Putin, modern-day Tsar, has gambled and lost in Ukraine, and must know a defeated Tsar’s fate is not pretty

Unlike Hitler's Panzer Blitzkrieg against France/Benelux in May 1940, Putin's invasion of Ukraine has not been a pushover. Putin's battle tanks have not taken Kiev or decapitated the Zelenskyy's government.

NATO is a far greater threat to Russia now that Germany has decided to rearm and send anti-tank/stinger missiles to the Ukrainian resistance. Russia's war plans are a dismal failure as Ukraine's 250,000 combat troops are supplemented by almost the entire male population now joining its reserve battalions.

Even if the Russians occupy Ukraine's biggest cities, their troops are vulnerable to commando-style insurgent attacks and artillery fire. Putin has needlessly wasted the lives of thousands of Russian soldiers, allowed US/EU sanctions to gut the Russian economy and disgusted the civilized world with his nuclear blackmail and terror tactics, enough to warrant a war crimes trial in The Hague.

The Kremlin is now dangerously dependent on China and this is another disaster for the Russian people as the Putin dictatorship becomes even more repressive. The Russian elite and masses will pay a bitter price for Putin's geopolitical crimes against Ukraine.

The rouble is now a pariah currency and even though the central bank policy rate is 20% while the economy could easily lose 25% from its GDP as the Russian people relive the Yeltsin economic nightmare of the 1990s.

The Putin regime is dependent on his KGB cronies, the siloviki who have looted at least $800 billion from Russia in his 22-year reign as the post-Soviet Tsar in the Kremlin. Now Putin has become a liability and not an asset to his palace guard and thus the odds of a regime change have never been higher.

As a student of Russian history, Putin knows that Nikita Khrushchev was ousted as the leader of the USSR after he gambled and lost in the Cuban missile crisis. Earlier, Tsars Peter III and Pavel were strangled in their own palace bedrooms by their own top siloviki nobles.

Even the last Tsar, Nicolas II was forced to abdicate by his generals after the imperial Russian Army was crushed by the troops of Kaiser Willhelm. So Putin desperately needs an exit strategy before Ukraine becomes his regime's Afghanistan and the Russian elite force regime change as the breadlines in Moscow lengthen.

It is now painfully obvious that a flawed strategy and awful logistics means that the Russian armed forces are now mired in the Ukraine quagmire with no imminent victory in sight while epic sanctions devastate Russia's economy and foreign trade.

The paranoid Tsar in the Kremlin has gambled and lost and knows that the fate of a defeated Tsar is not a pretty one. So it is entirely possible that Putin sends Sergei Lavrov to Ankara on Thursday in order to cut a deal with Ukraine's foreign minister.

This could be the best hope for the world and even save Putin's own skin - for now.

(IPA Service)

Views are personal

(Matein Khalid is Strategic Advisor with Asas Capital, Dubai. By arrangement with the Arabian Post)