Putin’s Propaganda of Desperation

There is much fighting ahead, but there will be no rapid victory for Russia. What we can learn from Putin’s response.

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We are now almost four days into Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine. There is still a lot of fighting ahead, and things are going to get worse before they get better, but cracks in Putin’s plans are already evident. On Thursday, elite Russian airborne forces captured the Hostomel airport, north of Kyiv. They were probably planning to fly in more paratroopers and use this for a lightning assault on Kyiv. Ukrainian defenders retook the airport and the remnants of Russia’s elite scattered into the woods. Russian forces from Belarus are still bearing down on Kyiv from the north and the battle for the city is not over yet, but now there will be no rapid victory for Putin, no decapitation. The Ukrainian army is fighting on elsewhere in Ukraine, and the Ukrainian government is still intact.

Putin took to the airwaves to try a different tactic: to try and encourage a Ukrainian military coup. In a TV address on Friday, he appealed to the Ukrainian army to “Take power into your own hands. It seems that it would be easier for us to agree with you than with this gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis, which settled in Kyiv and took the entire Ukrainian people hostage.” 

Putin insisted that the Ukrainian units that were fighting back were not the Ukrainian army, but bloodthirsty, genocidal “nationalist formations.” He complained that these “neo-Nazi units” were putting heavy weapons right in the middle of large cities such as Kyiv and Kharkiv at the recommendation of American advisers. This is an indirect threat that Putin is going to bomb civilian areas and blame the Americans.

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  1. Kurt Von Fuchs

    I think the comparison between Ukraine and Afghanistan is really a stretch. Yes, Ukraine is a struggling corrupt democracy. Afghanistan isn't even really a country, control beyond the major cities has never been done by anyone. Best Afghanistan can be described as a loose confederation of tribes with a few urban centers

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    JDW

    Yes. I will say it now. Russian people you do not want war with your Ukrainian brothers. This despot is why you cannot advance as a free and democratic nation. It's time you rise up and remove the evil autocrat from your midst.

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    Frank Lee

    The really notable thing... the American view, the Russian view and the Ukrainian view... all very much disliking the American Democrats. At least the American Democrats have the Trudeau administration.

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    1. Taylor

      Why did you consider this a useful response in this thread?

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        Frank Lee

        Your question illuminates the answer. Most of the people posting here are stuck in a left worldview political bubble that is strengthened by their media feeds. Many people that read the comments are not completely and are eager for perspective.

        The problem with being stuck in a bubble... only pursuing political dialog with those that "think" the same way... is that you will be insulated from the real world around you growing more and more against what you "think" and believe in.

        The common commenter here keeps going back to blaming Trump... as a thoughtless reflex. But today, the American voters are blaming everything wrong on the Democrats. The people of Russia hate the American Democrats. The people of Ukraine hate the American Democrats. A recent poll has the American Democrats supporting Trudeau's draconian authoritarianism against the Truckers, but polls in Canada showed that the majority of Canadians do not.

        Democrats lack self-awareness. So posts to help add self-awareness are useful.

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    David Chen

    I have to wonder what the hell the end-game was. 170,000 troops vs a hostile country of 44M. Are the Ukrainians who now live in bombed out cities going to greet their invaders with open arms? How many troops would be needed to occupy the country to prop up their puppet government? And for what? What have they gained even if they did 'win'? Ukraine went from drifting towards EU in 2014 to hating Russian guts in 2022 entirely as a result of Russia's actions. It really makes you wonder how much of that speech did Putin actually believe. Does he really think he is there to purge neo Nazis?

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      Frank Lee

      There was Crimea?

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        David Chen

        Which has 2.2M people with 2/3rds of them Russians. Ukraine is 78% Ukrainian. Extrapolating a victory in Crimea to Ukraine sounds pretty nuts on paper at least. Makes you wonder if Putin has gone mad.

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    Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

    Not surprised by the propaganda. The hard part is simply to distinguish between what outrageous claims they make as Boris Boob Bait (Build Back Better Boris Boob Bait?) and what claims they actually believe.

    Having adopted from the Crimean (was Ukrainian, now Russian controlled), the faithful of the Eastern Orthodox Church saw RC as apostate, Lutherans as heretics, and protestants as pagan. I can't print what they thought of Muslim. Me, I was accused in court of being a member of a child sacrificing cult (I'm a Quaker). Granted, our children's programs are often so boring some kids might think you're slowly killing them, but c;mon man!

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    Theirn Scott

    Citizens "taking up arms" to defend their country; what a great idea.

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    Picov Andropov

    Putin is acting incredibly unhinged. I fear for what the future holds. Excellent article.

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    George.Skinner

    The problem with being a ruthless dictator is that your people become accustomed to telling you what you want to hear, and not what you need to hear. If this is what Putin really believes to be true, it implies he’s already miscalculated badly and will probably continue to make bad decisions.

