This is Putin’s biggest mistake – and how he will be remembered

Writing in The Independent a week ago, I concluded an analysis of the west’s failure even to try to understand today’s Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, like this: “If Russia does invade Ukraine, it will not be a vanity project dreamt up by Putin to restore the USSR, nor will it be an operation undertaken in a fit of pique to teach Ukraine a lesson. Putin is neither – despite many preconceptions to the contrary – an imperial nostalgic nor a gambler. It will be because Putin, as Russia’s president, believes that his country’s security is threatened – and threatened, let there be no doubt about it, by us.”

That invasion has now happened. According to early reports, Russia launched multiple attacks on mainly military targets in the early hours of Thursday. This suggests it has chosen what might be described as the maximalist option, and that the purpose, thus, goes far beyond preserving and consolidating Russian influence in the eastern area of Donbas while letting the rest of the country go its own way.

Russia’s objective seems to be nothing less than to neutralise Ukraine militarily, and to ensure, as Russia would see it, that the country does not – and will not in the foreseeable future – present a security threat to Russia.

Much remains uncertain, including whether Putin plans to remove the current, democratically elected government, and whether he intends to leave Russian forces to occupy part, or all, of the country. Also uncertain at this stage is whether Ukrainians will be able, or have the will, to fight. The Nato alliance, and the United States and the UK separately, have all made clear in recent weeks that they will not send troops to fight for Ukraine, and that any response will be limited to measures such as sanctions.

It could be argued that, in one sense, this gave Moscow a green light. Some, though, might argue that a degree of ambiguity was in order.

What should already be clear, however, is that in launching a multi-pronged military attack on an independent country – a big country in area, with more than 44 million people, who have twice in the past 20 years successfully risen up against governments that displeased them – Putin is taking an enormous risk, both for Russia and for his own position.

Now it may be that Russia’s plans are well formulated in military terms, and entail limited objectives that can be achieved in relatively short order and with negligible resistance. Which is how Russia successfully seized the Crimean peninsula in 2014 – assisted, it should be said, by a local population largely sympathetic to Russia. And, just maybe, operations designed to devastate Ukraine’s whole military capability will pass off as successfully, awarding Putin another, even greater victory – on which he could perhaps bow out in a more triumphant blaze of glory.

But it is hard to see that any of this can be guaranteed. Ukraine is not Crimea. What is more, as Putin said in his statement announcing the start of military operations, Russia’s purpose is not just the “demilitarisation” of Ukraine, but what he termed its “denazification” – reflecting a Russian fear that post-Soviet Ukraine has permitted the revival of right-wing nationalist groups that trace their origins to the Europe of the 1930s. It is true that such elements exist in Ukraine, and that they enjoy a certain influence. But they are marginal.

Ukraine has a democratically elected government, and a president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who is of Jewish origin. Russia’s increasingly shrill attempts to identify the current Ukrainian government and the country as a whole with a revival of Nazism are a travesty of the reality. If Russia is going to embark on what Putin called “denazification”, this could involve arrests – and worse – of numbers of civilians, which would in turn make military operations far more complex, and unpredictable, for the Russian invaders.

The central reason why I – and, it has to be said, a minority of western Russia-watchers – regarded overt Russian military action against Ukraine as unlikely was that such a venture appeared so risky, and so contrary, in almost every way to both Russia’s, and Putin’s own, interests. The idea that military action could summarily end Ukraine’s westward-looking aspirations and refashion the country in a way that was more to Russia’s liking seemed at very least a massive risk on Moscow’s part, and very probably a catastrophic miscalculation.

For all Putin’s theatrical efforts, at the televised meeting of his Security Council on Monday, to present the decision that paved the way for military action as a collective decision, the responsibility for what happens will lie squarely at his door, as president of Russia and its commander-in-chief. And if it turns out to have been a miscalculation, it will have been Putin’s mistake, and undoubtedly the biggest mistake of what has – until now – been seen in the Russian context, at least, as a successful two decades in power.

Military difficulties – becoming bogged down, mounting casualties, the possibility of urban guerrilla warfare – would all take the gloss off any early successes very quickly. The appetite of Russians for war, least of all war against a neighbouring country where many have family and friends, is not at all certain – though casting the campaign as the anti-Nazi struggle of the age might help persuade some sections of Russian opinion. And while swiftly withdrawing and claiming victory – leaving the west to pick up the bill for rebuilding the country – could limit the damage to an extent, the consequences for Russia will, under almost any circumstances, be more than an impoverished and ruined country next door.

Post-invasion Ukraine will be more universally and more fervently anti-Russian than it already is. One of Putin’s complaints has been that today’s Ukraine has been building its sense of nationhood, at least in part, on casting Russia as the enemy, both now and historically. That will be doubly so, and with even more justification, after this Russian invasion.

If Moscow proceeded to install a pro-Russian government, it would help only for as long as that government could survive, while cultivating the sort of sullen and uncooperative, if not outright rebellious, population that is common to all occupations. In sum, Russia has now “lost” Ukraine even more finally than it already had, and effectively ceded it, in the longer term, to the western bloc.

Beyond Ukraine, Russia has ensured the revival of what had been a flailing western alliance, along with Nato’s likely augmentation to take in Finland and Sweden on Russia’s northern borders. From today, and possibly for years to come, Russia will also become an international pariah, excluded from normal international economic and diplomatic relations and cold-shouldered by the western countries whose respect it craved.

Putin – and many Russians – might counter that, from their perspective, they had been treated as outsiders regardless of any concessions or overtures on their part, so they had little to lose. Russia can also be expected to turn to other, more convenient partners, such as China, India, or up-and-coming African countries. Such a turn may leave Moscow less isolated than it would otherwise have been, but it does not match Russia’s image of itself as a European country.

In all, the invasion of Ukraine presents Putin with one of the most perilous junctures of his 20-plus years in power. He has remained in office for as long as he has thanks to an uncanny ability to sense what Russians want almost before they want it, but also by bringing stability to people’s lives, improving living standards, and putting Russia back on the international map.

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By invading Ukraine, he has certainly secured his own as well as Russia’s position on that map. But if military operations go badly, or if living standards in Russia start to slip, he risks popular discontent – or a palace coup. Despite efforts to present the invasion as a collective decision, it is not at all clear how much support it enjoys among Russia’s elite, let alone the population at large, which has been widely averse to military adventures.

For Putin himself, however, the calculus may be different. As Russia’s president, he may genuinely believe, along with colleagues of a similar age, that Ukraine’s choice to join Nato presents an immediate and existential threat to his homeland. He recently described Nato membership for Ukraine as a Russian “red line”.

And from that he may conclude that by invading Ukraine, he is saving Russia. In that sense, Putin may be convinced that he has chosen wisely, even if it costs him his job and his reputation as a successful Russian leader. Seen like this, it is not the judgement of the next few days or weeks that will determine whether invading Ukraine was a mistake, but the judgement of posterity.