The Front Putin Really Fears
Of all the bad takes on the situation in Russia-Ukraine, probably the worst is the notion that Moscow which suffered repeated losses to people power since 1989 could not possibly lose to people power yet again.
It is not just Putin’s apologists singing the same old tiresome tune. Cowards who have spent their whole lives accepting being told what to do and what to believe by those in authority find it impossible to believe that anyone would dare stand up to a dictator.
The facts are roundly against them. The current population of Russia is 145 million which is roughly the same as the population of the countries who rejected the Warsaw Pact in 1989. The current population of the countries that left the Soviet Union in 1992 is a little higher — 155 million.
The reason Putin fears Ukraine is that they rejected their Moscow installed dictator through people power not once but twice. Make no mistake, Putin has been acutely aware of the threat people power poses to his regime.
Putin’s disinformation operations targeted at the West have always been a small part of a much larger operation targeting Russia itself. Putin has also copied explicitly fascist tactics in the past as well, forming the Nashi youth movement modelled on the Hitler Youth and Soviet Komsomol. The purpose of Nashi was to own the streets which was their ultimate downfall as any movement strong enough to keep Putin in power might be strong enough to unseat him.
Reports from Moscow in the past few hours describe a population expecting an imminent crackdown. Rumors circulate of plans to declare martial law, rumors which may well prove self-fulfilling. A minority party known for being ‘more Putinist than Putin’ has introduced a bill to conscript demonstrators and send them to the front. Males of military age are rushing to the borders to escape conscription.
But let’s unwind that situation for just a moment.
Russians living in Moscow are undoubtedly hearing tales of the horror being visited on their sons in Ukraine that are at least as lurid as those appearing in the West. Of course, there will be a very large part of the population that reacts with the same casual callousness that was seen among Western supporters of the invasion of Iraq. But a much larger part is going to be thinking about themselves and their families.
Putin’s failure to ‘prepare the battlefield’ in Ukraine is being widely discussed. But Putin’s failure to prepare the information battlefield at home and abroad is even clearer.
There will always be a few people willing to believe even the most absurd establishment lie even when it is the opposite of the lie they were told the day before. In proof of this fact we only need consider the many Trump supporters who claim to believe the absurd proposition that Trump would have opposed Putin for a nanosecond.
Most people are much happier being told a lie than an unpleasant truth. Trying to tell unpleasant lies is much harder as the Johnson administration discovered when it ended the married deferment from the draft. Nixon was elected in large part on a pledge to end the draft and preferred losing the war to extending the draft.
Nor is the draft the only measure that Moscovites have to fear. Putin’s nuclear brinksmanship won’t just be unsettling citizens in the West.
Support for Putin within Russia almost certainly mirrors support for Trump in the US: A small core of cultists and establishment toadies and a much larger number who consider him a dangerous fool.
Putin’s war is so unpopular within Russia that state media is not allowed to call it an invasion or a war.
The Optimistic Scenario
Rather than forestalling a people powered revolution, the most optimistic scenario for that outcome actually begins with Putin attempting some new ‘extraordinary measure’. To understand why this is so, first consider who actually enforces Putin’s edicts.
Russia has multiple overlapping police forces. But one common feature of all police forces is that the bulk of the force is made up of youngish men who are reasonably fit. In other words, exactly the sort of person who is most likely to be useful in a combat situation. Police also have families and besides themselves, it is their brothers and their sons who at risk of being thrown into Putin’s Ukrainian meat grinder.
For the time being, the police are following Putin’s orders and arresting the ‘usual suspects’ being seen on the streets. But the jails are already full and there is limited capacity in the court system. As with many other parts of Putin’s machine, they are going through the motions but with a level of incompetence that appears to be willful.
So, what happens if Putin attempts to declare martial law and conscript ever able-bodied man?
Of course, the very first thing Muscovites will do is go to social media. Whatever measures are taken in fact will be amplified by rumor and misinformation to the max. Any measure that might be the start of a general draft will be taken as incontrovertible proof of a draft. And that of course includes shutting down the Internet and social media.
The police can shut down a demonstration of ten thousand Muscovites but they cannot oppose a hundred thousand without turning it into a million. And if a million Muscovites appear in the streets in opposition to Putin there is no power that can save him or his faction.
The Pessimistic Scenario
‘Ah yes’, the authoritarian lackey bleats, ‘but Putin will respond with force’.
Well let’s just think about that scenario for a moment.
About half the combat force of the Russian army is fighting a horrific war against their brother Slavs for a cause almost none of them believe. They have seen their comrades shot to death by 60 year old grandmothers, 10 year old kids and all ages in-between. Their officers have lied to them, their equipment is useless, they have no food, no fuel, depleted ammunition and they want to do nothing more than just go home.
Imagine that you are in that situation and you hear that a million of your fellow countrymen were protesting against the war you are fighting in Moscow, St. Petersburg etc. That is a pretty crippling blow for a start. Now you are told that the police/ FSB/ VDF have committed a Tiananmen massacre in Red Square Moscow.
What does any army do in that situation?
Of all the possible outcomes, ‘continue to fight to make the world safe for Putin’ is the least likely.
The reason Putin is in such a bind is that all the forces in Ukraine have access to information sources that are outside his control. If Putin had attempted to open his war with the ‘Shock and Awe’ tactics of his fellow war criminals, domestic opposition to his war would have overwhelmed him.
Putin cannot threaten ‘dire consequences’, that is to murder unarmed protesters in cold blood as the infamous war criminal Col. Dyer did at Amritsar. Every threat made to the population of Moscow is heard by every battalion in the field in Ukraine.
The Real Battlefield
The point I am trying to make here is not to convince people that Putin is certain to be deposed in a week, a month or any time. The point is that the Russian assault on Ukraine will only end when Putin is defeated on the home front and that this is the front Putin is obliged to fear the most.
