(Dobbs) There Is No Winner... But Putin's The Big Loser

Russia's president is losing much of what he lives for.

People jumped on Joe Biden for the chaotic evacuation of Afghanistan. I was one of them. Although ultimately successful on an unprecedented scale, it was messy and, for thirteen members of the U.S. military, deadly.

Vladimir Putin should be so lucky. Even if ultimately he holds onto the pieces of Ukraine that he craves the most, his invasion has been a disaster. 

For anyone who condemns Putin for waging this wicked war, this is good news.

Britain’s Ministry of Defence last week issued this brutal assessment of Russian casualties: “Russia has now likely suffered losses of one-third of the ground combat force it committed in February,” which is when it launched its attack.

And, after spending hundreds of billions of dollars to modernize its military— at the expense of almost every other lagging sector of society— Russia has lost countless missiles and tanks, helicopters and warplanes. Even the Moskva, the flagship of its Black Sea naval fleet, was attacked, and sank. Up to 250 Russian sailors died.

So Putin can goose-step his way through Red Square on Victory Day every year with a show of force, but from the performance of his military in Ukraine— the pathetically planned supply lines for his infantry, the failure of his air force to control the skies, the compromising retreats from original goals of the invasion— that’s what it is: a show. 

Equally devastating losses can be logged for the nation on the world stage. It has gone from superpower to pariah. Although Ukraine’s European allies don’t all agree on the range of military assistance to the embattled nation or on the scope of sanctions against Russia, they’re all on the same side. With Ukraine, against Russia. There is solidarity we haven’t seen in a long, long time.

And Putin personally has lost standing at home, despite his best efforts to muzzle critics. Russian bloggers, some embedded on the battlefield with their country’s forces, have broken through the barriers and given citizens with access an uncensored picture of the war. After the misadventure a week ago when, according to the Institute for the Study of War, almost 500 Russian soldiers died when Ukrainian forces bombarded their pontoon bridges, one blogger wrote, “Because of the stupidity of the Russian command— at least one battalion tactical group was burned, possibly two.” Another told his audience that vital equipment “is catastrophically lacking on the front.” A third charged that Russian commanders who staged the river crossing were guilty of “not idiocy, but direct sabotage.”

Meantime a former colonel in the Russian army went public Monday night on none less than the Russian equivalent of 60 Minutes on Rossiya, Russian state television. “The biggest problem with our military and political situation is that we are in total geopolitical isolation,” Mikhail Khodarenok said. “And the whole world is against us, even if we don’t want to admit it.” 

Not exactly what Vladimir Putin wants to hear.

No one knows for sure what really drove Putin to attack Ukraine— a longing for the greatness of Soviet power, protection of the people in Ukraine’s Russian-speaking provinces from “Nazification” and “genocide,” or his fear that NATO will expand, which from his writings Putin sees as an existential threat.

Probably some of each. But since Russia has been broadly denounced, not glorified for its invasion, its power is diminished, not strengthened. So Putin has failed. Its hold on those Russian-speaking areas still isn’t firm— the Pentagon just today predicted it will never be. So Putin has failed.

And after their leaders’ visit today to the White House, Finland and Sweden are on track to abandon their longtime military neutrality and join NATO. So Putin has failed big-time. Rather than reinforcing his buffer against NATO nations, it looks like he’ll soon have NATO aircraft and armaments lined up along an additional 800 miles of his nation’s border. As late-night television host Stephen Colbert put it, this is “good news” because it’s “bad news for Russia.”

By the way, Vladimir Putin also has achieved something that by current standards, few would think possible: he has brought Democrats and Republicans in the United States Congress together. Today, by a lopsided vote of 86 to 11, the Senate approved an additional $40-billion in aid for Ukraine.    

And it doesn’t end there, because there is no end to the punishment Putin has laid on his people. Like trashing their economy.

Inflation in Russia is between 18 and 23%, almost three times as high as ours. Interest rates are at 14%, whereas analysts see ours going as high as 3% by the end of the year.

And the production of goods and services? According to the Yale School of Management, almost a thousand western companies, including key players in Russia’s energy industry, the main source of its income, now have closed down their operations there. McDonald’s was an early one, temporarily shuttering its 800 restaurants right after the invasion. Then this week, citing the “humanitarian crisis caused by the war in Ukraine,” it announced that it’s selling every store.

I’ve been to one of the Moscow McDonald’s and it was mobbed. The Russian people won’t be happy. 

Russia was even excluded from last Saturday’s culturally cherished Eurovision Song Contest. Adding insult to injury, the musical folk-rap group from Ukraine won.

But the pitiful reality is, there is no winner here. Parts of many Ukrainian cities are rubble. Economically, everything from factories to farms have been decimated. Untold thousands are dead, millions displaced.

All because of the merciless aspirations of a megalomaniac.

Vladimir Putin has squandered much of what is important to Russia. In a democratic society, he would be finished. But Harry Truman’s famous slogan, “The buck stops here,” never reached the Kremlin.

Still, take heart. Putin might end up winning some of what he wanted when he went to war, but he is losing much of what he lives for.

No, there is no winner. But by many measures, the big loser is Russia.

Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies and politics at home and international crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.