Russia, and Putin are in Trouble: Get Over It!

By Rich Kozlovich

 

Today I posted a June 15, 2022 an article by Dr. Jay Lehr and Tom Harris, entitled, Putin’s Mistakes in Russo/Ukrainian War Are Serious Foreign Policy Blunders.  There were some really odd comments at the end of the article including:

 

"This article is moronic. Russia is systematically destroying the Ukraine army. Russia has very little debt and they have almost every natural resource that the world needs."

 

Well a lot has happened since then, and this article isn't so moronic after all.  Russia just suffered a massive defeat, and while it's true Russia has little debt, it has little capital.  All Russia has to offer the world are natural resources,  and how that plays out remains to be seen,  but the biggest thing to be seen is whether of not Putin can hold on to power.  

 

Even with new well trained reinforcements I don't think Putin can win because morale is in the toilet, the people are now aware this is a farce, the politicians think Putin needs to go and some are demanding his resignation with others demanding he be arrested and I think he's willing to kill all of them to stay in power. 

He's not a Khrushchev who was able to retire, he's made some really vicious decisions and I'm sure there would be pay back, he can't quit, and at some point I'm thinking the military will back a coup since he's placed all the blame for this failure on them. When the Praetorian Guard is threatened, Caesar dies.

 

There’s no misrepresentation of Putin in this article. The KGB was a brutal spy organization and anyone who rose in their ranks was brutal. Do we really believe all those Russian oligarchs who abandoned Putin and recently dropped dead was coincidental? During his rise to power he eliminated oligarchs who didn’t support him and the rest groveled, and made deals with Putin that made him a massively wealthy man, and centered all power in his hands, just like Stalin.  He’s a KGB thug through and through. And it’s also clear he isn’t nearly as smart as we all thought, or he wouldn’t have attacked Ukraine in the first place.

The Demographic numbers for Russia is also problematic for Ukraine as well as the rest of Europe, and whether or not Ukraine can recover after their losses and migration is a issue that time will resolve. It’s also true the Ukraine army is losing hundreds of men, but so is Russia, and none of this is going as planned, and the planning was bad from the very start, and he doesn’t have the demographic potential to occupy an area as large as Ukraine. There’s more to winning a war than what’s being touted.

Russian equipment isn’t all that great, Russian troop morale is in the sewer, Russian leadership is incompetent, Russia’s already used up their best troops, and they weren’t that good, and he’s running out of potential troops, that’s why he’s had to go to outside forces, and many of them have refused to fight. Russian mothers are pounding on doors demanding to know what’s happened to their sons, and Russian troops coming home are telling horror stories turning the people against Putin and this war, and he doesn’t have the economic resources to reproduce all that military hardware he’s already lost. He may end up with areas in Eastern Ukraine when this is over since there’s a large pro-Russian population there, but after it’s all said and done, that’s hardly being victorious.

Russian national debt is quite low compared to America, but their ability to generate capital is terrible compared to America. Putin can’t even finance his pension funds for the retired. Funding this military mess has further weakened their economy possibly beyond repair. They’ve now given up on the expansion of their Black Sea fleet, because they’re broke, and after 2024 when America starts pumping oil again the price of oil will drop and seriously impact his economy, Putin may not be in power then.

Russia has massive natural resources that’s true, and an incompetent government that’s embraced the system of the USSR, a sure loser, so what good are resources that aren’t being developed because of incompetents, stupidity, and corruption, and the level of corruption in Putin’s Russia is beyond the pale, because that corruption is tied to murder.

Ukraine has been a stunningly corrupt for years, but since Putin’s government is even more corrupt and murderous, that’s hardly a convincing argument to justify this invasion. There are no good guys in this, Putin is just the worst of the lot by far, and NATO didn’t break any agreement with Russia. That agreement was with the Soviet Union, and it no longer exists.

My final thought for those who are so supportive of Putin. Subscribe to Geopolitical Futures, Foreign Affairs, Stratfor, Jamestown Foundation, just to name a few I follow, and you may wish to read a book, maybe even two.