Neither Putin nor the Russian Federation would Survive a Major War with Ukraine, Felshtinsky Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 12 – Vladimir Putin has massed Russian forces on the border with Ukraine in order to test the United States. What he will do next remains unclear but one thing is certain, Yury Feltshtinsky says. If the Kremlin leader does launch a major war in Ukraine, it will be the end not only of his regime but of his country.

            Seven years ago, the New York-based Russian analyst says, Putin was told that Ukraine would not resist even in the Donbass. But Ukrainians showed they were willing to fight and so Moscow refrained from launching a major invasion by its regular army troops (gordonua.com/news/war/felshtinskiy-rezhim-putina-stabilen-rovno-do-teh-por-poka-rossiya-ne-razvyazhet-bolshuyu-voynu-1548341.html).

            Now, Ukraine is in a much better position to resist. Not only does it have a better-organized government and military but it has more allies; and consequently, Putin will have to think that the situation is other than it in fact is to launch a major invasion now. But the Kremlin leader lives in an alternative reality and so that danger remains a possibility.

            That makes it impossible to say whether everything now in place is simply “the latest bluff” by the Kremlin “or preparation for a real war. The only thing I know,” Feltshtinsky says, is that if [Putin] begins this war, this will be the end of the Russian Federation and Putin’s regime.”

According to Felshtinsky, “Putin’s regime is stable as long as Russia does not unleash a major war. Any major war begun by Russia will lead to a third world war, to the defeat of Russia, to the disintegration of the Russian Federation and to the crushing of the Putin regime, just as the Afghan war led to the fall of Soviet power and the disintegration of the USSR.”

It is quite possible that Putin doesn’t believe in that scenario, but that is what will happen, the analyst says. But he may recognize the danger and not go that far. Instead, he may use the concentration of forces now to change the status of the Donbass by absorbing that region into Russia. No one could stop him, but such a move would be politically ridiculous.

“Annexing earlier seized territories is a completely senseless step,” the analyst says. “It changes nothing in the status quo but only creates a new conflict situation.” But Putin may want that outcome for his own reasons, and he may not care how anyone reacts to what he does either at home to Navalny or abroad to Ukraine.

Negotiating with Putin is a fool’s errand, Felshtinsky suggests, because “for Putin, negotiations are not an instrument for reaching agreements but only a form of military cleverness, a preparatory operation in advance of a new crime.”

The Kremlin leader is “ever more inadequate and acts without a glance at Russian and world public opinion, at his allies, which he now has almost none, and even more at his opponents which are becoming with each passing year ever more numerous both in Russia and abroad.”