of the officer corps will oppose reform as a threat to their positions and maybe their hides. The principle of loyalty over professionalism may win out and crush the opposition.
Putin leads reform
Putin might recognize the need for fundamental change, albeit without admitting responsibility for defeat. He needs a first-rate army for his personal prestige and imperial ambitions. He also needs military might for his China partnership. Beijing wants a powerful Eurasian ally to help restore its place as the dominant world power.
Putin and a trusted council could oversee sweeping reforms in training, doctrines, contracts, promotions, and planning for renewed expansion. This would reenergize his imperial ambitions and preempt broader reform pressures from army and society.
China is dismayed by Russia’s failures in Ukraine. It would support state-led reform that would make a powerful army and consolidate autocracy. Beijing might even use its growing clout inside the weakening Russian economy to demand it.
Putin would face internal opposition, as did his predecessors Peter and Alexander II. Brute force has limits against entrenched bureaucratic strata. Most officers today have benefited from the present system and will drag their boots. Arms manufacturers have also done well by signing lucrative contracts and delivering substandard materiel.
Oligarchs have been beholden to Putin but many are fair-weather sailors who are losing their posh yachts and excursions. Military reform, they may feel, wastes money that’s needed to rebuild the economy. It also fuels quixotic imperial efforts and keeps an incompetent and possibly deranged figure in the Kremlin.
Reform without Putin
Military reformers know Putin built a decrepit army and sent it to its destruction. The nation is now heavily sanctioned, isolated, and imperiled as never before since 1945. They may fear that Putin cannot or will not reform the military and lead the country out of peril. Decisive action is needed.
Army reformers may find supporters among worried oligarchs. Several of them and their families have died mysteriously in recent weeks, some alongside their wives and children. They want a more stable political system and improved ties with the outside world, instead of increasing isolation.
China might support decisive action as a means of continuing its Long March to global power. Israel wants a reliable hand at the helm that will not return to the Soviet policy of supporting Arab revanchism. Furthermore, Israel is noting rising ultra-nationalism and antisemitism in Russia’s leaders and media.
Removal from office by arrest, perhaps while visiting an army base, is possible, as is a quick Praetorian operation on the Kremlin. Assassination will be difficult as Putin has loyal and vigilant security bureaus. However, one concerned ally has repeatedly shown great skill at terminating enemies.
A third scenario is a dedicated clique of officers, oligarchs, and prominent figures in the state gradually reducing Putin’s power – a rolling coup. The group could, with support from China, remove Putin and his council from control of the Ukraine war and nuclear weapons. In time he could lose the entire military and foreign policy. Putin becomes a figurehead or a quiet, powerless pensioner like Molotov, Khrushchev, and Gorbachev.
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The West should not have illusions of a reformed army being liberal, pro-West, or content with the state of affairs after the Ukraine defeat. It’s far more likely to be even more intensely nationalist than now and eager to avenge national honor. This sentiment will be found in Putin loyalists, putschist reformers, and large swathes of the public. It may define postwar Russia.
Better the Russian army stay the unprofessional, inept outfit it is, or remain paralyzed by factions, recriminations, purges, and entrenched opposition to reform.
©2022 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who’s written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs. Thanks as ever to fellow Hoya Susan Ganosellis.