Putin has 12 months left: what the Kremlin owner is calculating in Ukraine-2024
So let's try to look in 2024, using not the natural desire to have optimism about the success of Ukraine, but by facts, analysis and dynamic approach to forecasting. The events of 2024 and the development of the war will depend on the five components, which are below. Vladimir Putin has about 12-13 months of reserve resources-human and material-to maintain the current intensity of hostilities and pressing to Ukraine and Ukrainian cities, villages, towns.
The mobilization in September-October 2023 was extremely unpopular in Russia, where Putin, given the need to "translate" for another presidential term in March 2024, is limited in attracting mobilization resources in the largest cities-Moscow and St. Petersburg. The whole burden of mobilization lies on the poorer Russian regions and ethnic minorities. The economical situation does not look much better.
A third of the Russian state budget, which traditionally has enormous social obligations, for 2024 are expenditures on the army and weapons. But one thing is to bury these expenditures, and another thing is to finance them with some income. Currently, the Kremlin does not have a plan to collect some additional income - greater than those collected this year. The foreign borrowing market is closed. Russia should finance Belarus hard, buying Belarusian bonds.
The mediator in this business is the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, which actually forces Russian banks and investment groups to lend the regime of Alexander Lukashenko. Putin has recently met with 80 oligarchs in his residence in Novo-Ogaryovo, announcing taxes. To fill the budget, neither oil and gas wages, income tax, nor value added tax. The Kremlin's plans for 2024 depend on the results of an entire list of important international events that should take place next year.
Only if all these results are met by Moscow's expectations - it will be able to count on international support for its interests. But this is not that it is not guaranteed, but quite unlikely. That's what Putin calculates in 2024: like Joseph Stalin, Putin is paranoid. Any big problem that can happen in 2024 will only worsen this paranoid state and will prevent Putin from making some effective decisions.
The breakthrough of the front line by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, a deep internal economic crisis in Russia (unemployment, inflation, mass bankruptcy), any manifestations of disagreement within the Russian political class, any protest potential, even if it is silent, in Putin's eyes will look like The beginning of its end. He will have to focus on cementing his regime - and even his goals in the war against Ukraine will go to the background.
Putin will become even more uncomfortable for both his Kremlin environment and for his generals and his army. They already look in his eyes as failures who have not coped with the "grandeur of their mission. " Russian oligarchs are already afraid of Putin on the eve of the budget fees planned for the next year, and yet Putinism has always stood with one foot in support of the oligarchs who cemented the stability of the economy.
At the same time, there is nowhere to complain about Putin, there is no appeal or system of restraint and balance in Russia. Vladimir Putin is seriously counting on internal destabilization in Ukraine when Ukrainians began to be disappointed in the actions of military-political leadership of the country, in economic realities, began to publicly demonstrate fatigue from the war, from daily explosions and the need to serve in the Armed Forces.
Putin deliberately achieves the war to the situation where Ukraine must carry out additional mobilization that Russia itself has already carried out in the fall of this year. Calculation is logical: the Russian population is larger in size, and therefore longer is capable of replenishing the ranks of the army. Obviously, the Kremlin will use any methods of propaganda and information operations to multiply pessimistic sentiment in Ukraine.
For this purpose, bloggers from social networks can and will be involved, because unfortunately, information cleanliness in Ukraine is not discussed. First, the satisfactory state of the Ukrainian economy at a serious level is guaranteed by international partners-EU, G7, USA. This does not mean easy, but the government will be able to cope with all its financial obligations. Safety and defense funds will definitely be enough.
Secondly, nor is the level of the Ukrainian economy now being strong-Ukraine is not used to a rich life, so it is not difficult for millions of citizens and citizens to live for another year of economic tests of wartime. The consolidation of the population is small, the banking system works steadily, pensions are paid, the Internet and communication work, energy is still available, available food on retail networks.
This is enough that without unnecessary complaints and someone's attempts to organize a conditional "protest of the poor" to live at least another year of the war. The year that Russia will live is significantly more difficult. Third, Ukraine is a politically adult country. Everything that Putin wants to blow internal destabilization and disappointment in Ukraine is called the growth of political demand for the fastest victory. And this is normal. It is normal to want to defeat faster and not later.
