Russia has no good exit: analyst explains where Putin's regime is heading
Bohdan Frolov 13:06, 02.06.26 7 min. 616
"No Exit" — a one-act existential play by Jean-Paul Sartre about the hell of incompleteness — was first staged in Paris in May 1944. World War II was about to enter its fifth year. In the play, three recently deceased people, seemingly locked in a hellish drawing-room, confront the bad choices of their lives from which there is no escape after death.
If the Russian authorities allowed Sartre's play to be staged in Moscow in 2026, what would Kremlin dictator Vladimir Putin and ordinary Russians think about it more than four years after the start of the "special military operation" in Ukraine, wonders Michael Kimmage, director of the Kennan Institute and author of "Collision: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability," in his article for The New York Times.
According to him, since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Putinism has reached what might seem like an eerie equilibrium, but upon closer inspection turns out to be a trap for all participants. Putin has subordinated his state and society to a war that slowly saps Russia's strength, drains the nation's wealth, and consumes the lives of its youth.
On the surface, calm seems to reign
Putin has found a way to finance his costly war, preventing economic collapse and continuing to attract a significant number of recruits to the army, mainly through large cash bonuses. Russia, far from being isolated, interacts diplomatically and commercially with a large part of the world.
Despite some recent signs of domestic discontent — as ordinary citizens increasingly feel poorer, less protected from war, and face more internet blocks — Putin can be confident that he maintains full control.
But dragging out the war is not the same as winning it, the expert said. While his army struggles to achieve gains on the front line, Putin has few escalation tools left to change the dynamics. Forced mobilization would give Russia an advantage, but it would be extremely unpopular among Russians.
Nuclear weapons, of any kind, would be a terrible option. Their use would not guarantee victory and would risk provoking a harsh military response from the US and Europe or a rupture in Russia's relations with China, its most important ally.
Putin cannot simply leave Ukraine
If Russia agreed to a settlement along the current line of contact, Putin would have virtually nothing to show as a result of his efforts except a narrow strip of territory in southern Ukraine.
In addition to the blow to his vanity, as a supreme political survivor he understands: if he presents such a small prize to Russians who have lost family members, it would be an admission of the fundamental senselessness of the war.
The low quality of his strategic thinking and his hubris could then become a sharp political factor inside Russia, the article says.
Putin has trapped himself. But, besides himself, he has burdened the entire project of Putinism — if it survives his term — with some semblance of this war forever. Any future Putin-style leader will not be able to passively watch as an armed-to-the-teeth and battle-hardened Ukraine integrates into Western security structures and Europe militarizes.
If Putin has no way out of his war, ordinary Russians so far have no way out of Putinism. Recent public dissent in Russia has been misinterpreted. Discontent is absolutely real, but its essence is frustration with the fact that Putinism, despite its failures, seems endless.
Today, Putin faces neither an anti-war movement nor an opposition party. He can suppress Russian citizens at will. Even going about one's daily business means supporting, and sometimes servicing, a system that wages war and generates repression. Most Russians work for the state in one way or another — since the private sector is subordinate to the government — and have no say in how that state is run, Kimmage noted.
No way out of the situation
The search for a collective exit from this system is psychologically and politically impossible at the moment. There are no people or institutions capable of removing the president; there is no visible path to ending his rule or replacing it with something better.
In these circumstances, we may see outbursts of verbal protest — for example, in response to internet slowdowns — but since they have nowhere to develop, such protests are easily extinguished.
Theorists of revolutions in the 18th and 19th centuries emphasized the importance of rising expectations as a catalyst. When people feel that a better future is possible, they act to hasten the process — as in the Eastern European revolutions of 1989, which followed Gorbachev's promises of glasnost and perestroika.
Putin carefully ensures that Russians' expectations remain low. The promise of a modern Russia, prosperous and open to the world, has given way to complacency and apathetic acceptance of dictatorship and eternal wars. This uncomfortable equilibrium cannot last forever.
Putin's and Putinism's early promise, after what he considered the catastrophe of the Soviet Union's collapse, was comfortable predictability and rising living standards, effective governance if not freedom as such.
But the Russian president, who over time became an excellent autocrat, has proven to be a mediocre head of state, a poor steward of the Russian economy, and the culprit of regional chaos that boomerangs back to Russia, the expert emphasized. With every Ukrainian strike on Russian territory, the war undermines the well-being of Russian citizens.
"The path to competent Russian leadership now seems to require the dismantling of Putinism, and the less legitimate and effective the current system becomes, the fiercer the struggle for post-Putin positions will be. When his departure occurs, it may well destroy the stability he tried to impose when he became president of Russia more than 20 years ago," Kimmage concluded.
Other news about the war in Ukraine
Earlier, UNIAN reported on new moods among Russians after Putin's war went off plan. Russian propaganda increasingly discusses not only events at the front but also the future attitude of Ukrainians toward Russians. This indicates that Moscow understands the depth of the problems.
In addition, we also reported that Russia's summer offensive failed, but there will be more attempts. The capture of 14 square kilometers by the occupiers last month is almost nothing.
