The winds of war have shifted for Russian President Vladimir Putin, blowing away the complacency of a tuned-out Russian citizenry now feeling the repercussions of a conflict waged in their names.
Ukraine has redirected its sophisticated attack-drone arsenal from stalemated front lines to target critical Russian energy infrastructure from the Black Sea to the Baltic. The war now in its fifth year has finally crashed into the Russian homeland, shattering civilians’ sense of remove from a faraway conflict they’ve been led to believe is justified revenge on a demonized neighbor.
Ukraine’s drones have been hitting apartment buildings and damaging oil refineries and export facilities for the past few months. That has led to gas rationing, rising prices and suspended fuel deliveries from Russia’s Rostov region across occupied Ukrainian territory along the Sea of Azov to Russian-annexed Crimea.
Bombs and hardships that hadn’t hit Russians where they live are now daily occurrences, turning public opinion against the war that Putin will have a hard time ending even if he decides he wants to. The extent to which Putin has lost control over the narrative of his Ukraine gambit exploded in visible mortification last week, hours before the Kremlin leader’s high-profile event drawing 20,000 business leaders from 130 countries to his hometown for the annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
As the business and political elite still willing to mingle with an indicted war criminal gathered for the economic mecca dubbed the “Russian Davos,” Ukrainian drones struck an oil depot, sending black smoke billowing into the air behind the SPIEF venue.
The Russian economy has been corrupted by the Kremlin’s all-in investment in the military-industrial complex and the hefty signing bonuses and death benefits paid to keep luring thousands of young Russian men into the meat grinder each month. More than 40 percent of the national budget for the past year and the one coming has been devoted to recruiting and equipping fighters. The money from diminishing hard-currency reserves bankrolls manufacture of tanks, armored vehicles and missiles needed to pummel the length and breadth of Ukraine.
Putin is not thought to be contemplating an end to his war. He faces new threats to social stability and his power should he agree to a ceasefire with Ukraine and stand down the tens of thousands of recruits now fighting his war. An end to both armed combat and the factory rollout of more weapons and ammunition would swell the ranks of jobless Russians with young war veterans suddenly losing their combat pay and post-war employment prospects.
In “The Inertia of Russia’s War: Why Putin Can’t End the Conflict,” an analysis published last month by Foreign Affairs, the publication noted Russia’s economy and society have been “reorganized around war, creating a powerful set of domestic incentives that makes ending the war difficult, and even dangerous for Russia’s president.
“The war has produced a self-sustaining institutional and economic order that constrains even Putin. Russia’s fiscal and industrial base has become structurally dependent on military spending, so much so that entire regions and sectors cannot survive without it.
“Russia’s shadow economy, labor markets, regional budgets, social hierarchies, and political incentives have all been reordered around the conflict,” the analysis argued. “In the process, combat pay and expanded defense wages have given millions of Russians in depressed regions their first real income gains in years.”
Putin’s regime “cannot roll back these changes without exposing the country’s vast inequality or without creating a large class of aimless, incomeless veterans.”
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has taken advantage of Putin’s misfortunes by suggesting in-person, one-on-one peace talks with the Kremlin leader to negotiate a ceasefire. Putin rejected the request, telling a PBS News Hour correspondent over the weekend that “there is no point in meeting — the only purpose for the Ukrainian side would be to stop the advance of our armed forces.”
The Russian leader’s bluster revealed his declining options for assistance now that the two most powerful leaders he could turn to — Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump — have essentially turned their backs on his Ukraine aggression or any further role in trying to end it.
Xi hosted both Trump and Putin in separate high-pageantry meetings in Beijing last month. Neither presidential guest of the Communist leader left the brief ceremonial visits with much to show for their bilateral relationships. Xi gave no ground on Trump’s trade and tariff bullying, and Putin left without China’s commitment to finalize a deal to construct the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline.
China’s world-leading production of renewable energy resources has reduced the country’s need for fossil-fuel imports, leaving Xi with a declining interest in oil imports from Russia or commodities from the United States under Trump’s chaotic tariff policies.
Zelensky taunted Trump in his appeal to Putin to bypass the distracted U.S. president and that he and Putin engage directly. Zelensky also goaded Putin, noting he is “fully dependent on China and you too will have to fight much harder for your own existence, not Russia’s, but your own.”
The monthslong spree of Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian oil storage, refining and exporting facilities has confronted Russian car owners with spiking costs for gasoline and in many areas limits on how much can be purchased. In the western Russian region of Karelia, drivers are limited to 20 liters, or a little over five gallons.
As Ukraine gains clout in the ongoing war with Russia, Zelensky has exuded more confidence in dealing with Putin. Ahead of last month’s celebration on Moscow’s Red Square on the May 9 anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany, the Ukrainian president announced he was issuing a “permit” for the Kremlin to hold its annual military parade without fear of Ukrainian drone attacks.
Putin had ordered the parade be conducted without the usual thunderous display of tanks, missiles and sophisticated aircraft. This year, in fear of Ukrainian drones blasting the Kremlin show of force in the midst of dignitaries and columns of soldiers, Putin ordered the munitions and war vehicles be excluded from the procession.
Putin, channeling Trump, claimed in his address to the starkly reduced crowd that the war in Ukraine was coming to an end soon. The parade meant to project Russia’s military might instead showed its new vulnerability to Ukrainian retaliation. The deaths-to-injuries ratio has also shifted to higher fatalities due to explosive-laden drones hitting soldiers and impeding medical evacuation, which analysts say has never been a high priority for Russian infantry commanders.
“They simply leave their wounded on the battlefield,” said Seth Jones, a senior military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Carol J. Williams has just published her first book of fiction: Dispatches From Moscow: Spies and Lies “American correspondent Natalie Chester falls for Soviet diplomat Anatoly Kuznetsov as they navigate Chernobyl’s aftermath, KGB surveillance, and the collapsing Cold War. Based on the author’s experiences, this sweeping romance captures forbidden love against perestroika’s historic upheaval—where idealism faces deadly consequences.” Reviews and ordering information here.
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What a beautifully written article, Carol Williams … from that opening paragraph to this final devastating summation: “They simply leave their wounded on the battlefield.”