Putin’s Wars: From Chechnya to Ukraine — atrocity and over-reach

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The performance of Russia’s army in the war that it unleashed on Ukraine has baffled pundits — at home, as well as abroad. While many in the west are puzzled by the failings of what seemed to be a military powerhouse, in Russia commentators are increasingly unable to contain their vengeful fury at battlefield setbacks.

Take Vladimir Solovyov, one of Russian state TV’s best-known presenters. Back in spring, he championed the army as a symbol of national pride. Now — following Ukraine’s recapture of the town of Kherson — Solovyov has taken to dark philosophical monologues, decrying the military humiliation. “We need to work out who is responsible for the mistakes and correct them,” he raged on Sunday, demanding retribution against those officials who “lied” about the military’s powers — and its failure to implement “the orders of our supreme commander.”

It makes ghastly, if compelling, viewing. Yet it is not without irony: as the political scientist Mark Galeotti argues in his new book Putin’s Wars, the person Solovyov should blame for the military setbacks is the “supreme commander” himself, Vladimir Putin.

Galeotti argues that although the Russian president likes to play soldiers while posing for the cameras, and has used wars to bolster his political base, he has “relatively minimal military experience”, and that his attempt to direct the Ukraine campaign — say, by ignoring army advice and attacking Kyiv without proper supply lines — has been self-defeating, at best. Furthermore, his failure to root out corruption in the army and his lack of interest in logistics, is a key reason for its rot.

Putin seems more impressed with the ‘teeth’ of military hardware than the ‘tail’ of logistics

“Had he been content with building a strong nation within its own borders rather than chasing fantasies of empire, Putin would have likely been remembered as a successful statebuilder,” writes Galeotti, an expert on Russia and conflict. Instead, Russia will now spend years recovering from the damage of the president’s over-reach, which will leave “deep, painful scars” on its military, economy and society.

Galeotti started writing his book before Putin launched this year’s invasion of Ukraine, and though he inserted a chapter on the war just before it went to press in June, some passages inevitably seem outdated. There is, say, no debate about Russia’s introduction of mobilisation and its impact.

Still the account is very timely and compelling — not least as the author correctly and convincingly details the long historical factors behind the current mess. Corruption and a dangerously rigid command structure already plagued the Red Army in Soviet times. These issues only worsened in the chaos and economic shocks that followed the break-up of the USSR in 1991. In places such as Tajikistan, as Galeotti writes (and I witnessed myself), Russian soldiers were so badly paid that they survived by smuggling heroin from Afghanistan.

When Putin — a largely unknown former intelligence officer — became president in 2000, he tried to reform the army with a series of new appointments. To a degree it worked: structures were changed, with new technology such as drones introduced and kit improved. After early setbacks in Chechnya, the army had successes from Georgia to Syria. The annexation of Crimea in 2014 occurred with such ease (aided in part by Ukrainian soldiers deserting to the Russian side) that it fooled Putin into thinking it would be easy to replicate this in Kyiv.

Such hubris was disastrous. When Putin took the (seemingly) last-minute decision to invade Ukraine, he sidelined the more traditional planning ethos of his own commanders and made numerous basic mistakes. Military structures were uncoordinated; the wrong type of troops were deployed; the supply chains became extended, mainly because the supreme commander still seems more impressed with the “teeth” [of hardware] than “tail” [of logistics],” writes Galeotti. This was “not the war as the General Staff would wage it.”

Subsequently, some correction has occurred and the Russian army notched up successes in eastern Ukraine this summer. But as this gets rolled back, there is mounting anger on Russian military blogs and one of the remarkable aspects of the war, Galeotti notes, is that it is the Wagner mercenary group that has arguably enjoyed the greatest Russian battlefield success.

Recommended

Sadly, Galeotti does not devote much space to explaining how and why the Ukrainians have been so successful in fighting back (partly thanks, in my view, to savvier use of horizontal peer-to-peer organisational structures and digital innovation). This deserves a book in itself, not least because the advent of this “open source” war will rewrite many countries’ military strategies.

And while Galeotti perceptively notes that China could be one of the biggest military rivals — and flashpoints — for Moscow in the future, he does not attempt to explain how Russian military philosophy and structures compare with those of its eastern neighbour. This also requires urgent analysis.

But leaving this aside, Galeotti’s work is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand current events in Ukraine, and the risks of imperial hubris. If only Solovyov could see it.

Putin’s Wars: From Chechnya to Ukraine, by Mark Galeotti, Osprey £25, 384 pages

Gillian Tett is the FT’s US editor-at-large and chair of the editorial board

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