Putin has Long Thought that Everything is about Money but War in Ukraine is Proving Him Wrong, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 27 – Having risen to power in the 1990s and consolidated his position when Moscow was flooded with petrodollars, Vladimir Putin has long been convinced that he can address almost any problem with a combination of money and repression, Vladimir Pastukhov says.

            The Kremlin leader has even adopted this strategy as far as the war in Ukraine is concerned, the London-based Russian analyst says, believing that he can compensate for the reluctance of Russians to go and fight there by offering ever larger amounts of money to get them to do so (t.me/v_pastukhov/1221 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/postepenno-prihodit-osoznanie-togo-chto-vojna-eto-ne-pro-dengi).

            But two-and-one-half years into this conflict, Pastukhov argues, it is dawning on Putin and his regime that he can’t solve that problem or perhaps many others with money alone. At some point, the Kremlin won’t have enough money to overcome growing popular reluctance to go to war.

            That is bringing closer the day “the critical moment when money will cease to play a significant role in these calculations of life and death,” the analyst says; and “at that very moment, a real war will begin in and for Russia, one in which everything will become different” because Putin won’t have the resource he has relied on so often in the past.