Putin's War Comes Home To Russia
Putin's War Comes Home To Russia
The trend lines are hard to miss
Kremlinology is making a comeback. At this hour, the car bomb assassination of Daria Dugina remains mysterious, which was probably the entire point of doing it this way.
Like the apartment complex bombings which Vladimir Putin’s FSB carried out as a “false flag” provocation to excuse the destruction of Grozny, Yevgeny Prigozhin, “Putin’s Chef,” may be clearing a path to power by stoking the domestic chaos. Russia watchers seem to think he is the most likely suspect, but who knows.
Contrary to his own press, Alexander Dugin was not held in high regard at the Kremlin in recent years, whereas his daughter was a power player in her own right.
The bombing does nothing to advance Ukrainian interests, whatever Moscow says about vengeance. Dugina was outspoken in her support of Putin’s invasion, yes, but this also describes many other Russians with even larger public platforms. Killing her did not remove an obstacle to war or peace or profit for Ukraine.
Instead, her death has struck fear into the oligarch class of Russia at the very moment when the war is turning decisively against the Russian military. Her death is a terrorist act within a terrorist state that is currently losing a war of terror.
Underlining this point, Ukraine has intensified their campaign of deep strikes on every front during the last five days.
This morning, an air sortie reportedly hit a Russian convoy of trucks crossing a hastily-repaired Antonivksy Bridge, producing secondary explosions and causing a part of the span to collapse. Clearly, Ukraine enjoys total surveillance of Russian logistical corridors, as they keep doing this over and over again to demonstrate their power over the army on the right bank of the Dnipro.
Ammo dumps, headquarters, radars and anti-aircraft weapons are all getting picked off throughout Kherson Oblast. In the east, Russian advances near Bakhmut have been stalled for three days after HIMARS strikes on their headquarters and logistics. The proverbial tide has turned — and now the war is coming back to Russia.
That is the probable meaning of Dugina’s death. To use academic language, it is the most parsimonious explanation for the timing of her assassination.
Using an $8,000 drone purchased on Alibaba.com repurposed as a V-1 bomb, Ukraine struck the Russian Navy headquarters at Sevastopol two days ago. Damage was not extensive. However, the outflow of Russian tourists fleeing Crimea increased.
Similarly, fires at a munitions depot and an air field in Russian Belgorod Oblast had tens of thousands of people evacuating. We might think of these refugees as individual particles of anxiety being carried back into Russia by the rebounding wave of Putin’s war.
Many of these targets, such as the Saki air base, have managed to burn and explode without the mode of intervention being clear. Speculation abounds. Did a Russian flick his cigarette butt into the grass? Or did a Ukrainian operative use a small drone to drop a self-consuming incendiary device upwind of the target?
Again, the mystery is the point. Half of the combat air power of the Black Sea Fleet is gone, they don’t know how it happened, an Alibaba drone might strike at any moment, and their surface ships are cowering in the Sea of Azov. This is the terror of war rebounding on Russia.
Ukraine’s “thornbush” strategy is blooming again. The Black Sea Fleet is discredited as a fighting force. While they will still lash out against Ukraine in the usual, useless manner with cruise missiles, Black Sea grain and fertilizer markets are beginning to stabilize as the Russian threat of seaborne attack in the Gulf of Odessa evaporates.
Crimea is supremely vulnerable to land blockade — Ukraine only has to reach the Dnipro to threaten Russia’s “land bridge” to the peninsula — and the Kerch Strait bridge is already closed to traffic, ready to be shut down again any time Russians try to use it.
August is hot. November is not. What percentage of Russians deployed in Kherson today have been issued cold weather uniforms is anybody’s guess. Ukrainians will surely prohibit any further deliveries of such items in bulk. No shortage of such needful things such as, say, winter gloves exists on the Ukrainian side.
It’s only a matter of time before that matters.
Putin knows how bad things are. Prigozhin knows how bad things are. The Russians in Kherson Oblast know how bad things are. Everyone in Russia knows how bad things are by now, but no one is allowed to speak their terror. Whoever killed Darya Dugina was speaking without words. Their message was that no matter how bad things get now, everyone must stay in line.