Putin's Golden Bridge.
Let the politics begin.
Putin’s ‘Golden Bridge’.
It is almost time for the west to provide Putin with Sun Tzu’s ‘Golden Bridge. An escape, a route of retreat that benefits the victor as much as the loser.
Putin is in a corner and needs a way out. He survives by controlling the information his people receive, and by keeping his heel on the neck of the military and the police. The body count however, proves harder to hide.
His spending power has been reduced considerably by sanctions. He is using his national wealth fund to maintain his war, estimated to be only 30% of what it was three years ago. He is operating a war economy. If the war stops his economy fails, if the war continues his economy fails.
Putin has enormous manpower problems. One million people emigrated in the first year of the war. Most of these people were young, educated, skilled people. Putin has fed all his criminals, his Wagner mercenaries, and his regular troops into the meat grinder for minimal gains. Now he plugs front line gaps with North Korean conscripts who thought they were going on a ‘training exercise.’ More than 800,000 casualties, not including Wagner and the North Koreans.
His materiel losses are even worse, one third of his Black Sea Fleet were sunk. His air force has been reduced to launching missiles from inside Russian airspace to avoid losses. Most of his helicopters cannot fly. He cannot replace his armoured vehicles at anywhere close to the rate of loss. Every assault in Donbas results in the loss of air defence systems, rocket launchers, tanks, and armoured vehicles. Ukrainian drones dominate the air.
Strategically, he has lost the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. He has withdrawn from Syria and has no other ports for his ships in the Med.’ Finland and Sweden are no longer neutral, they are in NATO. His Northern fleets can be easily confined to St Petersburg anytime in the future.
Putin needs a way out and the west must hope to find a way of providing that. The end of Putin could destabilise Russia even further. A weakened Putin is better than an unknown quantity.
What can the west offer? More importantly what will Ukraine offer? They might allow him to stay in power and offer to reduce sanctions, invest, or rebuild his economy. This will make him look good in the eyes of his own people. Perhaps they can offer him something he already has, like Russian speaking Donbas.
I wrote nearly three years ago that Russia lost the wa
r the day they failed to take Kyiv. Putin needs his ‘Golden Bridge’ and perhaps Zelensky will give him one. Let the politics begin!
Robin Horsfall
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