Is Putin a good strategist?

Recent footage of shabby Russian troops advancing in Pokrovsk on motorcycles, converted pickup trucks and other civilian vehicles has drawn comparisons with familiar scenes of militias from the Syrian Civil War or Islamic State terrorist columns on the move across Iraq in 2014-17. The rag-tag, improvised “Franken-army” look of the Russian forces as they push forward in the Donbas can only play into the narrative of those who regard Putin’s war as a failure for Moscow and Putin himself as a bungling strategist who is only diminishing Russia and its power. There is even a famous, long-time and very funny X parody account dedicated to making fun of Putin’s strategic acumen and to presenting him as a serial “loser”. If only it were so.

Unfortunately for the West, and Europe in particular, the best that can be said objectively about Putin’s overall strategic performance is that “the jury is still out”. Only when the guns fall silent and some kind of peace is agreed upon will we have an actual, precise basis for judging how well or badly he’s done for Russia. 

What about so far? The case that Putin is an awful strategist – a widespread view among the most eminent of the West’s own strategic minds – rests on the basic view that the 2022 invasion of Ukraine was an epic blunder. Not only has Putin failed to take Kyiv in three days and defeat and perhaps occupy most of Ukraine, but he has become stuck in a hugely expensive war in blood and treasure. And for what? He can’t even take the Donbas.

Putin’s war, our sages further say, has also caused Russia’s ejection and cut-off from Europe’s cultural and economic system, leaving the Russian president to consort only with other despots and third-world minnows. Chief among these non-Westerners is of course Xi Jinping, but the “no-limits partnership” with China is only some kind of disguised Russian vassalage: Putin is getting some Chinese help to stay afloat but he has sold Russia’s future to China and is totally dependent on Beijing.

Worst of all in “counter-performance” terms, we are told, Putin has caused a strengthening of NATO: The alliance is now more united than ever, Sweden and Finland have joined, and allied defence spending is massively increasing with the Europeans in particular having awakened from their decades-long slumber and now starting to rearm at scale, especially in Germany. So, well done Mr Putin: You seem to have achieved the exact opposite of what you wanted. You have made Russia’s position weaker not stronger, and you have robbed the Russian people of a prosperous, civilised, developed future. 

Such is, broadly, the argument for casting Vladimir Putin as a very bad, indeed inept strategist. But inevitably it is an argument framed from a Western perspective, with all the faults and biases inherent in that thinking – as amply demonstrated, constantly, by the West’s own strategic “performance” from Libya and Iraq to Afghanistan and indeed the outbreak of war in Europe itself (a fundamental failure of deterrence).

What about the opposite case, that in favour of the proposition that Putin is indeed a good strategist? And let’s leave aside Putin’s previous record as a strategist and war leader from Chechnya to Georgia, the Syrian Civil War, and Crimea 2014, all of which were effectively successful –though brutal, costly and ugly – applications of Russian force, securing Russia’s main objectives in each case. Let’s just focus on Ukraine.

The question of whether Putin should or shouldn’t have invaded in 2022 – which, as mentioned, is a key plank in the case against his strategy-making – has been addressed in these pages before. To most Western observers, it looks like a clear unforced error. To Putin, it likely looked like an inevitability, a measure of last resort. Among other things, had he waited, any invasion would’ve been much more difficult later as Ukraine would’ve been even better prepared. And had he not acted at all, Ukraine would’ve certainly become a NATO country. Now, Western strategists may well say, “so what” and insist that Moscow should’ve just accepted that geopolitical outcome, and that doing something about it (i.e. going to war, which had become the only option in the end) would’ve been, and indeed was, a “mistake”. But that is not a serious argument. So, it is hard to count the decision to invade, itself, as a strategic failure on Putin’s part. The fact that he invaded is neither here nor there from that perspective; everything turns on what happened after and how he has conducted the war from a strategic point of view.

In that sense, the first thing to note is that Russia is still standing and fighting, despite having the whole of the Western alliance arrayed against it. It was not supposed to be so. Its economy was supposed to collapse long ago – indeed, it wasn’t supposed to survive even the first year of the hardest and most extensive Western sanctions in history. Russia was supposed to be just a “gas station with nukes” (to use the old neo-con phrasing) and unable to sustain the war economically, industrially or technologically, especially once the West started pumping advanced weaponry into Ukraine. We were assured that Putin would soon have a revolt on his hands, led by Russian mothers like in the old Afghanistan days, that the war would be unpopular. Diplomatically, Putin was supposed to have become completely isolated internationally and to have thrust Russia outside the community of civilised states.

