In an escalatory move, the US Senate is expediting the Sanctioning Russia Act 2026 containing a revised package of sanctions and tariffs to squeeze Moscow’s finances for the Ukraine war. The bipartisan Bill has enough votes to pass the Senate. Russians are hoping that the new legislation, where the discretion to impose sanctions vests with US President Donald Trump, may be largely symbolic. But one can never be too sure of Trump’s shifting moods.
In the US estimation, the support for the war among Russian elite and the public is waning amid growing unease over the Ukrainian strikes deep inside the country, including in Moscow. Trump has echoed the European narrative that Russian forces are in some trouble. Therefore, ruling party United Russia’s performance in the State Duma elections on September 18-20, the first since the war began, becomes a significant benchmark.
Two recent issues of The Economist magazine featured sensational reports regarding dissatisfaction in Russia. Of course, the journal has a reputation as a flag-carrier of anti-Russian narratives. But one of the pieces is an article under the byline of one of Russia’s most prominent industrialists, Andrey Melnichenko, nicknamed ‘fertiliser king’, who is under Western sanctions. Interestingly, the article was first featured in the Russian daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta, close to the Kremlin establishment. It makes Melnichenko’s decision to speak out rather intriguing, as he sketches for Russia grim scenarios if the war in Ukraine drags on and nothing changes domestically.
Melnichenko assesses that without policies that focus more on citizens’ welfare and present a more predictable, less hostile face to the West, Russia could descend into chaos or some kind of powerless vassal relationship with China or the West.
The debate about Melnichenko’s piece is heating up Moscow’s lively echo chamber, and is parsed carefully also by different brands of Russia watchers. On the other hand, balancing this to an extent is a sizeable group that expresses dissatisfaction differently. They want to prosecute the war more aggressively. They are not against the war, but are frustrated by its slow pace and favour further mobilisation and putting the country on a stronger war footing.
Public opinion is never easy to gauge in Russia. Indeed, the public mood has been darkened by Ukraine’s audacity to reach deeply and destructively into Russian territory with advanced drones supplied by the Nato countries. But then, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been in similar situations before too in his tumultuous career in the Kremlin, beginning with the Chechen war, which had American backing. In Ukraine, Putin is winning the war and his strategy is about winning without humiliating the adversary.
Putin is a keen student of German history, and I’ve written previously also that his statecraft bears striking similarity to that of Otto von Bismarck, who oversaw the unification of Germany and served as its first Chancellor from 1871 to 1890, which earned him the nickname Eiserner Kanzler (Iron Chancellor). That is quintessential Putin for you.
At the moment, Putin is where Bismarck stood as the Prussian army was knocking at the gates of Vienna after defeating the Austrian empire in the Austro-Prussian war of 1866. Bismarck had a historic choice to annex Austria, but with great deliberation, chose not to humiliate the Habsburgs, one of Europe’s most powerful and enduring dynastic systems. Instead, he allowed it to acquire the vainglorious title of Austro-Hungarian Empire. Of course, Bismarck’s wisdom and foresight—and his balance-of-power approach to diplomacy—helped maintain unified Germany’s position in the middle of Europe. He was proven right when Austria aligned with fraternal Germany to fight the First World War.
Great powers have a profound sense of history. Therefore, one can say with a high degree of certainty that Putin will not order any attack on the Nato countries for bleeding Russia. Of course, an alternative would be the outright annexation of Ukraine, but that too does not appeal to him. He would rather prefer a ‘neutral’ Ukraine as buffer, which would mean no Nato membership.
Of course, Putin, although a conciliator par excellence, will never compromise on Russia’s core interests. He’s far too great a patriot and nationalist at heart. But this is also where he is conscious of the need to keep whatever residual contact he would have with Trump to lean on Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy or the hotheads in Europe if circumstances necessitate it. Evidently, Putin is keeping cool himself, leaving it to the foreign ministry to dabble in fiery rhetoric from time to time.
However, this does not mean passivity. Putin now has the wonder weapon Oreshnik missile operationally ready after three field tests on Ukrainian soil. The latest test in Kyiv recently was so devastatingly successful that no one wants to talk about it. Indeed, the message has gone home, as the ouster of tech-savvy, 35-year-old Mykhailo
Fedorov, a favourite of Western tech companies, as Ukraine’s defence minister last week by President Zelenskyy signals. Notably, since Fedorov’s dismissal, there has been a drop in the intensity of Kyiv’s drone warfare.
In the political analysis of Russia, it is not easy to gauge the moment when incremental change reaches a critical mass and triggers a decisive shift. The big question is whether the present could be one such moment. Putin will escalate the conflict in Ukraine as retaliation, and this could even be imminent. Effective use of Oreshnik to crush Ukrainian resistance is one possibility going forward. Again, since the capture of Krasnyi Lyman in July, Russian forces have been putting rings of encirclement around Kharkiv, Sumy and Chernihiv.
This could be a likely pointer to the upcoming Russian operations on Kyiv. The northern border of Chernihiv oblast is part of Ukraine’s international border abutting Belarus’s Gomel region in the north-west and Russia’s Bryansk oblast in the north-east, respectively. Chernihiv oblast is bisected into northern and southern sections by the Desna river, which enters the Dnieper just north of Kyiv’s city limits.
M K Bhadrakumar | Former diplomat
(Views are personal)