A growing number of senior Kremlin officials has been quietly questioning Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine as military losses pile up and the Russian economy struggles to survive following multiple rounds of punishing sanctions.
Critics of Putin’s decision to go to war are spread across high-level posts in government and state-run businesses, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday, citing 10 people with direct knowledge of the situation.
The sources believe the Feb. 24 invasion was a “catastrophic mistake” that will set the country back decades.
Despite ripples of dissatisfaction, the sources said they see no chance of Putin changing course nor do they believe Russians will challenge his decision.
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Putin has surrounded himself with a narrowing circle of hard-line advisers who have backed the ex-KGB spy’s every move.
Putin has dismissed attempts by other officials who have tried to warn him of the political and economic consequences tied to his actions in Ukraine.
Some of the people questioning his motives are worried that his campaign to capture Ukraine, topple its government, and insert Putin-friendly allies will doom Russia to years of global isolation and erase gains made after the Cold War. While a few business tycoons have made veiled statements about Moscow’s strategy, most are too afraid of a widening crackdown on dissent to voice their full-throttled concerns in public.
“There’s no room for disagreement or discussion. Everyone must just get on with it and implement the president’s orders, and as long as Putin keeps the situation under control, people will follow him,” Tatiana Stanovaya, a political consultant at R.Politik, told Bloomberg.
Putin has said the West left him no choice but to go to war with Ukraine in an attempt to “de-Nazify” the country and promote Russian culture. He has publicly said the “economic blitzkrieg” has failed, Russia is too big to be isolated, and the economy will adapt, but others aren’t so sure.
Inside the Federal Security Service, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, frustration with the failure of the invasion has been growing, said Andrei Soldatov, an expert on Russian security services. Russia had expected the invasion to be over in a matter of days and did not plan for a sustained pushback by Ukrainian forces or the injection of billions of dollars in aid and military weapons that the West has provided.
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In fact, as the war drags on, some are fearful that he may turn to nuclear weapons in desperation. It’s a concern shared by U.S. intelligence officials, who have warned for weeks that Putin may resort to drastic measures if faced with failure.
