Ivo Daalder, former U.S. ambassador to NATO, is president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and host of the weekly podcast “World Review with Ivo Daalder.”
History unfolds in bursts — there are long periods where little changes, then suddenly the world is turned upside down. The 24-hour armed rebellion that saw a mercenary army traverse 800 kilometers toward Moscow, uncontested, has changed everything.
Russian President Vladimir Putin now faces the gravest crisis of his quarter-century presidency. His weakness has been exposed: None of Russia’s security forces stood in the way of the Wagner Group’s march to Moscow, and those who did were swiftly dealt with. The people of Rostov-on-Don — the logistical hub of Russia’s army in the south, which Wagner occupied without any resistance — greeted the mercenaries with waves and open arms. And it required an outsider, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, to convince Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin to stand down.
Power is as much about perception as it is about real capability. And the perception now is of a Russian president who frets about civil war and no longer appears to be in control of his country.
The immediate consequence of these developments is that both Putin and those around him are now intensely preoccupied with their own power and position. Everyone is watching their back. No one knows who can be trusted. Who has knives out for whom? Who will defend them? Paranoia is everywhere.
And this is particularly true for the military leadership, headed by Minister of Defense Sergei Shoygu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, who have led the utterly disastrous military campaign in Ukraine. They know they’re in trouble.
Their initial plan to invade turned to shambles quickly. Far from overrunning Kyiv in days, Russia’s much-vaunted military was routed from the capital region by a ragtag, if determined, Ukrainian military in less than a month. Then, last fall, Russian forces were driven back in the north and south, losing control of the critical cities of Kharkiv and Kherson.
Furthermore, this winter’s Russian offensive advanced only a few hundred meters in some places — and at a cost of an estimated 100,000 casualties, including 20,000 killed.
No wonder the Wagner chief found a ready audience for his criticism of Shoygu and Gerasimov. Even Russia’s one substantial victory — the capture of a flattened Bakhmut after 10 months of fighting, and at the cost of tens of thousands killed and wounded — was largely executed by the Wagner Group operating outside the Russian military’s control.
So, whether they stay or go, neither the defense minister nor the chief of the general staff — who has also commanded the Ukraine operation since December — can ever feel secure again.
While everyone is busy watching their backs inside Russia, in neighboring Ukraine the counteroffensive is gathering speed. After weeks of probing attacks, it now appears that the full offensive is advancing along three different axes in the east and south. The nine Western trained and equipped brigades also appear to be deployed in full force. And though Russian defenses have been built up as well, the events of the past weekend cannot but have had a demoralizing effect in the trenches.
Thus, though a bitter fight remains, the internal turmoil in Russia and its top command’s preoccupation with self-preservation could not have come at a better time for Ukraine’s leadership. The Russian military, we have learned over the past 16 months, remains a top-down institution, where tactical initiative and innovation is discouraged in favor of following orders that only come from on high — the very people now consumed by their own futures.
But while Russia’s trouble is Ukraine’s gain, there are reasons to remain vigilant, and even concerned. No one knows what Putin will do next — or even how long he will remain in power. The criticism of his war and the Russian military is now very much out in the open, and though moderates may take heart in this, the ultranationalists are likely to be most disturbed.
Therefore, one way for Putin to try to regain the initiative is to double down on the war in Ukraine — it’s what many of his most vociferous critics have demanded. Russia’s military may be running out of manpower and modern equipment, but it’s hardly out of options — including escalation. There are already worries that Russian forces have prepared to blow up the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia, just as they did the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, with catastrophic consequences for the people, the environment and Ukraine’s agricultural economy.
And Putin still retains the ultimate option — using a nuclear weapon. Desperate times sometimes call for desperate measures, and Putin has found himself in the deepest of desperate situations. And while civil war in a nuclear-armed country was surely the biggest worry in the White House over the weekend, the biggest worry now is that Putin may begin thinking the unthinkable.
Avoiding such escalation — whether the bombing of a nuclear plant or the detonation of an actual weapon — must be an absolute priority. When rumblings about nuclear escalation emerged last fall, United States National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan publicly noted that Russia would suffer “catastrophic consequences” — a message that was also privately delivered to the Russians directly.
And now, once again, Putin and those around him need to know that escalation will not pay — on the contrary. In case of any deliberate nuclear incident, the U.S. and key NATO allies need to intervene directly and bring the war to a swift and complete end by helping Ukraine restore control over all its territory.
We have reached the point of maximum danger. And the only way to avoid it is to make clear to Putin, and those around him, that there’s no way out except to back down, restore Ukraine’s sovereignty over its territory and end this war.