In an interview with the Leeuwarder Courant said former military commander Dick Berlin: ‘Putin has already lost this war.’ He also saw the Russian invasion of Ukraine as ‘the beginning of the fall of Putin’. Berlin was far from alone in saying that Vladimir Putin shot himself in the foot. “This will lead to his failure,” said European Commissioner Frans Timmermans on Sunday Buitenhof. In The Guardian Yuval Noah Harari wrote: “The war has been going on for less than a week and already it seems increasingly likely that Vladimir Putin is heading for a historic defeat.”
Putin probably doesn’t know that yet, because he seems to have become a bit disconnected from reality after an isolated existence of two years in his residence in Novo-Ogarjovo – with disinfection tunnel – for fear of corona. Putin uses no computers and no internet; he mainly gets his information from television. On TV he sees and hears the propaganda that comes from himself and the clique around him – it goes in like a cake.
“I don’t think this is a war that the Russians and Vladimir Putin can ultimately win,” David Petraeus, former CIA director and general in Afghanistan, told CNN. Petraeus has experience with wars that cannot be won. According to him, Putin misjudged the willingness of the Ukrainians to fight for their country, a ‘Churchill-like leader’ and – you should always take that into account, even Erik ten Hag knows – the home advantage.
Strange, because Vladimir Putin had made a name for himself in recent years as a “strategic genius” who did what he wanted with the divided West.
Now he has correctly united it with his actions and the genius has revived NATO, Finland and Sweden want to join too. The genius has strengthened the unity of the EU and made all Western European countries suddenly want to stick to the 2 percent standard for their defense spending.
De Volkskrant recently writes Kyiv instead of Kiev, we don’t want anything more to do with that second, Russian transcription: then you have made yourself intensely hated.
The genius has turned his country into a pirate state, vomited and despised by everyone. Last week, he sat down with at least thirteen billionaires in the Kremlin to convince them of the importance of the war. According to Forbes Russia’s 116 billionaires lost $126 billion on the Moscow Stock Exchange in the first week of the war. Billionaires don’t like that.
More and more oligarchs are speaking out against the war on Twitter – you can’t get a rich man angrier than by wanting to confiscate his boat. It’s for the capo di tutti capi a threat, the disgust of his mob buddies. One of them even wants to sell his football club out of chagrin.
In the meantime, the body bags with the corpses of Russian young men are transported to their homeland – you don’t make friends with that either.
Perhaps Vladimir Vladimirovich is indeed engaged in a losing battle. But will he ever see for himself? How many deaths should there be? Does Kyiv have to become one big Grozny first? When will the Russian economy be broken enough?
Putin has set up a trap, has swum into it himself and cannot go back. This is dangerous: dictators who feel loss are coming tend to beat themselves wildly.