Russian struggles to deal with war against Ukraine

 ISW:

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The attack on the Kerch Strait Bridge, coupled with recent Russian military failures and partial mobilization, is generating direct criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin from the Russian pro-war nationalist community. Some milbloggers, who represent and speak to that community on Telegram, criticized Putin’s and the Kremlin’s failure to address major events forthrightly, noting that it is challenging to rally behind Putin when his government relies on secrecy.[1] Others noted that Putin has consistently failed to address incidents such as the sinking of the cruiser Moskva or the prisoner exchange of Azovstal fighters whom the Kremlin had consistently demonized since the Battle of Mariupol.[2] Some milbloggers said that Putin must retaliate for the explosion on the Kerch Strait Bridge lest his silence be perceived as ”weakness.”[3] Milbloggers who did not criticize Putin instead criticized Russian Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev’s silence following the explosion after he had made several public claims that an attack on the Crimean Bridge was a Russian “red line.”[4] Direct criticism of Putin from this community is almost unprecedented. Milbloggers and other nationalist figures continue to express overwhelming support for Putin’s goals in Ukraine and have hitherto blamed failures and setbacks on the Russian military command or the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD).

These critiques from the pro-war camp may indicate rising doubts about Putin’s ability to deliver on his promised goal of “denazifying” Ukraine and may undermine Putin’s appeal within his core constituency. Putin’s stated objectives for the invasion he launched on February 24 deeply resonated with the nationalist community, which firmly subscribes to the ideology of Russia’s historic and cultural superiority and right to control over the territories of the former Soviet Union and the Russian Empire. Recent military failures have caused some milbloggers to become concerned about Putin’s commitment to that ideology, however, with some milbloggers even accusing him of failing to uphold the ideology even prior to the full-scale invasion in February 2022. One milblogger noted on October 7 his disgust with the Russian political elite, including Putin, for consistently failing to seize Ukraine after the Euromaidan Revolution in 2014 and for conducting an “ugly special military operation” that only further united Ukrainians and the West against Russia.[5]
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The perception of the trajectory of the war and of Ukrainian capabilities is changing as well, and Russians are undergoing a rude awakening. Russian sources have recognized that the Ukrainian southern counter-offensive poses a significant threat to Russian forces across southern Ukraine.[10] This recognition is a significant deviation from the previous narrative presented by propagandists, milbloggers, and the Russian MoD for months that Ukrainian counter-offensives in Kherson Oblast were impossible or had failed.[11] Russian sources are shifting their alibis to claim that Ukrainians would not be successful without NATO’s direct involvement, advancing the narrative that Russia is fighting against the powerful Western bloc rather than lowly Ukraine.[12] It is unclear how such excuses are affecting domestic audiences from the information available in open source, but sudden departures from months-long declarations of Ukraine’s inability to advance in the south may prompt some concern among the Russian public that is already preoccupied with mobilization fears.
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Putin cannot do the one thing his hardline constituency demands—win the war. Shuffling senior commanders will not fix the systemic problems that have hamstrung Russian operations, logistics, defense industry, and mobilization from the outset of the invasion. Scapegoats can deflect criticism from Putin only for a time, and the appearance of direct criticism of Putin’s leadership among his most devoted hardline constituency is likely a harbinger of future dissatisfaction in that quarter.

Escalation, either conventional or nuclear, cannot solve Putin’s problems. If Russian forces are able to expand their attacks against Ukrainian population centers or critical infrastructure, or if Putin is willing to use tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine, he can only hope thereby to stop the Ukrainian counter-offensives for a time. Such attacks will not allow his forces to conquer Ukraine and achieve the objectives that extreme pro-war Russian nationalists demand. They may well trigger Western responses that Russian hardliners would see as validating their arguments—but at the cost of devastating Russia’s remaining military power and ability to achieve anything of real value. What could happen if Putin loses the support of the constituency most committed to his vision? It is hard to say.
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The "denazification" excuse for the war was always more of an insult aimed at Ukraine than a realistic threat.  Ukraine was never a threat to Russia before it was attacked.  What Putin and his supporters were doing was trying to justify their aggression against a neighboring country.  The war has exposed the weakness of the Russian military in a way that surprised even NATO countries as well as Russia.  I suspect that Russian leaders still have not accepted the reality of their military weakness at this point.  Until they do, they are likely to continue to flail and waste what military assets they still have.