President Putin under 'enormous pressure' from Russian popul

Post Reply New Topic

President Putin under 'enormous pressure' from Russian population after sinking of flagship missile cruiser Moskva

Curtin University Professor Joseph Siracusa says President Vladimir Putin is under pressure from the Russian population to act on the sinking of its flagship missile cruiser Moskva.

April 18, 2022

President Vladimir Putin is facing increased pressure from the Russian population to act on the sinking of its flagship cruiser Moskva as the threat of a potential coup still looms.

Curtin University Professor Joseph Siracusa said Mr Putin would be urged to react to the sinking of the Russian military ship on Wednesday as it is seen as an “extension of one’s flag and national territory.”

“I think there’d be enormous pressure on the part of the Russian people to get even, to fight back, because their pride has been hurt,” he told Sky News Australia.

Professor Siracusa said the attack had likely hardened attitudes on both sides and believed a resolution to the Ukraine-Russia conflict was becoming “harder to see”.

Almost eight weeks after Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine, with military losses mounting and Russia facing unprecedented international isolation, a small but growing number of senior Kremlin insiders are quietly questioning his decision to go to war.

The ranks of the critics at the pinnacle of power remain limited, spread across high-level posts in government and state-run business. They believe the invasion was a catastrophic mistake that will set the country back for years, according to ten people with direct knowledge of the situation. All spoke on condition of anonymity, too fearful of retribution to comment publicly.

So far, these people see no chance the Russian president will change course and no prospect of any challenge to him at home. More and more reliant on a narrowing circle of hardline advisers, Putin has dismissed attempts by other officials to warn him of the crippling economic and political cost, they said.

Some said they increasingly share the fear voiced by U.S. intelligence officials that Putin could turn to a limited use of nuclear weapons if faced with failure in a campaign he views as his historic mission.

To be sure, support for Putin’s war remains deep across much of Russia’s elite, with many insiders embracing in public and in private the Kremlin’s narrative that conflict with the West is inevitable and that the economy will adapt to the sweeping sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its allies. And public backing remains strong as the initial shock and disruption from sanctions has given way to a kind of surreal stability in Russia.

Still, more and more top insiders have come to believe that Putin’s commitment to continue the invasion will doom Russia to years of isolation and heightened tension that will leave its economy crippled, its security compromised and its global influence gutted. A few business tycoons have made veiled statements questioning the Kremlin’s strategy, but many powerful players are too fearful of the widening crackdown on dissent to voice their concerns in public.

The skeptics were surprised by the speed and breadth of the response by the U.S. and its allies, with sanctions freezing half of the central bank’s $640 billion in reserves and foreign companies ditching decades of investment to shut down operations almost overnight, as well as the steadily expanding military support for Kyiv that’s helping its forces to blunt the Russian advance.

Putin brushed off the warnings, saying that while Russia would pay a huge cost, the West had left him no alternative but to wage war, the people said.

The president remains confident that the public is behind him, with Russians ready to endure years of sacrifice for his vision of national greatness, they said. With the help of tough capital controls, the ruble has recovered most of its initial losses and while inflation has spiked, economic disruption remains relatively limited so far.

Putin is determined to push on with the fight, even if the Kremlin has had to reduce its ambitions from a quick, sweeping takeover of much of the country to a grueling battle for the Donbas region in the east. Settling for less would leave Russia hopelessly vulnerable and weak in the face of the threat seen from the U.S. and its allies, according to this view.

In the weeks since the invasion started, Putin’s circle of advisers and contacts has narrowed even further from the limited group of hardliners he’d regularly consulted before, according to two people. The decision to invade was made by Putin and just a handful of hawks including Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, General Staff chief Valery Gerasimov, and Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia’s Security Council, these people said.

Only one senior official has so far broken publicly with the Kremlin over the invasion: Anatoly Chubais, the unpopular architect of the 1990s privatizations and the Kremlin’s climate envoy. He left the country and Putin removed him from his post.

Among business tycoons, many of whom saw yachts, properties and other holdings seized under sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its allies, a few have been critical of the war — though without mentioning Putin.

Putin has built his regime mainly on stoking public support, which has given him the means to control the elite,” said Tatiana Stanovaya of political consultant R.Politik. “There’s no room for disagreement or discussion, everyone must just get on with it and implement the president’s orders and as long as Putin keeps the situation under control, people will follow him.”

I imagine Putin's having second thoughts about the wisdom of this whole war in Ukraine. I doubt history is going to be kind when Putin's sure-thing was is examined.

He can't handle Ukraine.
How could he handle NATO?

Hence, he had wanted his man in the White House (Trump) to pull out of NATO prior to the invasion, expecting the whole alliance to collapse without American leadership.

A corollary to Godwin's law states that once Hitler Trump is mentioned, that discussion is ended. The implication is that the level of discourse has devolved to the degree that further communication is pointless. According to Usenet tradition, whoever mentioned Hitler Trump is deemed to have lost the argument.

What is Godwin's law? - Definition from WhatIs.com - TechTarget
https://www.techtarget.com › definition › Godwins-law

I thought it relevant, as Trump had wanted to emasculate the alliance at a time when he was chummy with Putin.

Unfortunately, the mainstream pressure on Putin is to have some victory to celebrate on May 9.

As I said before, I am convinced Trump was threatening NATO so they would putin put in more military dollars.
There was no real plan to leave NATO.

I guess I win the argument because Ammuuria is still part of it, while what you say is merely unrealised speculation.