Vladimir Putin cannot hope for any real victory in this reckless war

No different to any of his predecessors, or indeed any other national leader surrounded by ‘yes men’, Putin can lose the wrong war fought at the wrong time and in the wrong way

Putin’s vast columns of tanks, his arsenal of missiles and his nuclear weapons are of no use to him in Ukraine (EPA)

It may be wishful thinking, but is it too much to wonder whether Vladimir Putin might actually lose his reckless gamble of a war? Or at the least achieve a “victory” that is hardly worthy of the name?

In the short term, a few things have surprised and shocked the Kremlin – and impressed and encouraged most of the rest of the world. The Russian forces are not making the progress they must have been hoping for, against smaller, weaker opponents. The Russian army has many conscripts, for the time being, and they’re as unclear as anyone about exactly what this war is about. They know they are not defending the motherland from an invasion by Ukrainian-Nazi forces, or hordes of imperialist Americans, that’s for sure. It feels much more like things are the other way round.

According to the Ministry of Defence, the Russian attack has been slowed down by poor logistics and, presumably, inadequate planning, despite the weeks of preparation in the Kremlin. The Russians are running out of fuel, even to the extent that one Ukrainian citizen offered to tow a Russian tank back home.

Poor leadership from Putin, symbolised in his rambling speeches about history, an unmotivated conscript army and overstretched supply lines, is conspiring to deliver disappointment. By contrast, we see the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, visibly defiant, making patriotic videos in the streets of Kyiv to disprove crude Russian propaganda that he’d fled the capital, and turning up in combat gear to see the troops in the trenches. He’s a Churchillian figure, who has inspired his people to fight even harder and to make the Russians’ lives hell.

Putin perhaps expected Zelensky to have abandoned his people by now, and that Ukrainians would have surrendered in the face of overwhelming force. He was wrong. It’s possible that his intelligence officers only told him, the ex-KGB man, what they knew he wanted to hear (and it seems that way from the weird televised meeting of the Russian Security Council the other day). Ukrainians aren’t giving in. So grim is the prospect of life under Putin and his gang that many Ukrainians, old and young, would rather die. That isn’t the warm welcome and gratitude at being “liberated” the Russians had hoped for.

Of course, Putin has a plan B, but it is not a very useful one. Russia has destroyed the Ukrainian air force, and has enough cruise missiles stationed far away from Ukrainians with AK-47s to destroy vital infrastructure (and whole cities if need be). Food, fuel and energy supplies can be targeted. So can the digital infrastructure (though the Anonymous group has done a better job of bringing down official Russian websites). He can bombard and starve them into submission, eventually. He has lots more tanks, some with fuel on board, and rocket launchers, and bombers. He has nukes to terrify them with.

The Russians are already blowing up oil depots and lobbing rockets into apartment blocks. Their talent for destruction and taking civilian life knows no bounds. Eventually, they could break through the resistance and surround Kyiv, which is supposedly their plan. Putin could threaten to raze beautiful and historic Kyiv and other cities to the ground unless the “Nazis” give themselves up.

It doesn’t look like Zelensky will agree to that, nor his people, and the very idea of such continuing resistance and slaughter must appal Russians and even elements in the Kremlin. Ukrainians and Russians are supposedly kith and kin, not ancient tribal enemies. Why destroy Ukraine? Yet Putin gives every indication he’s prepared to do just that.

Putin could indeed “do a Grozny” and capture a pile of rubble and debris, just as the Russians did when they eventually quelled the rebellion in Chechnya, but that is not exactly the victory he would be looking for – one built on war crimes. The world would look on, even more astonished at Putin’s barbarity and even more determined to resist him. Many Russians would surely be determined to end his rule. He might not easily survive such a battle of Kyiv. But for Putin, the alternative is a war of attrition and terror, taking weeks if not months. Even if he flattened Ukraine, it is too large and too determined to be susceptible to rule in the old Soviet style. There will be continuing civilian and armed resistance.

Putin’s “special operation” was supposed to be over around now. A puppet regime was expected to be installed in Kyiv to govern an apathetic Ukrainian population, and the country dismembered, leaving a rump Ukrainian statelet as obedient to Moscow as neighbouring Belarus. It’s clear, even now, that that hasn’t happened, and it isn’t going to. Dead or alive, in prison or (unlikely) in exile, Zelensky will be a powerful rallying point for resistance to such a fate. To use the Churchillian phrase, they will never surrender.

The very terror Putin is inflicting on Ukraine has jolted Nato into action and alerted it to the immediate dangers to Poland, the Baltic republics, and Romania. America is increasing its presence in eastern Europe, not scaling it back. China and the Gulf states have signalled their disquiet by abstaining in the UN Security Council vote on the invasion. Much of the world wants no links with Russia. If Putin wants the Soviet empire back, he’ll have to accept the Cold War, hardships and isolation too.

The Russian people don’t yearn for that. They are protesting about a war they never wanted, and they know who to blame. In the age of the internet and social media, Putin cannot completely control their access to outside, and trustworthy, news sources in the way that Stalin or Brezhnev did. The Russian propaganda machine seems crude and ineffective these days. Too many Russians have links to friends and family in Ukraine for the truth to be extinguished – they all have smartphones, and they can tell them there’s no genocide going on in Ukraine. The soldiers can relay what’s really happening. The secret police cannot tap all the tablets and smartphones.

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The symbolic cancellation of football, Formula One, Eurovision and other sporting and cultural events is cutting through. Russians can see their president being banned from travelling to the west. They know the sanctions are coming. Though historically they are well used to queues, shortages and severe deprivations in their brave patriotic wars of resistance, Russians will ask why they are being asked to make sacrifices now, just for Putin’s vanity.

Russia is sometimes assumed to be big and unbeatable, but this hasn’t always been the case. Sometimes the little guys manage to resist, and even overcome. Tsar Nicholas II considered them subhuman, but the Japanese won their war with Russia in 1905. The Finns minimised Russian gains in the “Winter war” of 1939-40, mainly because Stalin had all his best generals shot in paranoiac purges. And of course we know the fate of the decade-long attempted Russian occupation and pacification of Afghanistan after the invasion in 1979 (a conflict that gifted the world Osama bin Laden) – a costly struggle that sapped the morale of the Soviet peoples and contributed to the collapse of the USSR, the very thing Putin sees as such a tragedy. Ukraine will be another humiliation, and a pyrrhic victory.

Putin’s vast columns of tanks, his arsenal of missiles and his nuclear weapons are of no use to him in Ukraine, unless he wishes to be friends with a pile of radioactive dust. No different to any of his predecessors in charge, or indeed any other national leader surrounded by “yes men”, Putin can lose the wrong war fought at the wrong time and in the wrong way.

He’s going the right way to making Russia a worldwide object of hatred, ridicule and contempt. He isn’t, after all, the strategic and tactical genius his fans in the west (such as Donald Trump) make him out to be. There will be no glorious liberation of Ukraine, no reconciliation. Nato is more united than it was this time last week, and Putin is becoming resented by his own population.

Russians neither desire nor need 19th-century-style territorial expansion to feel pride in their country. Their president is being called a war criminal, and not just by foreigners. Not the legacy this devious, insecure 69-year-old is looking to leave behind.