It may not feel like it to the innocent people of Kyiv, targeted with ultra-powerful hypersonic missiles, but the latest round of bombardment is, if anything, a sign of Russian weakness.
If all that the Kremlin can do, after more than four years of its “special military operation”, is to murder, maim and terrorise Ukrainian civilians, it proves two things. First, that it is losing the military campaign on the ground and in the air. And, second, that Vladimir Putin is concerned about public opinion as elections for the State Duma approach.
These are due to be held in about a month and, while they will not be fully fair and free, they nonetheless provide some opportunity for Russians to express dissent – mostly in private, but also, to some extent, in the state-controlled media. The only remaining anti-war political party, Yabloko, has been banned, its deputy leader, Lev Shlosberg, sentenced to 11 years in a penal colony for “discrediting” the Russian armed forces (as if they needed any help), and “spreading false information” about them.
Again, these political moves, albeit formally taken by a court, are not signs of a regime confident in its support among the 111 million registered voters soon to be heading to the polls. Indeed, these developments confirm the slow, gradual but unmistakable slide of the Russian Federation into a political model closer to the Soviet Union it replaced.
Leninist democratic centralism – limited freedom of choice, with minimal toleration of criticism – is making an unspoken comeback. The nation’s politicians must subscribe to the tenets of the special military operation.
In the words of the speaker of the Russian parliament, they have to be loyal in wartime to the slogan “Russia! Putin! Victory!”. As with his communist predecessors, President Putin is not merely a political party leader but the very embodiment of the motherland.
Muscovites in the miles-long queues at the petrol stations, brawling over a few litres of fuel, don’t seem to have quite the same iron discipline. Russians have long had to deal with shortages and rationing with a characteristic brand of black humour – it was widespread and perfected during the Soviet era.
The doyen of Moscow broadcast correspondents, the BBC’s Steve Rosenberg, quotes a typical joke in a Russian magazine: “The most effective way to spread panic among the population is for the authorities to declare that the situation is under control.”
That the country’s petrol supply is not under control is apparent to even the most brainwashed of citizens.
The forecourt queues are real – and so is the acrid black smoke billowing across Russian skylines as Ukrainian missiles and drones hit oil refineries, warehouses belonging to Wildberries (the equivalent of Amazon) and other commercial targets. The Russian people know that the occupied territory of Crimea has been virtually cut off from the Russian mainland, and that the life expectancy of a new recruit on the Donbas frontline is under half an hour, such is Ukraine’s drone superiority.
Many families in Russia have lost one of their own to the war, and with at least 30,000 troops killed or injured every month, there will be many more bereaved families wondering what this war is for, and if it can ever be “won” in the sense of a harmonious reunion of Russia with Ukraine. It is obvious that it cannot be after all that has happened since the tanks rolled over the border in February 2022.
All of that is on top of a vicious sanctions regime that has cut Russia off from Western investment and branded products, and the isolation and further impoverishment of its people.
The discontent and despair aimed at Vladimir Putin is barely reflected in the media (although some of the television “debate” programmes can turn frenzied with frustration), and won’t be much represented in the new Duma.
As with the USSR and the Russian empire before it, President Putin’s state likes to give the impression of monolithic solidarity with a people devoted to their leader. But the official propaganda is essentially that of a Potemkin village writ large.
Vladimir Putin is too shrewd not to realise this, but seems determined to carry on with his bloody gamble. He should remember that, both as a constitutional formality and as a matter of powerful historical tradition, sovereignty rests not with him or the State Duma, but with the people – and they are not content.