Putin has built around himself a gigantic army of private “praetorians” meant to protect him the way the Roman emperors were once protected. Today, the Russian National Guard — whose main task is to safeguard the system and the court at the Kremlin — numbers about 400,000 troops. Meanwhile, roughly 600,000 soldiers are fighting on the front in Ukraine. Russia’s losses are steadily increasing, and Ukraine’s new defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, has said he would like to see 50,000 additional Moscow troops eliminated every month. Already today, Vladimir Putin is forced to patch shortages in the army — as well as in the country’s healthcare system — by recruiting mercenaries from African countries. At present, the most frequently appearing name among fallen soldiers is Mohamed.
Putin and his fanatsy
As we reach the fourth anniversary of Putin’s special military operations, let’s remember it is only a year ago that President Trump told President Zelenskyy that he “has no cards” – Russia “has all the cards”.
The truth is that it is Putin who holds a losing hand. His cards show a Russia suffering unsustainable losses. In addition to well over one million casualties, his illegal war has shattered the Russian armed forces, broken the economy, isolated the country, and accelerated the demographic collapse. His dream of reconstituting the Soviet empire is the very definition of fantasy.
For too long the prevailing assumption that Russia would outlast Ukraine and its western allies was based on the commentary that Russia held an insurmountable edge in manpower and war material. It is not the first time conventional wisdom has devolved into lazy cliché.
The reality is the war in Ukraine has made Russia a beggar-state. It is a vassal of China and beholden to North Korea and Iran for want of military assistance. Additionally, it’s manpower advantage is being neutralized due to breathtaking losses in men and equipment.
Although the military maintains it is achieving its target of 30,000 recruits per month, Ukrainian assessments place the number of Russian casualties at a steady at 35,000 per month. Some sources such as Bloomberg report that Russia suffered as much as 44,000 killed and wounded in January alone.
Losses are increasingly outstripping replacement personnel by greater margins. Ukraine, in the meantime, is also committed to meeting quotas. Mykhailo Fedorov, the Ukrainian defense minister told the New York Times his aim is to increase the number of Russian losses to 50,000 per month. “The objective is to impose costs on Russia that it cannot bear,” he told reporters.
Harley Balzer, former Director of Georgetown University’s Russian Area Studies Program and co-author ofFailure: Russia Under Putin, says the main age group of Russians being sent to war are in their 40s and 50s. This is how the government is addressing the demographic time bomb. He adds that he Kremlin’s supply chain of foreign fighters now extends to over 50 countries and the most common name among soldiers killed in action is Mohamed.
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In order to spare major population centers like Moscow, St Petersburg, and Novosibirsk the effects of war and to compensate for declining volunteer rates, the government has resorted to recruiting outside Russia. The prime human markets are in the Global South. Thousands of young men from former Soviet countries, low-income nations in South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, South and Central America have been lured with false promises of high civilian salaries, educational opportunities, and fast-track citizenship. Once conscripted they find themselves at the front under-trained, ill-equipped, and integrated with Russian units attempting to inter-operate without a common language.
On the Atlantic Council website, a report includes social media videos picturing the abuse of Africans by their Russian ‘comrades’. Russians are seen taunting them as “disposables” and mocking one recruit who is wearing an anti-tank mine strapped to his chest. His orders are to “run and hop through the woods”.
Putin and Russia’s economy
It is not only cannon fodder that Moscow lacks. The healthcare sectors are also depleted. The shortage has forced Russia to recruit doctors from Africa. In meeting hiring criteria, candidates need not provide a diploma. Nor is there the requirement to speak Russian. A simple statement of qualifications suffices.
How does Putin respond to these systemic risks? He elevated the National Guard of Russia (Rosgvardia) into a powerful “parallel” force operating outside the Defense Ministry. Rosgvardia has a separate chain of command that reports directly to Putin. It is essentially a private army responsible for domestic stability and regime protection. This is a type of praetorian guard whose duty in ancient Rome was to act as secret police, gatherer intelligence, performed arrests, and protect the emperor.
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Established by presidential decree on April 5, 2016, Rosgvardia was a consolidation of OMON (Special Purpose Mobile Unit) and SOBR (Special Rapid Response Unit). OMON is paramilitary riot police force under the National Guard, known as “Black Berets”. SOBR is an elite Spetsnaz unit serving as a high-risk police tactical unit similar to Western SWAT teams. Together, they now form an imperial army of an emperor who oversees an empire that is fragile and fragmenting.
According to British MI6, Rosgvardia is a paramilitary of 400,000 personnel (600,000 Russian army troops are presently deployed in Ukraine). It is fortified with heavy weapons, tanks, artillery, and Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS). About 30,000 national guardsmen are assign to Ukraine to conduct rear-area security.
Its Director is Viktor Zolotov. Zolotov is a former KGB bodyguard and longtime member of the Putin inner circle. He served as the president’s chief bodyguard from 2000 to 2013 and as part of his remit is now in charge of conducting intelligence activities and implementing state policy.
Putin is creating a punitive regime by increasing surveillance operations, suppressing artists, censoring academics, banning the Telegram messaging app, concocting a rehabilitation of Stalin, and enabling the arrest of minors. Are these the signs of a regime holding all the cards or an autocratic system sensing a palpable weakness from the pressures of a long unwinnable war?
And finally, Is Putin the decisive, poker-faced master strategist we were led to believe, or a former KGB apparatchik who has become a self-centered autocrat whose political arteries have hardened? In the end, history may judge Putin as another ruler who staked the life of a nation on a gamble that from the beginning was almost sure to be lost.
Dr Jack Jarmon served as USAID Technical Advisor for the Russian government during the mid 1990s. He has taught international relations at the University of Pennsylvania and Rutgers University where he was Associate Director and Research Professor at the Command Control and Interoperability Center for Advanced Data Analysis. He is currently editorial board member and contributor at PostPravda.info, a Ukrainian and Polish news organization.
