Russian President Vladimir Putin has “failed miserably” in his war against Ukraine, said.
Herbst, the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, reflected on Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine launched nearly 15 months ago and said, “Putin has had a very bad year.”
The Kremlin has sought to frame the Russian invasion as a “special military operation” against Ukraine and a battle for Russia’s survival. In March, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that a foreign policy strategy recently adopted by Putin identifies the West as posing an “existential” threat to Russia.
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The Russian leader has been trying to convince Russians that the war is existential, but with little success, said Herbst.
“Putin has failed miserably,” the former diplomat said, pointing to public discussion on the war from Russian military bloggers and sites that typically publish Kremlin propaganda.
Herbst said he saw a post last week which said Russia would perform better in the war if the population truly believed the war was an existential one for the country.
“Interesting, they don’t believe it because it’s a preposterous idea. It’s an existential war for Ukraine, which is why they are fighting bravely. For Russia, it’s Putin’s war of choice,” said Herbst.
Just weeks into Putin’s full-scale invasion, in March 2022, Herbst told Newsweek that the war had been an “unmitigated disaster” for the Russian president.
The former ambassador said on Tuesday that Putin’s “obvious failure” in Ukraine is placing “significant and growing strain” on his regime.
“A year ago, [Putin] had lost the battle for Kyiv and the battle for Kharkiv. But his forces had regrouped and were making slow but notable progress in Donbas [in] April, May of 2022.
“In June, Ukraine received the HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems) from us, and by August, they began a counteroffensive, which took back more than 50 percent of the land that Moscow had seized since the big invasion.”
Now, Russia is losing territory in Bakhmut, said Herbst, referring to counterattacks from Kyiv in the small industrial city where Russian and Ukrainian forces have clashed since last summer.
“There’s no real Russian counter-offensive this year, and Ukraine is preparing for another counteroffensive. Moscow is doing even worse now than it did then. A year ago, analysts greatly overestimated Russian strength,” added Herbst.
Herbst’s remarks came as Kyiv’s military, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, said more than 200,000 Russian troops have been “liquidated” in the conflict so far. Moscow lost 610 soldiers over the past 24 hours, according to the Ukrainian military.
Russia doesn’t regularly release its casualty figures. In January, Moscow said that less than 6,000 of its troops have died, along with fewer than 4,000 additional fighters from Russia’s so-called people’s republics in Ukraine’s occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The casualty figures have not been independently verified by Newsweek.
Newsweek has contacted Russia’s Foreign Ministry for comment.
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