No consultation: Putin’s solo path to war

As the invasion of Ukraine grinds into its second week, many in Russia’s political and foreign-policy elites are scratching their heads over why President Vladimir Putin suddenly decided to abandon a tough diplomatic poker game with the West over NATO expansion – in which he held many cards – and veer into the uncharted territory of war and national isolation.

It may not be the first time a big power has launched an unprovoked attack on another country on false pretenses. But it’s remarkable that Mr. Putin appears to have consulted with almost no one before taking that fateful decision, leaving much of his own policy elite feeling blindsided. And how Russia’s government system, which does have at least some constitutional checks and balances, got to this point, where it appears to have failed so profoundly, is a question that some Russian political experts, particularly opposition-minded ones, are already asking out loud as they try to assess what happened along the way.

Russia has been a highly centralized and militarized autocracy for 1,000 years, and has long sought to protect itself by acquiring territory to serve as a buffer between itself and its outside enemies. But there were always controls, in the form of a czarist dynasty with a traditional aristocracy, or a Communist Party with a collegial Politburo, to moderate the behavior of the person at the top. The system created by Mr. Putin seems to have no effective counterbalances or moderating forces to his decision-making.

Afghanistan and Iraq

That contrasts with more recent examples. In 2002-03, the George W. Bush administration spent months trying to convince the world that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction before invading that country. When the USSR went into Afghanistan in 1979, a collective leadership composed of powerful players in the Politburo made the call.

But when Mr. Putin announced his rationale for war on Feb. 24, he did so with a long, rambling speech that followed a clearly stage-managed meeting of his Security Council. During it, he badgered and scolded members of that powerful body as if they were schoolchildren.

Some say Mr. Putin’s singlehanded grip over the government was inevitable from the time he came to power pledging to restore the “power vertical” after the 1990s, when Russia’s global standing and economy foundered. Others blame conflict with the West, which became intense after a pro-Western street revolt in Kyiv and Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, leading to a creeping militarization of Russian politics. They add that Mr. Putin’s isolation was deeply exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and his own apparent fear of contagion, sharply limiting his contacts with anyone beyond his close inner circle. 

His long tenure may also have played a role. 

“Putin has been in power for too long. I would compare that to a gradual, irreversible case of drug poisoning,” says Georgi Satarov, a former adviser to President Boris Yeltsin, who heads the anticorruption InDem Foundation in Moscow. “His aides have formed an information bubble around him, and he tends to believe only reports given to him by the FSB [security service]. Gradually he has formed a very specific view of himself, the world, and his place in it. And it is, a priori, a distorted image.”

Thousands of mainly urban, educated Russians have taken to the streets in recent days and signed petitions to express their dismay over the unprovoked attack on what has always been regarded as a fraternal country. Most average Russians, however, appear to be experiencing a rally-around-the-flag moment. That may explain a poll released a few days ago by the state-funded VTsIOM agency, which found that 68% supported the “limited military operation” against Ukraine, while 22% did not support it. The impact on Mr. Putin’s vaunted personal popularity rating is murkier. One poll, by the state-owned Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) found that it has surged from 60% to 71%, while a survey by the independent Levada Center puts it at 50-50 in major cities.

Meanwhile, there is a shocked silence from Russia’s large professional foreign-policy community. A few, including people known to have Kremlin access, say they had no idea that an invasion of Ukraine was in the works. They believed the military buildup on Ukraine’s border was meant to get the West’s attention and begin a diplomatic conversation over ending NATO expansion to the east and revising the security order in Europe. Andrei Kortunov, head of the prestigious Russian International Affairs Council, which is affiliated with the Foreign Ministry, told a British TV network, in a breaking voice, that he never believed that an invasion was possible.

Another top expert, Fyodor Lukyanov, head of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, which often advises the Kremlin, told the Monitor that he did not see this coming. 

“I tended to interpret signs of war preparations as signs of sophisticated escalation games,” he says. “We underestimated the commitment of the Russian leadership to change the geopolitical and security environment, which they had played no role in forming and found unacceptable for a long time. When efforts to change it failed, they took this action.”

Alexei Kondaurov, a former Soviet KGB major-general-turned-political-activist, says he is also in shock. “I never thought this could happen. It is sheer madness, and a personal disaster for Putin.”

He says Mr. Putin’s “transformation” happened after the 2014 annexation of Crimea, which Russians lauded.

“He never met with opposition,” Mr. Kondaurov says. “Not when he waged war in Syria, amended the Russian Constitution, or ran for re-election. He got away with everything.”

Stanislav Shushkevich, the former president of Belarus who was replaced 26 years ago by Alexander Lukashenko, shares that perception. “Power is a drug,” he told the Monitor. “Just like [Mr. Lukashenko], he’s been in power too long, and with no democratic constraints, they forget about their state responsibilities.”

All roads now lead to Putin

Mr. Putin came to power in 2000, pledging to restore order after a disastrous post-Soviet decade and build a durable Russian-style democracy. In one of his recent speeches, he even revealed that he once asked United States President Bill Clinton if Russia could join NATO. (He said he did not get an encouraging response.)

In early years, Russia’s political system resembled a big, sprawling corporation with many influential players, and Mr. Putin was like the chairman of the board, says Nikolai Petrov, an expert with Chatham House in London. But that shifted over time.

“We gradually witnessed the construction of one single power pyramid to replace multiple ones, now directly subordinated to Putin,” he says. “The degree of personalization increased in a very direct way. Putin became the single source of legitimacy. He was increasingly less dependent on other players, whether they were regional leaders, corporate heads, government officials, politicians, or even security elites.”

Then came the pandemic, which Mr. Petrov says made things worse. “So, instead of people who might have given him useful advice, he became surrounded by close aides, bodyguards, and such. ... Putin is a capable person, but he is the enemy of the internet, and his isolation has become extreme.”

History, too, looms large in Mr. Putin’s mind.

The Russian president has become obsessed with righting what he sees as historical wrongs, says Gleb Pavlovsky, a former Putin adviser-turned-critic, arguing that he has turned away from his earlier interest in state-building to drag Russia into a confrontation with the West that it cannot win.

“Ukraine was a trigger, not his basic purpose,” says Mr. Pavlovsky. It is the prime example, he says, that Mr. Putin believes Russia was deceived about the West’s intentions to expand NATO into its backyard, and he became certain that Western leaders were planning to use Ukraine as a launching pad for attacking Russia. “Now we are in a battle where it’s an eye for an eye, you hit us and we’ll hit you.”

He adds: “It is not clear that the Putin system can survive.”

[Editor's note: The story was updated to correct the spelling of Alexei Kondaurov's surname.]