Russian elites ask Putin not to negotiate and reinforce the front with total mobilization to achieve victory

Despite the enthusiasm shown by Putin at his end-of-year press conference, the truth is that Russia’s advances, although constant, are limited to rural areas and they arrive at the cost of an unaffordable number of casualties. British defense ministry reports show that Russia would have lost more than 1,500 men a day on average between deaths and injuries during the last three months. In that period, the capture of Pokrovsk, nor that of Velyka Novosilka, nor even that of Chasiv Yar or Kupiansk, has been completed. Since the fall of Vuhledar, on October 2, Russia has not been able to enter any urban center… and only the ruins remained of Vuhledar.

The impatience begins to reign among Putin’s subordinateswho despair at this constant I want and I can’t and begin to blame the president. From the beginning, whether to try to wash the Russian image abroad or not to alarm its own citizens, the Kremlin has insisted on an unrealistic speech full of euphemisms. Until well into the war, it was forbidden to even pronounce that word in public, opting instead for the term “special military operation.”

Instead of ordering a mobilization similar to the one in Ukraine, numerous young people were allowed to leave the country and hardly anyone has been recruited from large cities such as Moscow or Saint Petersburg. Putin wants Ukraine, but at the same time he does not want to take on the wear and tear that this implies nor the disaffection that their war can cause among the people. The result is as expected: the Russians suffer the war in their flesh and in their pockets, soldiers die at a dizzying rate on the battlefield… but in the end it is preferable to call thousands of North Koreans before opting for an unpopular general call to rows.

A problem that is not about numbers

Another thing is that said mobilization would be useful for something. At the Institute for the Study of War, they doubt it. According to the American think tank, The Russian problem is not one of numbers, but of maneuverespecially in the mobility of armored vehicles, something that has prevented Gerasimov’s army from taking advantage of the tactical advantages that its numerical superiority and almost suicidal tactics have given it. The ISW does not believe that Russia needs more soldiersbut to make better use of its resources. Another thing is that this is possible in the face of a more than solvent army like the Ukrainian one, well armed and willing to defend.

Putin has not yet decided on the economic front either. Russia flirts with the war economy, but without fully embracing it. The result, again, is an uncomfortable middle ground in which inflation remains sky-high while GDP growth is very meager. The sources consulted by Meduza assure that the easiest thing, at this point, would be to end the war as soon as possible, but not to do it with a negotiation, but with a victory. To do this, they point out, you have to take things more seriously and stop being shy.

It is not even clear that the Kremlin has a defined idea of ​​what Russia is going to be after the warboth in case of victory and defeat. The economic damage being caused by Western sanctions and the Ukrainian blockade The flow of oil to Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe is tremendous. Does Putin have alternatives beyond the constant nuclear threat? It doesn’t seem like it. China is a bad economic partner because it negotiates from an advantage. As for Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and the rest of Russia’s remaining allies, better not to talk.

In the military field, the situation is similar. It is estimated that, in these three years, Russia has lost more than 600,000 men -we always talk about dead and wounded-, in addition to almost half of the armor it had before February 24. Not only is it being shown that his army is not as fearsome as imagined, but, seeing it so decimated, it is difficult to think that it could be a true threat for the future. Building an empire without weapons is very complicated and demographics don’t help either: fewer people live in Russia right now than eight years ago. Resources, in short, are not unlimited.

Trump: from 24 hours to six months

However, what is most shocking about the information Medusa It is the refusal of a negotiated solution, despite having the presumed support of Donald Trump in said negotiations. Russian distrust of the United States, no matter who occupies the White House, is almost instinctive, the product of many decades of propaganda. Brute force and fait accompli are still preferred over Western collaboration. Although Putin and Trump have repeatedly expressed their willingness to meetit is still unclear exactly what the American president can offer the Russian to convince him to stop his attacks.

He JD Vance’s initial plan, which included the recognition of Crimea and the occupied parts in Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson is not enough for the Kremlin, which does not know how to sell such an agreement after insisting on the inevitability of total victory. Moscow wants, at a minimum, to annex these four regions completely, as it stated in its own constitution in September 2022. Trump knows that Ukraine will never accept something like that, nor would it make sense for it to do so. Hence his promise to “end the war in 24 hours” has changed to “we will try to reach an agreement in the next six months”, as he stated at the beginning of the week.

For his part, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky has been meeting these days with its Western allies of the so-called “Ramstein contact group”, German city where the United States has one of its main European bases. There, Zelensky insisted on the need to continue supporting his country to stop Putin’s imperialist desires and stated that it would be “crazy” to stop now after three years of fighting. In a rather pessimistic speech, he described Trump’s arrival to power as a “turning point” for Europe, assuming that American aid will stop sooner rather than later.