Before discussing today’s biggest topic, the Kharkiv offensive, let me say
a few words about Mikhail Mishustin being formally reappointed as PM.
Our theory about the new Cabinet is now getting confirmed.
It’s going to stay mostly the same.
There may be some reshuffles in technical ministries,
like the Ministry of Construction or the Ministry of Agriculture.
Some new folks may snag deputy PM roles.
After all, the bureaucratic princes like Patrushev Jr.
need to be handed lucrative sinecures.
Other than that, the system will predictably
stay the way it is till the bitter end.
The commitment and loyalty of its leading elements
amid the war have been rewarded.
For autocracies, loyalty is the only asset that matters.
And this asset is inversely proportional to professionalism.
The more accomplished someone is and the better reputation they have, the more likely
it is that one day, they’ll say no to a moronic decree.
Conversely, those who’ve got nothing to lose and who are
totally dependent on the big bosses remain super-loyal.
And there are no better candidates than the ones already implicated in the war
and hated both by the army and by those affected by this army’s actions.
I think it’s rather safe to assume that the pro-war bloggers’ fantasies about
Dyumin and Surovikin will never leave the realm of speculation.
Chances are, both the MoD leadership
and the leading Cabinet members won’t be unseated.
KHARKIV OFFENSIVE
Clearly, these new term-related bureacratic rituals are mostly immaterial
compared to the reactivation of the Kharkiv Region offensive.
According to Ukrainian Telegram channels, the recent
shelling campaign has been on par with that of the early days of this war.
X (former Twitter) is awash with videos of the destroyed Russian convoys.
As always, when we don’t have access to professional military expertise, we don’t
say much about the military aspect because we are no military experts.
Ruslan Leviev will offer his weekly digest and weigh in on it.
But what we can do is comment on the political aspect of the offensive.
In yesterday's video about Putin’s new term, we said it was going to be,
above all, the start of a new phase in this war.
Putin is certain that the system is working sustainably
and he’s gotten away with the war.
Whether he’ll as easily get away with the war ending, the army getting back home,
and all hell breaking loose is a whole different topic.
Putin himself doesn’t have an answer—and doesn’t need to, for that matter.
In any case, this turn of events will connote huge risks.
No wonder the new term kicks off by the augmented combat activity attempting
to produce the kind of offensive that has been lacking over the past few months.
Up until now, the seized piles of rubble and small villages
were reduced to have been portrayed as major victories akin to WW2.
Large-scale offensives always carry mass casualties.
An offensive requires a lot of manpower.
When both armies have dug in, as is the case in this war,
every yard-long advance will cost multiple lives.
The Russian high command must have embarked on it
because of one of the three reasons, all of them equally woeful.
One is that Medvedev’s tall tales are true.
The Russian draft offices are being swarmed by would-be battlefield
millionaires who have no concerns about the future.
If this is the case, the Russian army is being replenished with 1,000 fresh troops daily
and there’s enough manpower to ensure both the offensive and the defensive efforts.
However, to date, there’s been no reliable confirmation of Medvedev’s claims.
Moreover, the Russian regions literally competing for the biggest payout title
suggests things aren’t as bright and the target numbers aren’t nearly there.
No one will be raising the financial bar against an overwhelmingly high demand.
Scenario #2.
Putin believes the victory-trumpeting yarns.
He believes his army is overstaffed and will have no trouble attacking.
If that’s the case, we’re dealing with the by-product
of hot air being sold left, right, and center.
As you’re telling everyone your draft offices are being inundated
with applications, you can’t object to a new offensive.
According to your own account, you’ve got the reserves needed.
The third, and most sinister, reason may be that the MoD knows for a fact
that the current active-duty forces are expendable and fully replaceable.
If that’s the case, it heralds an inevitable conscription drive.
I’m not going to be scaremongering here or trying to come up with a time frame.
Yet, the rule is simple.
If the combatants start getting killed at a faster rate,
the troops will soon have to be replenished.
The commanders need to sub them in for someone else,
whether voluntary or coerced.
As indicated by the reaction of both sides,
the new offensive looks like some serious stuff.
We know that the Russian army hasn’t changed its tactics over the past two years.
It’s been attacking head-on, hoping that the Ukrainians
will surrender before they run out of manpower.
If the initial panic-ridden reactions are legit and it’s not yet another load of hot air
but a full-fledged strategic offensive, there’s little doubt about its consequences.
The appalling death toll updates provided by Mediazone on a weekly basis
will be dwarfed by what is about to come.
When we said Putin’s new term would be a grim era, perhaps
much grimmer than we’d ever seen, it wasn’t an overstatement.
It would be gullible of someone to expect this regime to change at the highest level.
A different kind of change may well be on the cards, though.
For the past two years, the stately thugs have been waiting
for something, like an election, to happen.
It was a limiting factor.
But now the world is suddenly their oyster,
and they can embark on an unprecedented killing spree.
Their line of reasoning may be as follows.
We’ve started the war, croaked scores of people, and rigged the election big time.
No one has come after us.
So, it’s now no holds barred, and our luck will never run out.
