Putin is Between a Rock and a Hard Place

By Rich Kozlovich  Tags: P&D Geopolitics Edition: Russo/Ukrainian War, and Donald Trump, Putin

This piece was inspired by a podcast by George Friedman of Geopolitical Futures.   GF is a subscription site, and so I can't link it, and so too are some of my other observations, so you'll just have to take my word for what appears here.  Or not as it please you.  Otherwise information from non subscription sites are linked.  

The Russian oligarchs, former criminals, many of which formerly worked in Soviet intelligence agencies, are outraged at Putin.  They created him and now because of him all their money that’s tied up in European banks are closed to them, they can’t get at it.  

Putin's facing serious economic issues, and it's being reported the Russian economy is suffering, that Russia's economic growth plummeted after Trump took office, and their economic minister says the country is on the brink of recession.  Now  OPEC is going to boost oil production which will cut into Russia's income stream.

Trump was catering to Putin for quite a while, and while Trump is a brilliant negotiator, there’s a difference between economic negotiations, and the negations dealing with national pride..... and survival for Putin.  But Trump is still Trump, and he’s had it with Putin, giving him a deadline for massively larger sanctions and sanctions on anyone who trades with him, and he’s not Obama.

• Clock Ticking For Russia During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump said he believed he could end the Russia-Ukraine war with a few phone calls. I thought he could, too. I thought Russia and Ukraine were both weary, to put it mildly, and would be happy to be given a way out by the U.S. But we were wrong. Ukraine wanted to negotiate an end to the war, but Russia didn’t. ........
• Trump's Eyes Opened on Putin. Now What Will He Do?  - "I'm not happy with what Putin is doing. He's killing a lot of people, and I don't know what the hell happened to Putin," said Donald Trump on Truth Social over the holiday weekend. 
• Trump Warns Russia: Make Peace With Ukraine in 50 Days—Or Monster Tariffs  - President Donald Trump told reporters during a meeting with NATO chief Mark Rutte on Monday that European NATO members would fund billions of dollars of American military equipment, including Patriot missiles, for Ukraine and threatened Russian President Vladimir Putin with a massive 100-per cent indirect tariff if he did not make peace in 50 days....
• Trump’s Ukraine Ultimatum: A Promising First Step - President Trump’s July 14 ultimatum to Vladimir Putin—demanding peace in Ukraine within 50 days and threatening secondary sanctions on countries like China and India if they continue funding Russia’s aggression—is a welcome and long-overdue step. But it is just that: a first step. If the goal is peace and deterrence of future wars, the United States and its allies must go further.......

What Putin is doing in these negotiations are what the Russians have always done.  Talking a lot,  saying nothing, delaying, and all the while pursuing their goals threatening to take more and more dramatic actions in order to force everyone to give in, "pounding Ukraine with missiles and drones a day before the two sides meet for a new round of direct talks in Istanbul."  

His military is undermanned and disgruntled sending Smartphone videos of protest back to their families.  A Ukrainian drone attack destroyed more than 40 Russian planes deep in Russian territory, and Russian retribution for daring Ukrainian strike is postponed, perhaps indefinitely:

Ukraine’s June 1 strike on four Russian airbases exposed severe vulnerabilities in Russia’s air defenses, prompting patriotic outcries and demands for retaliation despite censorship and subdued official responses. Russia’s retaliatory strike on June..

Having around a million casualties from his war with Ukraine, and hundreds of thousands of them dying, Putin faces not only a serious manpower issues for his military, he also faces a serious labor gap.  Now Putin's Ministry of Education is floating the idea they should try to recruit workers from Africa, Latin America, and India, but these are untrained people who will be expected to fill jobs that are far more technical than they capable of performing, in a culture with a language they're don't speak.  That will take time to train them properly.  This isn't a short term fix that can help Putin. 

He's incapable of meeting the needs of his military any longer, and has asked Laos to send "engineering troops to help de-mine the Kursk region".  Laos sent 50 engineers, even "providing rehabilitation support for wounded Russian soldiers."

