Vladimir Putin is “unlikely to survive” if he fails in the Ukraine war, according to an expert.
This claim comes just after the Kremlin alleged that the Russian president made an unannounced trip to visit troops in an occupied region of Ukraine, Kherson.
Russia actually withdrew from the city of Kherson last year, losing the only regional capital it had captured throughout the war although it still controls parts of the area.
That’s supposedly his second journey to such dangerous areas in two months, and, according to the Kremlin, it was not prepared in advance.
It’s not entirely clear when Putin made the trip – and it’s worth remembering that none of the clips of this trip have been independently verified – although he may have also visited the Luhansk region.
Such visits are highly unusual – so what does this tell us about what is going on with the Kremlin and Putin right now?
Speaking to Misha Glenny, rector of the Institute for Human Sciences, the Vienna-based think tank, BBC Radio 4′s Justin Webb asked if we might be able establish what might be happening at the top of the Russian chain of command.
He asked: “Can we make any kind of intelligent guesses, predictions, as to what is going on in the Kremlin at the moment and more widely at the top of Russian society when it comes to Putin and the balance of power with those around him?”
Glenny replied that it was “very difficult to say” what is going on inside the Kremlin.
However, he added: “Putin appears to have no choice himself but to carry on with the war because should he fail in the war, then he is unlikely to survive.”
Glenny also suggested the visit was primarily a message to Putin’s troops, as a morale-boosting exercise.
In the footage the Kremlin put out, Putin tells troops in Kherson that he did not want to distract them from their duties, but “it is important for me to hear your opinion on how the situation is developing, to listen to you, to exchange information.”
It’s no secret that the war has not gone as Russia expected, as it’s still rumbling on after more than year. Putin had originally suggested Ukraine would be entirely under Moscow’s control within a matter of days.
The specialist also suggested it was clear that Putin has “significant problems” right now particularly as the country’s economy is performing so poorly.
“The only thing we hear occasionally from people like Oleg Deripaska the aluminium oligarch, is that there are real concerns about the Russian economy going forward, and we also know there is a chronic shortage of labour emerging in Russia,” Glenny added.
Deripaska warned in March that the sanctions imposed by the West meant Russia could run out of money by 2024 unless it was able to secure foreign investors.
And It’s not just the economy that presents a problem for the Kremlin and its attempts to seize Ukraine, according to Glenny. He also said young men were either fleeing or dying in battle, depleting the country’s supply of soldiers.
The specialist did say the visit might be part of Putin’s bid to re-defining his war aims right now. Instead of looking to conquer the whole of Ukraine, he is just trying to secure those four Ukrainian provinces which he claimed to annex last September: Kherson, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and the Donetsk.
But beyond that, Glenny said it was hard to get a picture of what was really happening behind the scenes. Even the recently leaked Pentagon intelligence documents did not explain more, other than hinting at infighting among Russian officials.
Putin visited Mariupol, which was bombarded by Russian troops, in March – although that trip was dubbed “laughable” by the UK’s former Nato representative, Lord Ricketts.