Many experts, including Ekaterina Schulmann, warned that,
following the election, Putin was going to up the ante.
That was seen as the biggest effect of an unchallenged electoral procedure.
If the bogus election looks like a triumph,
it should be followed up with a battlefield win.
So far, the odds are, we’re witnessing the worst possible scenario unfold.
The electoral procedure and the reappointment have lifted any obstacles.
Now they can fully commit to the war effort.
They no longer need to keep this subject
out of the public eye and pretend nothing is happening.
Even the Victory Day parade was accompanied by the talk of this new war.
And the next day, they launched a new offensive.
The problem processing this news is clear.
We’re almost 27 months into the war.
The war updates have become an integral part of our lives,
and we can easily underestimate the new events.
Pro-war social media pages may be trumpeting
the Kharkiv offensive as the redo of Feb. 24, 2022.
But we may as easily view it as the new Avdiivka massacre, a months-long
bloodbath with an eye to a small patch of scorched land.
We’ve gotten used to the meaningless bloodletting and may miss the point
when Putin completely loses his marbles and decides to raise the stakes
based on the MoD-reported manpower numbers alone.
SPOTTING THE THREAT
If Putin is convinced he has an abundance of resources and the system
is completely invulnerable, he may decide to expand everything he has right now
and re-launch the invasion instead of pressing on with the trench warfare.
Is the attempted Kharkiv offensive part of this plan?
We don’t know.
Can it be part of this plan? It sure can.
The biggest pitfall for the public exhausted by the war and already immune
to all sorts of news stories is that it may fail to spot the threat until it’s too late.
The first conscription drive came out of the blue.
It had been several months into the war.
In September 2022, people responded in the best way possible
by trying to protect themselves.
Some holed up in their grandmas’ summer houses, some fled to Tbilisi and Yerevan,
and others stayed home, refusing to open their door to strangers.
Now things are radically different.
People have been fearful for way too long.
They were dreading the worst scenarios.
And they are now sick of being afraid, and so, if and by the time the worst scenario
becomes a reality, their survival mode may have been deactivated.
It’s similar to the cities being shelled on both sides of the fence.
Early into the war, people are holed up in bomb shelters.
They are fleeing the streets once air raid sirens start blaring.
But over time, they’re getting used to it and begin going about their daily routines
even if the explosions are going off nearby.
There’s only one sensible takeaway here.
Once the dictator starts to feel invincible, your worst action plan will be thinking
the worst part is over and living as if nothing were happening.
Only in history books do the wars seem to be a string of deaths.
Even in the worst-ever military conflicts, like both world wars,
there were entire years that seemed to be missing.
One example would be the eight-month Phoney War
between Hitler’s Polish blitzkrieg and his Paris campaign.
It might look like, even though the war was still raging,
the worst part must’ve been over.
Germany had seized whatever it had been coveting in the East,
and life had gotten into a groove.
Everyone’s exhausted, for sure.
But when we said Putin was going to embroil Russia in an endless war,
we didn’t mean constantly televised Donbas-related geography lessons.
A new escalatory step may start at any point.
It may bring along something we haven’t yet experienced.
At any point, things may get far worse than ever before.
As we are reading the news stories, just like the one about the Kharkiv offensive,
the key thing for us is to avoid missing the moment.
We shouldn’t engage in self-soothing.
Instead, think about what you’re going to do if things go south.
This is the kind of question everyone should be preoccupied with,
including the Russian people, the Ukrainian people, the Ukrainian government,
Western governments, and even those dumb, greedy, orfearful enough
to still be part of Putin’s inner circle.
Putin doesn’t care about the consequences, not because he’s all that brave and feisty.
It’s just that he doesn’t experience it the way everyone else does.
Being in power for a quarter of a century, with the past two years really standing out,
he’s become convinced that he can ride out and survive any challenge, he won’t
be charged for his crimes, and it’ll be others who’ll be facing
the music over his blood-soaked idiocy.
He thinks he can recruit as many people as he wants to and have them all killed.
He thinks he’s going to be showered with free cash forever and that the fearful
and sycophantic elite will rather have themselves jailed than oppose him.
Just like a mindless gambler, Putin is overplaying his hand.
The trouble is, we’ll be the most affected by his decision-making.
Our entire video today revolves around our assumptions.
We seem to be walking on eggshells and throwing in
the “if”-clauses at an alarmingly high rate.
But that’s what being a responsible public figure is like.
We can’t respond to every news story and update
as if it boded an armageddon about to come.
We can’t be freaking out all the time. It’ll lead us nowhere.
On the other hand, we have no right to be offering false consolation, either.
Things are really looking bad, and there’s no way
of knowing when they get even far worse.
Our job is for the viewers who can’t commit themselves to reading and analyzing the news
around the clock to have a sensible outlook on what’s going on to be able to make reasonable calls.
Things are so precarious and iffy, we can’t
just resort to any slogans or ready-made clichés.
All we can do right now is show you what you need to be keeping a watchful eye on
and which of the ongoing stressful events may really devolve into something way worse.
We’ll be closely following the events as they unfold
and keeping you updated at every step of the way.
See you tomorrow!