Putin Chooses War

In his 2014-2015 wars with Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin was hypersensitive to casualties. I imagine he remains so, even as earlier today as he ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 

As I reported back in 2014, soldiers’ bodies were secretly transported back to Russia in special refrigerated trucks. Burials took place in the early morning hours. Grieving parents received payment on their son’s insurance only if they pledged to remain silent on the cause of his death. Associations of mothers of fallen soldiers were subjected to harassment and closure. Combat deaths were declared and remain a state secret. 

We now know the scope of Putin’s ambition with respect to Ukraine. His goal is not the slicing off of pieces of Ukrainian territory, such as in the Donbas. It is not the building of a land bridge from that region to Crimea. Rather, it is the annihilation of the Ukrainian political system and the installation of a government that follows the orders of the Kremlin. 

And so it is that as of February 24, 2022, war between two large armies is underway. Russia has some 190,000 troops that are invading Ukraine from three sides. The Russian-backed, self-declared republics in the Donbas have militia forces estimated at 34,000. Ukraine has a standing army of 215,000 not counting reserves, the second-largest in Europe after Russia. 

Ukraine's army is not the same one that battled separatist forces and Russian regulars almost a decade ago. Since then, it has received a steady supply of lethal weapons from its Western supporters. The upcoming battles will show the  effectiveness of a better-equipped Ukrainian army, motivated by the defense of their homeland.

Putin has already previewed the impending brutality of his proposed annihilation of a democratic Ukraine. He intends to imprison (or worse) those on a kill list as he has already done in occupied Crimea and the Donbas. 

The course of battle is developing at a rapid pace. The two armies first confronted each other face-to-face on the Donbas line of demarcation. As recognized by Russia, the Donetsk and Luhansk republics laid claim not only to the 60% of occupied Donbas, but also to the 40% of the Donbas currently under the protection of the Ukrainian army. Accordingly, DNR-LNR have instructed Ukrainian troops protecting their part of the Donbas to leave – an invitation that Ukraine has refused. 

We are currently in a fog of war as Russia’s military carries out something of a “shock and awe” plan. Accounts of the shelling of military and civilian targets, including in Kyiv, are flooding in. Apparently, Russian troops and tanks are entering Ukrainian territory from three directions. There is little information on the intensity of battle and casualties. We do not know how well Ukraine’s modernized military is performing in this first stage of war. 

In this Russian-Ukrainian War, Ukraine is facing regular Russian troops for the first time since August of 2014. We should judge the outcome of these battles not in terms of absolute victory or defeat but in terms of relative casualties. Sadly, the outnumbered and outgunned Ukrainian side will incur losses, likely heavy ones, but if they can cause equal damage to regular Russian troops, it will be a victory, albeit a sad one. 

Putin invoked state secrecy to hide the 1,000 or so Russian casualties in 2014 and 2015. In this second war, Putin will be confronted with a  number of killed and wounded too large to hide behind state secrecy.

Ukraine’s increasingly competent intelligence service has purportedly discovered (as reported by Reuters) that the Russian army has ordered 45,000 plastic body bags. This is not to say that Russian armed forces expect such astronomical casualties, but it suggests casualties in the thousands. 

In the Afghan War, which went a long way in explaining the collapse of the Soviet Union so bemoaned by Putin, 15,000 Russian soldiers were killed and 60,000 wounded to live out their lives as cripples, drug addicts and broken men.

Putin is already feeling pressure from the mothers of soldiers, who report that their conscripted sons are being forced to sign contracts for service in Ukraine on the grounds that there are not enough foot soldiers for the Ukraine operation. 

Putin is counting on those in the West who believe that his invasion does not affect them. Unfortunately, we are all potentially affected. We now know that Putin does not operate according to the rules of rationality. He has implied the threat of nuclear war if he views the West as intervening in his massacre of Ukraine. As expressed in the Military Times, the build up of U.S. troops near the Ukraine border could be grounds for a Russian miscalculation, which would plunge the world into catastrophic territory of the unknown. 

For now, public opinion surveys show that the Russian people have bought into the threat of a NATO attack, but they do not attribute blame to Ukraine, rather to the U.S. In general, the Russian people think positively  of their Ukrainian brethren. They were willing to welcome the Crimean annexation on the grounds Putin was returning “our Crimea,” and he did so at no cost of Russian life. Surveys of public opinion now find a deep sense of unease, which suggests the absence of  a Crimean “lift,” especially among young Russians who must fight the war.

Putin is known as a risk taker, but in starting a war against people toward whom Russians bear no grudge, he is taking the greatest risk of his lifetime. 

Paul Roderick Gregory is a professor of economics at the University of Houston, Texas, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a research fellow at the German Institute for Economic Research.