Ukrainian society has formed this demand-and the military-political leadership will satisfy it. Although any elections are not discussed yet, in the future there is a popular politician who for electoral purposes will say, "I would have won this war faster. " Therefore, both President Vladimir Zelensky and the General Staff of the Armed Forces should not work with shorter deadlines than pessimistic forecasts.
We are unlikely to have reasons to speak about Ukraine and Russia's readiness of any peaceful negotiations, but we should prepare for the fact that diplomacy in 2024 will play a much larger role in our war. The mother of a bloody massacre in the heart of Europe and not try to achieve something at the level of diplomacy - this does not fit in the brains of neither European nor American politicians.
If Putin looked in the eye of the event as a leader who really has an impact on the post -Soviet region, now he looks like a mummar Gaddafi - an extremely specific dictator who interferes with everyone, no one is trusting, but no one knows how well bring it closer to the end. We have an interesting memory of William Burns, the current head of the CIA, in his book "The Back Channel".
When Burns arrived in Gaddafi in his Shatter in the Libyan Desert on the eve of the Civil War in Libya, which Gaddafi was killed, he was already in a very strange stage, where he considered himself the most influential politician of Africa and the Middle East.
Accordingly, Gaddafi was waiting for the appropriate attitude to himself and read Burns a two -hour lecture, in which he spoke about the details of his vision of all the main events of the region, sincerely believing that it was interested in someone. But the fact that Gaddafi's thoughts about Israel, Palestine, Egypt or Saudi Arabia were no longer interested in anyone. The same is happening with Putin now.
He sincerely thinks that his position is important in the international arena, but no one is interested in either his vision, his comments or even his threats. And like none of the heavyweights of international politics wanted to meet Gaddafi, so no one now burns with the desire to talk to Putin. The role of the mediator in an attempt to reach at least some arrangements can take over the Turkish leader Recep TaiP Erdogan - he has repeatedly offered his services.
He has experience in talking to Putin Finnish President Sauli Niintyo. In addition, there are policies not burdened with official positions - for example, former NATO Secretary General Anders Fog Rasmussen, former US security advisor John Bolton, former US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo. Or someone else. They could theoretically offer Putin the classic path of Knut and gingerbread-a long-term plan of exit from the sanction pressure in response to the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine.
Perhaps gradual. It should be expected that in the course of these negotiations, the idea of introducing a UN peacekeeping contingent for the demarcation line may be re -emerged. In this case, Putin will be able to declare the Russians that he "destroyed the most radical Nazi elements in Ukraine, reaching his goals and demonstrating Russia's military power.
" Forms of diplomacy around our war in 2024 may be different, but they will definitely be - and we should get used to the fact that they will not be able to wave them. ***** These five theses show what we can imagine the events of 2024. Currently, in the coming weeks and months, Putin has a rather pragmatic goal to show that the Russian army is able to fight even against NATO weapons - it needs it for the future, as if he would not imagine him.
Neither the plan, nor even plan, and Putin is not particularly especially - he can simply continue all the same as we see now. It is very important to mention that in February 2022 the invasion happened after the President of Zelensky's Presidential intentions in Donbass and Southern Ukraine - a large modern hospital in Kramatorsk, airport and technological university in Mariupol, Renovation in Kherson, which has already started to accept international flights before the war.
Putin could not allow the quality of life in Ukraine and the territories where he brought the "Russian World", was strikingly different. We now see that Russia cannot give the occupied territories not that investments, jobs or prospects - but only prisons, arrests, robberies, Russian passports and military service.
The only argument that Russia could theoretically have in international discussions is an argument about the best quality of life in the occupied territories than in the territories controlled by Ukraine. But this is not about it and even absurd to talk about it. Before the war in Ukraine was a popular book "Why nation declines" Daron Ajmoglu and James Robinson.
The conclusion in this book, based on the analysis of hundreds of years of development of different countries, was quite simple: countries with a shortage of freedom inevitably slip into the abyss. There is no historical example where a totalitarian country would become successful. Freedom deficiency has programmed Russia to lose - and 2024 may well be a head in a book about why another free nation has fallen.