Vladimir Putin Decides He Is a Better General Than His Generals and Takes the Reins in Ukraine – Opinion

On the closing of the Red Army, der FührerbunkerAdolf Hitler attempted to prevent the inevitable by giving orders divisions and regiments which had long ago disappeared to the Eastern Front. Lyndon Johnson, the President of the United States of America during the Vietnam War’s darkest days, personally selected the North Vietnamese targets that would be bombed. Jimmy Carter participated in tactical details of the failed hostage rescue mission to Iran, known as Operation Eagle Claw or Desert One. Now we’re hearing of another failed political leader donning the hat of a tactician and running his own war, that would be Russian President Vladimir Putin.

According to western military sources, President Putin makes low-level tactical decisions which would be made by an officer responsible for as few 700 Russian troops.

According to military sources, General Valery Gerasimov (chief of the general staff) and Putin were controlling basic movements in Ukraine.

“We think Putin and Gerasimov are involved in tactical decision-making at a level we would normally expect to be taken by a colonel or a brigadier”, the source said.

“Western military sources” may or may not be a meaningful qualification, but when we put this together with some other stories, perhaps we can get a closer peek at the truth.

Multiple reports alleged a politicalo-military shakeup at Moscow in April. According to reports, Vladimir Putin would leave domestic policy in the hands of his deputy to focus his vast, extraordinary brain on winning the war against Ukraine. The chief of the Russian military’s general staff, Valery Gerasimov, was told to take charge of the running of the war see Russian Army in Ukraine Undergoing Major Command Shake-Up, Sources Say. The upshot of that experiment was Gerasimov nearly being splattered across the landscape (Mysterious Ammunition Dump Explosion Rocks Russia and Did Ukraine Nearly Kill Russia’s Top Military Officer?),

Another story came out last week that definitely has the ring of truth, Russian generals turning on each other to avoid Putin’s purge, says Ben Wallace. Sources indicate that the British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace is what is in the headline.

During a visit to Finland, Ben Wallace said military leaders were blaming each other for the “disaster” and feared being purged if the “quagmire” turns into a panicked retreat.

Military chiefs in the general staff were the scapegoats for President Putin’s failed invasion, he said, adding that those in the military system were “always terrified they are about to be purged and pushed out”.

…

“There is a point of tension in the system. They respect former KGB agent as much as possible [Putin]The Russian General Staff will be blamed for the failure of a leader and made to scapegoat him.

“He [Putin]It would be foolish to try and blame Gerasimov or the generals for this largely emotional, politically driven invasion that defies all logic. It’s a political decision he took, not a military one, and he needs to wear that decision.”

There is no one close to Putin who has told him to abandon plans to seize Ukraine, Wallace said, adding that the war could “very quickly turn from a quagmire to a rout” if the Russians collapse like they did north of Kyiv.

It doesn’t take much imagination to understand how in any bureaucracy, you want to avoid being around a project that starts to look like a failure. It isn’t enough that you, yourself, avoid the taint (ewwww), but you have to avoid colleagues who might be tainted. The general officers of the army would know that the Ukraine situation has worsened and Telegram and Twitter are reporting on how slow it is moving. Knowing that the commander-in-chief was the prime mover for the invasion and has a habit of whacking people who get out of line (6 Russian Oligarchs Commit Suicide in Mysterious Outbreak of Epstein Syndrome), you’d do well to run like the devil from anything vaguely concerned with Ukraine.

We cannot empirically evaluate this story’s accuracy, but we can say it is highly plausible. This war is Putin’s baby. He wasn’t snookered into invading; he’d made his mind up months earlier. In retrospect, Putin telegraphed this war in his June 2021 essay “Historical Unity between Ukrainians and Russians,” you can read the original essay here or a good analysis of the essay’s meaning here. He might have been fed information shaped to conform to his preconceived notion of how an invasion would play out, but autocrats collect sycophants; if you want the truth, you can’t be in the business of killing messengers. We do know that a day into the war, he showed signs of discomfort (Putin Shows Signs of Panic, as He Calls on Ukraine Military to Mutiny) and that rumors flared about Putin purging FSB officers who’d provided the intelligence assessment on Ukraine (Trouble in Paradise: Putin Arrests Senior FSB Officers Over Ukraine Fiasco).

It is possible to imagine Putin watching over Gerasimov’s shoulder and instructing him how to behave if he was chased from Ukraine by an artillery bombardment. It is easy to see generals following orders and creating paperwork to show their fear of a purge.

As I’ve mentioned before, my gut feeling is that Putin sees himself as the smartest guy he knows and has unshakable faith in his ability to maneuver. Putin could easily be compared to Barack Obama in saying: “I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. My policy directors are more knowledgeable about the policies of any issue that I am. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.” That kind of hubris and a realization that one’s political life, or real life, might depend upon a successful military outcome could easily lure a politician into deciding that he’s a better general than his generals.