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    Probably Wrong

    The line comparing Ukraine to Afghanistan is interesting. It may be that Putin saw both governments as illegitimate puppets propped up by the West, easily swept aside. Which makes me wonder, could seeing steel in Ukrainian spines make China reassess Taiwan’s chances of “reintegration”? Or is this too optimistic?

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    1. Michael.Terrien

      Taiwan is a tougher nut to crack being an island. Of course China is a more formidable aggressor as well. But I do believe watching sustained Ukrainian resistance will help Pooh understand the difficulty of being an invader and an occupier. It has to give him pause.

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      David Chen

      Supposedly Taiwan has gotten complacent and soft militarily. Whereas Ukraine had 8 years of stand-off war with Russia. If Putin did this immediately after the Maiden Rev in 2014, Ukraine would have stood no chance. I think they had something like 5000 troops at the time. In those 8 years, the numbers swelled to something like 200,000 professionals and even more in reserve.

      Taiwan should take a lesson from this, that the 'international order' is nothing more than a paper agreement. If China invades, the only thing they can count on is guns.

      It would be ironic if the reason Putin invaded was because they expected it to fold like the Afghan government. Talk about history repeating itself. Hitler invaded Russia after seeing it struggle with even fighting Finland. He was convinced that it was a house of cards and he just needed to kick the door in. And it did look just like that at first, with hundreds of thousands of Russia troops being encircled and surrounded. We all know how that ultimately turned out though.

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        JDW

        Taiwan is not soft militarily. Many believe the Chinese would take terrible casualties assaulting that island even if the US did nothing. Of course long term the Chinese win but Taiwan is a veritable fortress. The Chinese should definitely take note and realize Taiwan would be far worse for them and we'd be coming unlike Ukraine.

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          David Chen

          https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4325775

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      2. Larry Liu

        What Ukraines are doing are inspiring. It actually makes China’s invasion of Taiwan less likely in the short term. If also shows the roadmap for Taiwan, if Taiwan is serious about its independence and way of life. It must believe it so much that its people are willing to fight till the bitter end. It cannot and must not mainly rely on America. They must be willing to show the world that they are ready to die for liberty. And Ukraine showed that it is possible.

        Even though most strategic thinkers already gave Taiwan to China as part of the grand bargaining with China at the expense of Taiwan. It does not have to be the case. Taiwan, like Ukraine, needs to show that it is not willing to settle for less.

        That also means Taiwan must invest more heavily in self-defense. It must mainly rely on itself to build a case for its liberty, economically, morally, and militarily. The world is more likely come to Taiwan's aid after that. There is a fighting chance.

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      scott

      I'm a cynical optimist...so, maybe, but, then again, probably not.

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    Victor Clairmont

    Propaganda indeed.

    We will only know the full extend of casualties and other information as time goes by.

    But calling the resistance to Putin invasion neo-nazis, even though Zelenskyy the President is Jewish, is laughable.

    So what if they have small tiny groups like the Alt Right or Progressive Communists in their population that have terrible ideas? Does that indict the 99.9% of Ukrainians that are not?

    There are probably more sympathetic Nazi's and communists in Russian, overwhelmingly so for all we know. Putin should start his purge there instead.

    May the Ukrainians wreck the Russian troops. Again, if anyone has any links to causes we can legitimately give to Ukraine's aid, let us know.

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      AnnaA

      That Nazi line of arguments rings differently in Eastern Europe. There were Ukrainian groups during WWII who collaborated with the Nazis (UPA) and brutally (I really stress, gruesomely) killed and raped. It's been brought up by Russian propaganda for the past 10 years in social media in Eastern Europe, essentially with the goal in mind to sway people's opinion away from Ukraine during and after the Crimea annexation. The right wing governments in Poland and Hungary would play it up over the years, with some results. That obviously doesn't even compare with the casualties of the Red Army and Stalin's rule, but the social media are hardly after historical accuracy, of course.

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        JDW

        Yes they are relying on historical crimes but when you have a Jewish president, you've pretty much gotten past anti-semitism as the dominant force in a country.

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          AnnaA

          1. Like (sorry, button doesn't work).
          2. Agreed, that should be the "duh" counter-argument to it.
          Another interesting thing to remember, though, that in Russian mind, Jews were not the main victim of Hitler, it was Russians. Anti-semitism did not figure high in Hitler's crimes, in their minds, because Jews continued to be killed in Soviet areas even AFTER the war. It also made it easier to justify retaining the spoils looted from retreating German officers and civilians in the form of artwork and valuables for the Soviet governments rather than return them to their rightful original owners, many of whom were Jews. For all intents and purposes, Nazis and Jews were equally suspicious.

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          Victor Clairmont

          To be fair, we had a black president and forces in America tend to say that racism is the dominant force in America still today (not true by the way).

          Looking at you Nikole Hannah Jones and your ilk.

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        Victor Clairmont

        Agreed.

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