North Korea is sending "25,000 more troops, 1,000 combat engineers, and 5,000 "military construction personnel to help rebuild Russia's Kursk region," and now Putin’s surrender to Islam:

In March 2025, tens of thousands of Muslims flooded Moscow’s streets for Eid al-Fitr prayers. Loudspeakers blasted the Islamic call to prayer, echoing under the gaze of the Kremlin itself. This wasn’t simply a religious gathering. It was a state-enabled spectacle of Islamic dominance in Russia’s capital—a country once considered the stronghold of Orthodox Christianity. The government not only permitted the display but also provided infrastructure and protection.

He attacked Ukraine only to abandon Russia to elements that will destroy Russia from within.  

Putin has a Central Asian problem.  Former Soviet Republics are, like Kazakhstan, moving in directions that are clearly meant to neutralize Russian influence.  Kazakhstan is negotiating with Pakistan on military issues, and has aims to modernize their military via what they calling multivector diplomacy

Central Asia’s Water Crisis Becoming Russia’s Problem: To the extent that happens—and Moscow’s behavior makes such an outcome ever more probable—three developments are almost certain. 

1. First, the Central Asian countries are likely to distance themselves from Moscow, even as an ever-increasing number of their citizens migrate to Russia to access sufficient water.  
2.  Second, the PRC, Afghanistan, and possibly other countries further from the scene will expand their influence in the region at Russia’s expense.
3. Third, Russia will likely become the site of more ethnic conflict and the political instability that such a development entails. Had Moscow taken a different position on diverting some Siberian river water to Central Asia or even shown itself more sympathetic to the problems of Central Asians, it might have avoided all these unwelcome outcomes. It may now be too late for the Kremlin to recover...............

The Caucuses, which are historically notorious for instability, are growing more and more unstable, and it's clear Russia is so tied up with Ukraine they're losing control involving their own region of Dagestan, along with Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, and now Turkey is involving itself.  Just about everything the Russians have done has exacerbated the issues there. 

The Poles have to worry about everyone.  They don’t like the Ukrainians, the hate the Germans, and they fear the Russians, and rightly so since the Russians are talking about the “final act” an attack against European cities, and presumably they mean nuclear attacks.  Which probably means they’re just talking since you don’t tell the enemy what you’re planning to do.  But Putin is in trouble, and if he can’t do something radical to win this war, he’s toast. 

• Kremlin Increases Anti-Poland Propaganda Executive Summary: Russia is intensifying its hybrid warfare against Poland through cyberattacks, sabotage, and disinformation, while portraying Polish defensive actions as provocations to fuel domestic narratives and justify ongoing hostility. Kremlin propaganda is beginning to..
• Pivotal Poland: Europe’s Rising Power Announcing – Promethean Liberation: Russia’s Emerging National and Regional Movements - The invasion of Ukraine has accelerated the decline of the Russian state and raised the prospects for domestic turmoil. It has resulted in an unsustainable militarization of the economy, falling state revenues, shrinking financial reserves, military failures, and signs of mounting regional and ethnic unrest. Without structural reforms that boost the civilian economy and absent any autonomy among Russia’s 83 republics and regions, the federal structure will become increasingly unmanageable and vulnerable to movements demanding sovereignty or secession.

And now Germany is promoting the idea Ukraine should be part of NATO.  It's not going to happen for a number of reasons, including everyone is getting really tired of Zelenskyy.  

Putin turned Russian politics in its head, and while Stalin never feared the other institutional structures of the communist regime because they all understood Stalin was the new Czar.  Everyone between Stalin and Putin did fear them.  Putin, like Stalin, doesn’t fear them, but he’s not Stalin, and he never built a structure around himself as Stalin did.

If he makes a peace with Ukraine after over three years of war, and a million casualties with the hundreds of thousands of young Russian men dying, billions of dollars in military costs, multi billions lost in economic sanctions, he’s toast.  So, he threatens use of nuclear weapons, which he doesn’t dare do now since Europe fears him and is reaming itself against him.  He’s threatening to attack Europe via an air war for arming Ukraine, but Europe is doing it anyway, and now Germany has deployed military brigades in Lithuania.

Their banking system is collapsing, the Russian people are not happy, but Putin is making it clear he’s in charge, he wants what he wants, and Europe had better be prepared for war, but I do believe there's a von Stauffenberg cabal within his military, and his government, and if that's true, he's not going to last much longer, especially if Trump imposes more economic sanctions on Russia and all those doing business with Russia.