The Russians haven’t been happy with the withdrawal from the Kharkov region and the loss of Izyum, and this wasn’t forgotten just because Putin decided to absorb four new regions into the RF. They perceive this special military operation as lackluster, indecisive, taking too long, leaving Ukraine in too good a position, including being able to hit Russia and kill/intimidate Russians, and they are very angry.
This is because the people in Russia perceive this SMO in a way that doesn’t necessarily have much in common with Putin’s perception. They perceive Ukraine, they pay attention to every little piece of land changing hands and if they think there has been a setback, they will find someone to blame. If Russians withdrew from Bucha or Izyum, and then Russians got slaughtered by the Ukrops, they see this as a betrayal, as leaving our guys at the mercy of those bastards.
Putin, on the other hand, constantly thinks in terms of “if I do this, and it escalates to the point of a nuclear exchange, and all the cities in Russia are nuked, will you still thank me for being decisive and not allowing Donbass to be exposed to attacks”? The people of Russia see a little girl being killed by the Ukrainians and think Putin is to blame because he didn’t hit Ukraine hard enough and fast enough. Putin thinks “will you still think saving this girl was worth it if I get 50 million Russians killed doing it?”
What do I think? I think Putin’s conciliatory stance and measured approach don’t work, because he’s not dealing with a rational opponent. He’s dealing with power-addicted crazy people who behave like street thugs. If you try not to provoke him, it means you’re weak and you fear him, and he’s going to bully you harder. If you stand up to him, it means you’re a threat and he needs to fight and defeat you to prove his dominance. At the very moment Putin decided to make Russia strong, and not a slave to the West, he set it on a course that must put it in a military conflict with America. Trying to avoid it only emboldens the enemy, who thinks you fear them. Trying to stand your ground immediately triggers a dominance fight. It’s no wonder Americans are so obsessed with the stupid ideas such as being an “alpha male”, and with “body language” that needs to show decisiveness and dominance. They think in instinctual, animalistic terms, and see themselves as a pack of wolves or something. I think this is because they implicitly assume that they are invincible in any kind of a conventional conflict, and nuclear war is “unthinkable”, which is somehow interpreted as “only we are allowed to do it, and nobody else would dare”. Basically, the Americans use amygdala instead of the frontal cortex. They don’t like complicated ideas and long articles; they like sound-bites that provoke decisive action.
If you are careful not to give Americans too much of a bloody nose, in order not to make them feel like they have to escalate, they will see you as weak and scared. If you give them a bloody nose, they will immediately think about the nukes. So, how to find a middle path between conceding to serfdom, and having nuclear mutual annihilation? That’s what Putin is trying to navigate. He knows that America is actually weakening as a function of time, and if he could only wait long enough, their economy would lose the ability to power their military, which is intentionally designed to be high-maintenance in order to continuously siphon money into the military-industrial complex. Everything actually costs more to maintain than to purchase. If there’s no money to siphon, things degrade very quickly. However, I just don’t see America going quietly into the night if they have the option to destroy the world first.
The advantage of Putin’s approach, compared with something more sudden and decisive, is that it gives Russia time to adapt and strengthen, and come to terms with the realities of the situation, because a significant percentage of Russians only slowly came to understand that the West is not their friend, and that they are actually hated and seen with contempt. Also, it gives the west time to weaken by bleeding conventional military forces in Ukraine, and by showing weaknesses of their economic and energy policies. These things take time, and you don’t want to attack the enemy too suddenly if they are already making mistakes that will make them weaker in the future.
The bitter pill to swallow is that it’s going to get worse, but there’s an advantage to gradual worsening of the situation, compared to having “business as usual” followed by nuclear destruction; people get to experience the direction things are going, and they get to think about whether they really want to go all the way in that direction. The problem is, I don’t think people decide anything in the West; the political class talks about democracy a lot, but I don’t think that word means what they think it means.