Russia’s imperious president, Vladimir Putin, may have just endured his worst week since the collapse of the Soviet Union, which he says was the greatest tragedy of the 20th century.
His vaunted army, including a tank force once considered one of Russia’s best, collapsed in the face of a Ukrainian offensive in eastern Ukraine. Some Russian soldiers fled after ditching their uniforms and donning civilian clothes they stole from homes, according to local residents.
In southern Ukraine, Russian units defending the strategic city of Kherson struggled to hold their positions against persistent Ukrainian attacks.
Putin even faced what sounded like tough questioning from his most important ally, China’s President Xi Jinping.
“We understand your questions and concerns” about Ukraine, he told Xi at a summit meeting in the central Asian city of Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
When Putin ordered his army to invade Ukraine in February, he saw a historic opportunity to reassemble the core of the Soviet Union and appeared to anticipate a rapid victory.
That plan failed when Ukraine, bolstered by Western military aid and U.S. intelligence, halted Russia’s attempt to seize its capital, Kyiv.
Now Putin’s Plan B, the conquest of eastern and southern Ukraine, is teetering on the edge of failure as well.
Some cheerleaders have hailed Ukraine’s victory at Izyum, an important railway junction in the east, as the turning point of the war. That’s premature. Russia holds about one-fifth of Ukraine’s territory and has more troops it can deploy, although their quality is uncertain.
“Despite the euphoria, this ain’t over yet,” Alexander Vershbow, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, told me last week. “Putin is obviously furious that his commanders have failed … but that doesn’t mean he’ll give up. He can still escalate in many ways.”
So what can we expect from Putin now? Vershbow offered a forecast.
Putin won’t capitulate; that would mean the end of his rule.
He likely will intensify the death and destruction Russia has inflicted on Ukraine’s civilians.
Putin’s career has been marked by success in wars waged against weaker opponents. He came to power in 1999 by ordering a midwinter siege of Grozny, capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, in a savage war to suppress Muslim separatists. In 2008, he sent the army into neighboring Georgia; in 2014, he sent troops into eastern Ukraine and annexed the Crimean peninsula.
In those wars, his forces often inflicted casualties on civilians as a deliberate tactic.
