After the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin expected quick action. According to available information, the Russian president believed his selfproclaimed “military special operation” would dominate Ukrainian territory and quickly remove Volodymyr Zelenskyy from power. Nothing is further from reality. On the anniversary of the war, specialists in the main international relations publications take stock of Putin’s mistakes and successes.
According to them, the Kremlin’s biggest omissions include mistakes in military strategy, underestimating NATO aid to the invaded country and minimizing Ukrainian mobilization. On the other hand, the Russian government was right in forecasting economic resilience to Western sanctions, maintaining popular support, and betting that Putin would not be completely isolated on the international stage.
In Foreign Affairs, a text by RAND Corporation’s Russian defense specialist, Dara Massicot, entitled “What Putin Got Wrong About” lists the Russian president’s misunderstandings, which center on military strategy. And they began, according to the author, with the planning of the operation, which was kept secret even by their top government, in a kind of “secret operation”.
According to various sources, only Putin and his closest associates in the Kremlin, the secret services and the military planned the operation. A recent report by the Londonbased Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) says even senior members of the Russian general staff have not been briefed on the plans.
As a result, Russia is ignoring its own military doctrine that weeks of air and missile strikes should be the first phase of an offensive in what strategists are calling the “early war period.” This move is considered crucial as it destroys the opponent’s resilience. Ground forces will arrive later, when defensive capabilities and roads have already been cleared.
Instead, Putin’s ground forces were deployed from day one. They spread across four fronts simultaneously into Ukrainian territory and, rather than concentrating fire, rushed forward. There were air raids against some positions, but not decisive. Probably because they wanted to avoid turning the country into a scorched earth as they planned to put an ally in power after Zelenskyy’s assassination or arrest. In other words, the infrastructure was spared.
“The result was catastrophic. Russian forces rushing to fulfill what they believed were orders to reach specific areas within specific time frames violated their logistics and were cornered by Ukrainian units on certain routes. They were then relentlessly bombarded by artillery and antitank weapons,” Massicot wrote.
A report in the New York Times described the logistical preparation on site as disastrous. The Russian military even used Sovietera maps, and there was a shortage of food for the soldiers.
The Kremlin’s bet on fleeing the country’s government which Putin described as consisting of “drug addicts and Nazis” in the early days and the Ukrainians welcoming the Russians has not been confirmed. According to a Washington Post report, Russian intelligence services had conducted a secret prewar poll that showed only 48 percent of the population were “ready to defend Ukraine,” and only 30 percent supported Zelenskyy.
However, the same poll indicated that 84% of the population would view Russian soldiers as “occupiers, not liberators,” and this was overlooked. Instead of surrendering, “the Ukrainians united to defend their sovereignty, enlisted in the armed forces and formed territorial defense units that resisted the Russian attack,” analyzes Massicot.
internal support
Finally, Putin did not expect the West to unite in support of Ukraine. Heavily dependent on Russian fossil fuels, Europe is unwilling to pay the price of turning directly on Moscow. But NATO countries closed their ranks, looked for energy alternatives and donated weapons on a scale not seen since World War II.
However, there have also been achievements on the part of the President of Russia, as he lists in an article in Foreign Policy magazine entitled “What Russia thinks was right” by Stephen Walt, Professor of International Relations at Harvard.
First, Putin went to war confident that the Russian economy would survive possible Western sanctions. Despite tough economic embargoes, GDP was estimated to fall by 2.5% in 2022, contrary to those who had predicted a fall of more than 10%. In early February, Putin said he expected little growth this year:
“It has come as a surprise to many of those who have tried and are trying to trouble us how effectively we are combating threats to the economy and certain manufacturing sectors,” the president said at a televised event.
Second, Walt argued, Putin correctly assessed that the Russian people would be willing to pay high prices and that military setbacks would not lead to his downfall. “He may have started the war hoping it would be quick and cheap, but his decision to press on after initial setbacks and eventually to mobilize reserves and fight reflected his belief that most Russian people would agree with his decision would, and he could quell any opposition that arose,” Walt wrote.
In addition, according to the researcher, Putin knew that the war would not damage Russia’s image in general. Although he is now viewed as an evil figure in Western powers, diplomatic relations are normal in other key countries such as India, Saudi Arabia and Israel and until last week Brazil, when President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva strongly condemned the invasion. “The war did not help Russia’s global image (…), but the tangible opposition was limited to a subset of the world’s nations,” he said.
After all, Putin rightly understood that NATO would not be directly involved in the conflict. New shipments of weapons are arriving every day, but there are no troops on the ground at least for now. “We are trying to stop Russia without direct interference from American troops. Whether this approach will work remains to be seen,” Walt wrote.