Desperate Putin is deluded to think he can win

telegraph.co.uk: Vladimir Putin must feel a little smug. After months of bad news, his armies are inching forward in the Donbas and even Boris Johnson is admitting that they are making “gradual, slow, but – I’m afraid – palpable progress”. Global food and energy prices are also rising thanks not just to Western sanctions, but Russia’s blockade of the Black Sea and closure of international pipelines. And Henry Kissinger, a diplomat famed for his sense of realpolitik, has suggested Moscow be allowed to hold onto some of its gains as the price of peace.

These facts may have come as a shock to some, but it is not surprising that the Russians are making some progress on the ground. And any Kremlin celebration would be misplaced: Russia is still losing and, perversely, some short-term successes actually leave Putin worse-off in the long run.

We hear much about Russian losses, but the Ukrainians are suffering attrition of their own and new weapons from NATO cannot restore the exhausted or raise the dead. Besides, having initially had to follow Putin’s amateurish initial strategy, Russia’s generals are now being allowed to fight the way their army is meant to, with massive artillery barrages and punishing ground assaults.

Putin clearly hopes to conquer all of the eastern Donbas region, but his generals are likely to be more pragmatic and just want to establish a defensible front line and hold it. After all, their offensive will soon be exhausted and there is no evidence Moscow can muster the men and material needed for a new one any time soon. Rather, the generals’ hope is to use the advantage of the defender to hold the Ukrainians at bay, whatever the West gives them.

In other words, the best-case Russian scenario is to hold what, in effect, they have. But what then? Putin’s language has certainly changed from the airy optimism of the start of the war. Since May 9, when he used his speech at Russia’s Victory Day celebrations to signal that this was going to be a longer and harder war – which he has blamed on Western “interference” – then rhetorically, at least, he has been digging in for a long conflict.

At the same time, though, he is shying away from the hard decisions involved in being able to sustain this struggle in the long term. This is classic Putin: when all the options appear painful, he tries to avoid making a choice at all.

Further advances in the Donbas would mean longer lines to defend against the inevitable Ukrainian counterattack, for example, and the Russian military is simply short of men. It also means more territory in which they will have to police an angry local population already turning to sabotage and guerrilla warfare. Given that the National Guard, Russia’s militarised internal security service, is already being pressed into service as front-line soldiers, this is a further burden on an overstretched force.

Ukraine has fully mobilised, but Russia’s generals are still making do with a peacetime army. It has suffered more than 15,000 deaths at that, and if the usual arithmetic of modern war applies, one can presume at least 45,000 soldiers more are out of action because of wounds and illness.

If Putin declares that this “special military operation” is actually a war, he could mobilise reserves. There is no way that the military could absorb more than 100,000-150,000 troops, and they would be armed with older weapons and of dubious training. Nonetheless, this many fresh new troops would undoubtedly have an impact on the battlefield and might allow another offensive.

It would take perhaps three months to get them battle-ready, though, and there would potentially be a huge public backlash. So Putin dithers, reservists worry, the generals fume and time is running out to prepare another offensive before autumn makes operations harder.

Time and again, Putin’s lack of strategic perception means that what might look like momentary gains carry with them long-term risks.

Consider his recent offer in a call with Italian prime minister Mario Draghi to lift the blockade on Ukrainian grain shipments – but only “subject to the lifting of politically motivated restrictions by the West”. On the face of it, this was a chance for him to present himself as the man with the answer to the rising food prices that are causing hardship in the West and potential famine in Africa.

Yet this was also an admission that it is Russian firepower on the Black Sea blocking the grain. In the process, he is undermining what has been one of the successes of Russian (and Chinese) propaganda in the Global South: convincing hungry nations that Western sanctions are to blame.

It is also proof that, even though some fringe Russian commentators are suggesting that the West cannot cope with rising food prices, the Kremlin realises that, however painful, they are not about to force the West to retreat.

By contrast, Western sanctions are already doing crippling damage to the Russian economy. Economic war isn’t quick, but even if the sanctions are lifted tomorrow, their effects will linger for years – even decades. Putin spent 20 years building up the military he has squandered in Ukraine. With an economy which could shrink by perhaps even more than a quarter this year, and with access to Western technology blocked, it would take at least as long to repair the damage.

It also means that, if he does try to hold the territories he has taken, he doesn’t have the funds to reconstruct their shattered cities. What is spent there will have to be at the expense of Russian regions already feeling the pressure of the economic crisis.

Putin is not in any way a military expert, for all that he seems to have decided to micromanage this war. Simply looking at the maps of advances, his desperate need for this campaign to be a triumph may make him think things are going his way. They are not. While he likes to compare himself with legendary Russian state-builders such as Peter the Great, he is increasingly looking more like the last tsar, Nicholas II. Tsar Nicholas thought the First World War was a chance to buttress himself and his regime and found himself leading his country in a war it could not win. In the process he doomed himself and his dynasty.

Likewise, Putin may well be falling prey to the seductive hope that some kind of substantive victory is always just over the horizon. That with “just one more push”, the Ukrainians will be willing to accept his terms or the West will back away from its support for them.

Russia gets the worst of both worlds. A leader too inconstant to make hard decisions yet also too deluded to appreciate when it is time to cut his losses.

For the moment, after all, the war is heading towards deadlock. There is no sign that the Ukrainians – whatever Kissinger may say – are in any way willing to make the kind of massive concessions Putin is still demanding. Indeed, after the horrors of the Bucha massacre and the astonishing determination of the defence of Mariupol, it is doubtful that, for all his current popularity, Volodymyr Zelenskyy could even promise them.

Insulated in his circle of cronies and yes-men, desperate to salvage his legacy and heedless of the harm he is doing to Russia and the Russian people, Putin is no more willing to make concessions. It seems that it will take more losses on the battlefield, more misery and anger at home, more discontent within the elite before he will even realise he will have to back down.

In the words of one middle-ranking official who has already got his family out of Russia: “Everyone knows this war is a catastrophe, except for the one man who could end it.”

Yet it is not just Putin that will have to accept that this is going to be a long, hard road. We live in an age of instant gratification and, while in public the West continues to be united in its commitment to supporting Ukraine and punishing Putin, behind the scenes there are the first signs of “Ukraine fatigue”.

The West likewise must not be seduced by the same delusion, that one last push, whether another economic sanction or another proposed negotiation, will bring a quick end to the conflict. Instead, we must continue to show unity, offer military and economic support to Ukraine and prepare as best we can for the economic damage and political turmoil we will suffer as a result. Wars, even economic and political ones, have their cost.

Professor Mark Galeotti is the director of the consultancy Mayak Intelligence and author of The Weaponisation of Everything