Alas, none of this has happened, and the reasons ultimately trace, objectively, to good strategic decisions made by Putin. One was the rapid reorientation of the entire Russian economy towards “Eurasian” markets and framing the conflict as a war between the global South and the global West, as explained by Oleksiy Arestovich himself. 

Another one was the strategic support secured at key moments from China and Iran, and later North Korea. The idea that the Chinese partnership is a terrible long term deal for Russia, and that the alliance is extremely unequal in political terms, is speculation based on our Western reading and expectations. It’s just as likely that the relationship is based on mutual gain and genuine respect between two sovereign nations that think long term about their joint struggle against the West. And that China finds it in its interest to see a strong Russia keeping the West in check at the other end of the Eurasian landmass.

Regarding the overall resilience of the Russian economy, that is more a result of Putin’s policies pursued over the longer span of his reign, than a matter of strategic decisions post-2022. The foundations of Russia’s war economy were there before, not least in the massive war chest that Putin had  accumulated over the previous decade (only part of which was frozen by Western banks) and his deliberate decision to keep Russia’s debt extremely low. Western analysts simply miscalculated Russian economic strength from the start of the war, and the potential for expanding war production. Perhaps Russia’s economic performance should not be counted in favour of Putin’s strategic skills strictly in terms of the Ukraine war, since it has longer roots; but it will be hard for anyone to argue that economic performance in war is not part of the overall strategic performance of the country.

On the diplomatic front, again, it has long become hard to maintain the initial  narrative that Putin is isolated. On the contrary, Putin moved swiftly after February 2022 to build up support across the Global South. He even elevated Russia’s role in the BRICS, which has since expanded, and kept even countries like India from disassociating from him. And recently he’s managed to manoeuvre himself, again, into one to one summitry with the US president.

The second thing to note after the fact that Russia is still standing and fighting, is the fact that its forces keep advancing. It may be hard to call it “winning” for now, given the slow pace and high apparent cost, but the fact is that Russia has the advantage on the battlefield as well as in terms of its strategic strike campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure. As various Western studies have increasingly noted, the Russian army has adapted very well to this fight – and so far to every new weapon system introduced by the West – and is now also superior in many aspects of the drone war. 

Is this a function of Putin’s skills as strategist? Arguably yes. All key decisions would have to be approved by him – especially when it comes to the allocation of resources, the timing of offensives, staffing etc. So, insofar as the Russians have the upper hand, he must have done something right when it comes to military strategy. The very fact that the Russian army is still in the field across a 1,000 kilometre front, with all the associated logistical and materiel challenges involved, is a remarkable achievement. Recruitment of Russian volunteers to serve in the war has also kept up at high levels and in political terms Putin’s regime is now arguably stronger than before because he has managed to “sell” the war as an existential crisis for the entire nation and, by and large, to rally the people behind him.

The strongest argument – and perhaps the only real one – for the idea of Putin the strategic bungler is NATO unity, expansion and European rearmament. But unfortunately, even here things are open to interpretation. The US has clearly announced its intention to reduce its role in European defence over the long term, and recently it has even withdrawn troops from Romania. 

The Swedish and Finnish moves only codify their pre-existing, de facto alignment with NATO; and do not impact Russia directly unless Moscow was actually planning to invade the Baltics, of which there is no evidence. Besides, this has triggered the beginning of a Russian military build-up in the North that would arguably not taken place otherwise. 

Finally, the matter of European rearmament is of serious strategic significance, but it’s not actually clear who wins from it. All we know is that Europe is going even deeper into debt to plough vast sums into unproductive defence acquisitions at a time of crisis when it desperately needs to boost its economic competitiveness in other sectors. The purpose is to deter a Russian invasion that Putin may not even be planning. Effectively, in a very real way, Putin is forcing the Europeans to allocate money they don’t have (and must borrow) away from the vital investments they need in order to secure Europe’s political-economic future. The only way this is a bad strategic outcome for Putin is if he actually was intending to attack NATO; otherwise, again, is must count favourably towards his strategic ledger.

The question of whether Putin is a good or a bad strategist is of more than academic interest. It tends to frame the perspective we adopt towards this dangerous and quite effective leader, and the level of realism we inject into our assessments of Russian power. As the war enters a more uncertain phase, now more than ever we must leave illusions to one side and deal with reality as it is and not as we might want it to be.