Commentary: EXODUS 20:22 – Upheaval in Gorky Park

Are we watching the last days of Vladimir Putin’s rule in Russia? The Russian President is cornered like never before. The Russian people are in the streets, his friends have vanished, his army is in tatters, and his allies are running for cover. Exodus stage left.

In the wake of a colossal setback on the battlefields of Ukraine, he recently called for 300,000 Russian reservists for immediate duty on the front lines. Mr. Putin is quite aware of how this is perceived in foreign capitals. Desperate times require desperate measures. These reservists are desperately needed to fill holes formerly defended by his elite Guards Tank Army. The remnants of that army were last seen fleeing back to Russia a few weeks ago. The opposition is currently upgrading their tank brigades with the spoils deserted by Putin’s legions. The last time Russia mobilized the populace was in response to Operation Barbarossa.  (Hitler’s invasion in 1941). Putin is enduring mass protests and a mass exodus from Mother Russia. Long lines of cars are making for the borders, and international flights to anywhere are overbooked. Despite Putin’s best home-spun propaganda – the Russians aren’t buying it anymore and frankly just don’t have the will to fight this war. They want him to leave.

For Putin, this is the worst nightmare he can fathom. The fundamental problems undermining Putin’s effort to mobilize his people to fight are so deep that they cannot be fixed in the coming months.

Time to commit the Reserves

Unfortunately for Putin, Russia does not have the infrastructure to organize, train, and equip these reserves, which can result in any semblance of combat power in the near term. The last time many of his reservists donned a uniform, it was adorned with Soviet patches. That was 1989. Many of these recruits are older, no longer in good physical shape, and obviously aren’t motivated. They are headed to the meat grinder, and they know it. Drone coverage and mainstream media reports mass departures of military-age males in response to Putin’s call to arms. Additionally, most of Russia’s military ‘boot camp’, like training personnel, have already deployed to Ukraine. Putin is not concerning himself with technicalities, though – he just needs people to jump into foxholes immediately.

Aside from the challenges of getting reservists ready for battle, there is also the question of whether the Russian military has enough modern weapons and other equipment for the hundreds of thousands of new troops being pushed forward. All the new stuff has been expended, destroyed, or captured already.

How did things go south so rapidly?

After all, the west has been cowering in the face of his intrusions in Crimea, Libya, and Syria for almost a decade. A quick answer is that the antagonist in all this is one man – Vladimir Putin – not the Russians themselves. He alone is responsible for the deaths and carnage. He has painstakingly fostered a cult of personality – centered on himself and gradually pushed his rivals aside in his march to dictatorship. Bravado and a few uninvited visits into foreign conflict zones helped his mystique along. The masquerade is convincing, given that he does have the world’s largest arsenal of tactical and strategic nuclear weapons in his pocket. His conventional facade surely impressed NATO and fooled the Western Intelligence Community. Now we see that the threat of nukes is all Putin has. Russia’s hollow interior and failures on the battlefield are smudging the strong man’s veneer. His regime is ridden with increased elite in-fighting, bureaucratic empire building, and systemic corruption. Cronyism rules. The economy has transformed into a source of personal enrichment for competing elites. Now we find out that the state’s vaunted military modernization was rubbish. The Russians are forced to open their Cold War storage facilities in hopes that the old tanks and machinery still work.

Over the past 20 years, Putin’s state-controlled propaganda ministry has promoted the theme that Russia is great again. Twenty years of hype has crumbled in the aftermath of Putin’s ill-advised invasion.  The war has delivered a body blow to the state and to Putin’s painstakingly crafted image. His military has proven to be a paper tiger. The battlefield setbacks and the impact of Western sanctions are choking the economy, along with unrestrained theft of scarce resources by the Russian elite.

The impact of Putin’s decisions

The invasion in February proved to be the spark that threatened to burn the Russian state. Putin is rapidly losing legitimacy at home and abroad. The secret police are angry with him for blaming them for the military fiasco. The generals that haven’t been killed yet are angry that the war is destroying the armed forces. And the blinded populace is, alas – opening their eyes.

As former U.S. Army General and Secretary of State Colin Powell said, “In prosperity, our friends know us; in adversity, we know our friends.” Putin is running out of friends. Iran may be his only pal now. Russia’s foreign allies are starting to telegraph their concerns and gradually distancing themselves from Putin, as illustrated in multiple scenes on the international stage. As alluded to earlier, the mobilization announcement has resulted in mass upheaval. Thousands massed in Gorky Park to protest. The public is becoming aware of the meat-grinder and doesn’t want their husbands and sons sent to the front. Over a thousand people have been arrested; many others have bought one-way airline tickets or driven their cars to the nearest border. The exodus is only being stifled by state controls and bordering nations like Norway – closing their gates.

Meanwhile, an armed ANTIFA-like resistance movement appears to have emerged in Russia and is actively fire-bombing draft boards and derailing trains. A social media channel that caters to Russian partisans provides instructions on how to assassinate officials. Recently, a military officer at a recruiting station was shot. Local elites throughout Russia are demanding Putin’s resignation.

The Russian army increasingly refuses to fight, and desertions are mounting. So much so that the Duma has passed recent legislation imposing stiff penalties for desertion, surrender, and insubordination. Given the poor condition of front-line soldiers, Moscow has taken to enlisting senior citizens, mercenaries, and hardened criminals. None of these groups can be expected to fight with enthusiasm. The criminals are more likely to vanish into the countryside at first sight. Imagine being an officer in charge of this lot – especially when you sympathize with their disdain.

Putin’s military machine kills foreigners and commits atrocities with abandon — and now it is sending in old men to stop bullets. All that’s left to do is for Russian elites and masses to realize this predicament and do something about it. They need to force the restructuring of the Russian Federation with a post-Putin regime. Most of us can’t believe what we are seeing, but the realization of the Russian state’s collapse is approaching.

On the other hand, Vladimir Putin is quite the savvy operator. He didn’t become dictator of Russia by luck. Unfortunately for us, he still has an ally lurking around the corner – the infamous Russian winter. Putin is counting on the winter to slow the Ukrainian advances and dampen the local protests as the masses move indoors to the fireplace. Meanwhile, he will use this winter pause to shore up his forces and enact measures on the home front to suppress the upheaval.

All this is not lost on Ukrainian President Zelensky. He is rapidly moving food, petrol, and ammunition forward and issuing winter garments to his troops. He must take advantage of his opposition’s low morale and sustain the wave of euphoria from recent victories. He would very much like to utilize the frozen bogs as thoroughfares for an armored spearhead. After all, what else is he expected to do with the influx of Russian armor he recently inherited? Hopefully, he takes a page out of George Washington’s playbook and hits the Russian camps in the winter.

With luck, we will soon be rid of Mr. Putin and write a new chapter with his Exodus 20:23.