This is the real reason for Putin’s war

He especially hopes that Ukraine and the West will run out of air faster than Russia. But for Kremlin boss Vladimir Putin, his war of aggression is still not going according to plan. The offensive of the Russian army at the turn of the year came to an end, in more than half a year with heavy losses Russia was not able to completely conquer Bakhmut. There are hardly any military successes, on the contrary: Moscow now has to fear a Ukrainian counter-offensive with Western combat and infantry fighting vehicles.

There is no end to the war in sight, which puts Putin in a difficult position to explain internationally. This is one of the reasons why Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov justified the attack on Ukraine on Monday at the UN Security Council with the Kremlin’s well-known story: the West had provoked the Russian invasion through provocations and its “hegemonic plans “.

The reasons for the offensive war lie elsewhere. It is more likely that Putin expected a quick campaign, hoping to add more than 40 million Ukrainians to Russia. Because the Russian population is shrinking, which also has to do with the political failure of the Russian president in more than 23 years in power.

Putin wants to make Russia a superpower again. Instead, he accelerated the decline of his country. That could become his legacy.

NATO is not the problem

In recent years, the Russian president has often criticized the fact that, against all promises, NATO expanded further east after the fall of the Iron Curtain. But NATO’s eastward expansion was in 2004. Should that be cause for war for the Kremlin almost 18 years later? Especially since NATO has always rejected Ukraine’s accession, pointing out that the Western military alliance does not accept states with unresolved territorial conflicts. After all, Russia occupied parts of Ukraine with Crimea in 2014. It also confirms that Putin has long sought to extend Russia’s geostrategic influence to former Soviet republics – especially if they are not members of NATO or the EU.

It was only after the illegal annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014 that Ukraine began to rearm. And only after that, the US began to train the Ukrainian army and special forces according to NATO standards.

Putin is looking for a way out of the demographic trap

So the truth about Putin’s motivation for the war probably does not lie in a perceived threat from NATO. The Western military alliance has been in crisis at the latest since Donald Trump took office. The then US president openly threatened to leave the United States, French President Emmanuel Macron had previously declared it “brain dead”.

On the contrary, Putin’s February 22, 2022 speech announcing the so-called “special operation” reveals his real reasons. In it he described his interpretation of recent history: Ukraine as a state has no right to exist. There is actually no Ukraine, but Russian soil.

This is how Putin reinterpreted history. At the same time, he demonstrated an imperialist ideology. He made it clear that he ignores the post-1990 treaties that guarantee the sovereignty of the former Soviet republics. This also shows that the Kremlin boss is mainly about one thing: “Great Russia”. For this, Putin does not stop at EU states from the Baltic states, as the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” documented on the basis of internal Kremlin papers.

The Russian population is shrinking

For years, the Russian president had spoken repeatedly about his country’s demographic problems at his annual press conferences. The Russian population is shrinking while the population in China, India or Indonesia on the Asian continent is exploding. This has economic and geopolitical implications for Russia, and in the medium term will destroy the Kremlin chief’s dream of becoming a great power.

According to 2021 UN projections, Russia’s population could have shrunk from the current 143 million to 133 million by 2050. The extrapolation does not take into account the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Not only do many young people die in wars, significantly fewer children are born in times of crisis.

Before the war, the average life expectancy of Russians had already fallen to 71 years, that of men to only 66 years. “That is lower than in North Korea, Syria and Bangladesh,” historian Max Boot told the Washington Post. The most recent birth rate was only 1.5 children per woman.

In 2020, Russia’s Rosstat statistics agency estimated that the country could lose 290,000 inhabitants a year later, 238,000 the following year, 189,000 then in 2023, and another 165,000 in 2024. That would be nearly 900,000 people in just four years. Corona and Putin’s war have exacerbated the demographic dilemma with his invasion. It is the self-destruction of Russia, Putin is trapped.

High mortality and high poverty in Russia

But how did the dwindling Russian Empire come about? In addition to a lower birth rate, mortality in Russia is also high. One reason for this lies in excessive alcohol consumption, which leads to more deaths from liver damage and circulatory disorders, poisoning and accidents. It was no coincidence that the former president of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev tried to save socialism by banning ghosts. Without success.

Another indicator is probably poverty in Russia. Many people cannot afford health care and children. “Health spending in Russia has long since failed to cope with the challenges of the 21st century,” Anatoly Vishnevsky, a population expert at the Moscow Higher School of Economics, criticized the “Welt” in 2017. There is too little public investment, and especially about the major structural problems of the country.

Putin has been in power since 1999 and wealth has not been distributed under his leadership. 13.5 percent of the Russian population lived below the subsistence level in 2019 and the distribution of wealth has barely changed over the past 16 years. Russia has vast resources of raw materials and sells oil and gas to large parts of the world.

It’s about the “human resource”

But political elites and oligarchs enriched themselves from the proceeds of raw materials and relatively little was invested in the growth of the Russian economy. Therefore, according to October 2022 data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Russia has a lower gross domestic product than Italy, Canada or South Korea. This documents Putin’s failure during his many years in office.

The Russian president tried to address the demographic problem. From 2018, families will receive the equivalent of 150 euros per month for children up to 18 months – especially in rural areas that is a lot of money. But that is not a success either.

This is one of the reasons why he now focuses on Ukraine and the “human resource”. Russia kidnaps Ukrainians and especially children. For the Kremlin boss, this is the spoils of this war, because Putin is annoyed that many ethnic Russians live abroad. He has already brought Belarus under his political control. But in Ukraine, he apparently underestimated the fact that a clear majority of the Ukrainian population would want to defend their state sovereignty.

An expensive misconception. Not only are many Russian soldiers dying, many people have also fled Russia. “Like other white nationalists, Putin is obsessed with demographics and driven by the fear that his ethnic group could become a numerical minority,” American historian Timothy Snyder of Yale University wrote in an analysis. But Russian imperialism is fueling precisely this development at the moment.