Russia’s Desperate Putin Most Dangerous as Ukraine War Turns Against Him

Vladimir Putin is widely perceived to be in deep trouble in Ukraine, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, European backers and Western military analysts all predicting humiliation for the Russian dictator. But uncertainty persists: if correct, how might a cornered Putin, fearing for his policy and person, respond to impending defeat? Based on past behavior, he is likely to escalate rather than capitulate, with options ranging from trolling YouTube to waging nuclear war.

For Ukraine, recent developments are largely positive. Using sophisticated Ukrainian-made drones and missiles, Kyiv has forced invaders onto the defensive. Russia’s dead and wounded are estimated at 30,000 per month. Its advance has stalled and in some areas reversed. Ukrainian airstrikes deep into Russian territory are bringing the war home to a misled, disillusioned public. St Petersburg burns, fuel shortages cause panic buying, and prices and taxes rise. Putin’s 2022 “special military operation,” intended for swift victory, has now outlasted World War I.

Ukrainians still endure daily, increasingly indiscriminate air attacks. Yet speaking to the Guardian last week, Zelenskyy expressed optimism that the nightmare may be nearing an end. Western experts partially support this view. Jack Watling, land warfare specialist at the Royal United Services Institute, wrote this month that Russia’s battlefield combat power is faltering and a ceasefire may be within reach. “Putin’s savagery is exceeded only by its futility. Slowly but surely, he is losing his war,” wrote U.S. commentator Seth Stodder.

All well and good, but three awkward questions arise. First, does Putin actually realize he is losing? Russia’s leader is a conservative, old-school thug who believes Russia remains a superpower, not what he has made it: a despised rogue state and Chinese client. Out-of-touch, Putin does not use a smartphone or the internet. He relies on inner-circle apparatchiks, loyalist generals, spies and state media who tell him what he wants to hear. If so, he will simply continue regardless.

Yet this assessment raises a second, alarming question: what will Putin do if and when his Kremlin bubble bursts and he suddenly grasps that a devastating strategic and personal defeat looms? Do not expect him to sue for peace. Only last week he contemptuously dismissed Zelenskyy’s offer of ceasefire talks, stubbornly reiterating his war aims wishlist.

Putin’s more probable reaction would be to double down by expanding the active war zone beyond Ukraine, potentially drawing European NATO member states into the open-ended, direct confrontation they have avoided until now. In many respects, this is already happening. Hence a chorus of urgent warnings from European security, intelligence and military chiefs about how Russian sabotage, subversion and coercion are accelerating as Moscow struggles in Ukraine.

“The frontline is everywhere,” warned the head of MI6, Blaise Metreweli. “The export of chaos is a feature, not a bug, in the Russian approach to international engagement.” It was the product, she said, of Putin’s “aggressive, expansionist and revisionist mindset.” Prime Minister Keir Starmer says Western intelligence believes Russia could attack a NATO country within the next four years, making the furious row over future UK defense spending all the more relevant.

Anne Keast-Butler, head of Britain’s GCHQ spy agency, claimed last month that Moscow’s forces were “going backwards on the battlefield.” Putin’s response involved intensifying pressure on Ukraine’s allies and neighbors, notably through cyber-attacks and covert disinformation campaigns. Moscow was “relentlessly targeting critical infrastructure, democratic processes, supply chains and public trust,” she said.

Russia’s offensive is becoming more physically aggressive as well. Armed drone and combat jet incursions into NATO airspace are multiplying. Thousands of GPS interference incidents disrupting civilian aviation and maritime navigation are blamed on Russia. Poland’s rail network, which supplies Ukraine, has been sabotaged. Germany and the UK have suffered similar attacks. Baltic undersea pipelines and internet cables have been cut. In this undeclared war, Norway’s land border with Russia, the North Sea and the North Atlantic approaches are emerging fronts.

The expanding battlefield has a strong geopolitical aspect. The EU, having imposed additional sanctions on Russia last week, is finally opening formal membership talks with Ukraine. Next month’s NATO summit will see renewed pledges of solidarity, notwithstanding U.S. backsliding. On Europe’s eastern frontier, most recently in Moldova and Armenia, Russian influence campaigns have been repulsed. Viktor Orbán’s defeat in Hungary was a big setback for Putin and pro-Moscow far-right populist-nationalist forces. The western Balkans are another testing ground.

Russia is expected to further intensify hybrid warfare operations across Europe, according to the Centre for Democracy & Resilience think tank. A key aim is undermining coordinated Western action by spreading fear and confusion. At some point soon, it suggested, European states will have to abandon one-off responses, acknowledge they are collectively under attack, and hit back by imposing greater “direct, asymmetric costs” on Russia. Amid the biggest planned rearmament in Europe since the 1930s, it is but a short step to head-on East-West military conflict.

The more robust the pushback, the more extreme may be Putin’s reaction. His original decision to risk a full-scale invasion of Ukraine was not rational. He has since resorted to grotesque “human wave” infantry assaults, mass child abductions, innumerable war crimes against civilians, reckless attacks on nuclear power plants and “deranged” hypersonic ballistic missile strikes. These are not the actions of a normal, level-headed person. So when ex-president Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s mouthpiece, threatens Europe with nuclear weapons, as he often does, that ultimate madness cannot be wholly ruled out.

How does this end? Maybe it does not. A third awkward question arising from Putin’s foundering Ukraine campaign concerns the shape of any future “peace” agreement. Ukraine and Europe are aching for it all to stop. Knowing this, Putin may try to freeze the conflict while reorganizing and re-arming; or he could accept Zelenskyy’s ceasefire offer without sincerely committing to a lasting settlement. Herein lies great danger for Kyiv. Public pressure to bring the troops home and hold fresh elections could fracture Ukraine’s fragile unity. If the Russian threat appeared to recede, European governments might reduce military support. A ceasefire without ironclad, pre-agreed security guarantees could render Ukraine more, not less, vulnerable to renewed aggression.

Current Western optimism may be misplaced. Yet it helps to remember that one man alone is the primary cause of all this pain and suffering — not history, geography, identity or ideology. The Russian people have a responsibility, to Ukraine, the world and themselves, to remove him from power, as previously argued here. Without Putin, everything is possible. With him, it is war without end.

Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator.