Putin’s reign may not survive the impending fall of Crimea

Tuesday marked the third anniversary of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny against Russian President Vladimir Putin. Prigozhin failed and paid with his life. But Russia as a whole, and Russian-occupied Crimea in particular, might have been better off had the man once known as “Putin’s chef” succeeded in overthrowing the regime in Moscow.

Prigozhin understood something Putin could not: The Kremlin is incapable of defeating Ukraine on a conventional military basis.

Putin still appears unable to grasp this. On the day of Prigozhin’s uprising, Russian dead and wounded numbered just over 223,000. Three years later, Russian losses in Ukraine have swelled more than sixfold, nearing 1.4 million.

Putin’s end in Ukraine is coming. Russia cannot continue to sustain these levels of military losses. On Tuesday, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte noted that Putin is losing as many as 35,000 Russian soldiers each month. He also said that Moscow is spending 50 percent of its government budget on its military. For reference, the U.S. spends only about 15 percent of its federal budget (and no more than 9 percent of its overall combined state and national government budgets) on defense.

Even Vladimir Solovyov, considered one of Putin’s top propagandists, is worried. On his top-rated Russia-1 prime time show, Solovyov lashed out at Russia’s Central Bank for keeping interest rates high. He claimed it is causing construction to halt on vital dams and barriers to protect Russian bridges and military infrastructure.

Yet then Solovyov said the quiet part out loud: “We are building dams. But in the last couple of days there has been no work — there is no money. How is that possible?” Putin’s economy, like his war machine, is running on empty.

And........

© The Hill