‘Diminishing returns’: What can change the course for Putin in the Ukraine war?
By Paul Sonne and Robyn Dixon,
March 27, 2022 at 4:00 a.m. EDT
“There’s no room for disagreement or discussion, everyone must just get on with it and implement the president’s orders and as long as Putin keeps the situation under control, people will follow him.”
— Tatiana Stanovaya
Political consultant R.Politik
According to the White House, Russia is returning to the 2014 playbook it used when it seized Crimea and fomented separatist uprisings in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. Referendums in Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk were supposed to whitewash Russia’s actions but were marked by election fraud, pre-marked ballots and intimidation. Few nations recognized them.
Russian political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya, the founder of the R.Politik political analysis group, said Lavrov’s comments were a first attempt at legitimizing Russia’s annexation plans.
President Vladimir Putin has not yet made the final call on referendums, she said, but she predicted they would be held before the end of the year amid growing pressure from Russia’s “party of war,” the hard-line security chiefs and hawkish politicians who are the war’s main advocates.
July 12, 2022
Moscow’s plan to implement a new law enabling authorities to seize the assets of Western firms leaving the country failed to get through parliament before the summer recess, giving companies more time to negotiate exits. Russia’s parliamentary session ended last week without the bill being passed. That makes any progress unlikely until at least mid-September, when the lower house of parliament, or Duma, begins reviewing proposed laws in its autumn session.
Some experts now doubt whether the proposed law will be implemented at all. “The fact that it only passed the first reading and got stuck means there is no consensus in the government about its further fate,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of political analysis firm R.Politik.
22/03/2022
Russian artists and heavyweight media figures have spoken out against the war and even billionaire oligarchs have offered veiled criticism. But after almost a month of fighting, there has been no apparent outbreak of dissent from within Putin’s inner circle or among political heavyweights inside the country. “There has been no sign of a split” within the ruling class, said Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of the R.Politik political analysis firm.
“There is a full consensus, albeit possibly with differences on tactics,” she added. She said a distinction had to be drawn between having reservations about the invasion and being ready to act. “People are in shock and many believe this is a mistake. But no-one is able to act. Everyone is focused on their own survival.”
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For years, observers have been speculating over which fatal illness afflicts Russian President Vladimir Putin. But in recent months this discussion has snowballed. Pancreatic cancer, thyroid cancer, blood cancer, or long-standing back problems? True or not, these rumors have forced everyone to think seriously about what would happen if Putin were gone.
The opposition tends to believe that if Putin departs, his regime will go with him and there would be a chance for a “new perestroika.” Conservatives think this moment would be a chance to tighten the screws.
Either way, there is deep uncertainty about what – and who – would come next.
Russian political analyst has argued that Russian President Vladimir Putin is likely to believe that his country is winning the war in Ukraine because he’s achieving his geopolitical goals.
Tatiana Stanovaya, founder and CEO of political analysis firm R.Politik, wrote an op-ed for Foreign Policy magazine published on Wednesday where she suggested people in the West were wrong to assume Putin thinks he’s losing the conflict.
Russian forces have suffered major setbacks, including the failure to take the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv in the early stages of the war, that have led many in the West to suggest the Russian government is aware they are losing.
16.06.2022
A new political reality is emerging in Russia as the result of internal disruption caused by the war against Ukraine. This isn’t the first bifurcation point in the Putin regime: other examples include the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in 2020. The difference is that the regime had incubated previous landmark decisions within itself, and moved toward them gradually as they germinated. The war, in contrast, caught the Russian elites unawares, and Putin’s inability to bring it to a swift and victorious end is radically changing the nature and prospects of internal political processes.
For the first time in his reign of nearly a quarter of a century, the president has made a radical strategic decision almost entirely on his own. No matter how loyal the Russian elites may be, no matter how ready they may have been to share Putin’s logic, or at least to resign themselves to it, that doesn’t alter the fact that the war was thrust upon them without any discussion or preparations.
One of the reasons it’s so difficult to understand Russian intentions—and what is at stake in the Ukraine war—is the significant divergence between how external observers see events and how they are viewed from the Kremlin. Things that appear obvious to some, such as Russia’s incapacity to achieve a military victory, are perceived completely differently in Moscow. The fact is that most of today’s discussions over how to help Ukraine win on the battlefield, coerce Kyiv into concessions, or allow Russian President Vladimir Putin to save face have little in common with reality.
Here I will debunk five common assumptions about how Putin sees this war. The West needs to look at the situation differently if it wants to be more effective in its approach and decrease the risks of escalation.
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