According to outside reports and inside interviews with Russian oligarchs, the war in Ukraine has begun to "fray" their nerves and those of the Russian elite, the "cracks are starting to show," the division between pro-and anti-war factions is "becoming more marked."
In fact Russia's internal tensions at the highest levels were foreshadowed as early as 24 February, when President Putin summoned the country's richest muck-a-mucks for an update. Reports are revealing that among the latter, there was "shock" and "depression." Said one attendee, "Everyone was in a terrible mood. Everyone was sitting there crushed." Said another, "I’d never seen them as stunned as they were. Some of them could not even speak."
Their stupefaction was, to many others, now stupefying. The Biden Administration had been warning for weeks that Russia was intent on invading Ukraine — warnings backed up by the entire U.S. intelligence community. Yet even those warnings were somewhat superfluous. After all, Putin had been amassing troops on Ukraine's borders for just as long. What did the world think was going on? That Vladimir would spend all those rubles to gather troop formations and execute elaborate (though ultimately useless) training maneuvers only to spend more rubles to pull back the troops, tanks, trucks, etc.?
Here was one of those precise replays of history. In 1941, Hitler bamboozled Stalin with the tale that hundreds of thousands of German troops amassing on Russia's border were there merely for training exercises. Somehow, the usually paranoid Soviet totalitarian believed him. Then Nazi Germany struck. In the present-day story, Putin was Hitler. And much of the world was Stalin.
Which brings us up to today. Disgruntled, disillusioned Russian oligarchs are weeping more for themselves than their country's quite possible collapse. Their assets are being frozen; in many cases, tens of billions of dollars worth. Said one to the Washington Post: "It's a catastrophe.... In one day, they destroyed what was built over many years." Now the destruction may become permanent, since the White House has proposed the liquidation of these assets, the proceeds going to Ukraine.
Privately, the oligarchs are fuming at Putin. They believe he "blindsided' them by furtively(?) aiming for war. Publicly, their fulminations are, understandably, tempered, what with Putin's temper and inclination for lethal reprisals. Worse, they feel helpless. Unless the disgruntled oligarchs go public with their anger and sense of betrayal, Putin doesn't much give a damn what they think. The best they can do — so far — is express dissatisfaction with certain government proposals designed theoretically to counteract the damaging effects of Western sanctions.
A steel magnate, for instance, criticized the parliamentary idea of requiring foreign buyers who are interested in Russian goods other than energy to pay in rubles. He told a Moscow newspaper that the proposal would injure Russia's export markets — duh — which Russia had "fought for for decades." A metals plant owner strongly cautioned that a legislative measure that would confiscate fleeing foreign companies' assets would rock investor confidence and bring a return of 1917's revolutionary unrest. An aluminum oligarch "has gone furthest," writes the Post, saying that Russia's war in Ukraine is "insanity" — insane, however, only because of its economic downsides. The West, he smartly added, is also to blame for the war. Nevertheless, rather unsmartly he charged that the war is "a madness for which we will long be ashamed of."
The Post reports that Russian oligarchs remain emotionally paralyzed by fear. "I don’t know who has the balls to fight back," said one. Yet their paralysis may be temporary. In fact I would go so far as to wager that eventually they will overcome their fear, for otherwise they'll have nothing left. "If the war is long, and [we] begin to lose, then the chances will be greater" for open resistance to Putin, said one oligarch. "There will be a serious battle for Donbas and, if it is not successful, then there will be a big battle inside Russia," he added. The "if" becomes more of a when upon contemplating Ukraine's long-term odds of battlefield success. The West is now pouring war metériel into Ukraine that the nation needs most, and the Russian army is exhausting itself and its supplies.
Additionally, notwithstanding the heavy, pro-war propaganda with which Putin is dousing the people, Ukrainian attacks inside Russia are unnerving the locals and, reports the Post in a separate article, "threatening to upend President Vladimir Putin’s effort to insulate his citizens from the fighting." Add to that the mounting coffins and countless funeral ceremonies held for Russian soldiers, all across the nation. The people said enough during Russia's invasion of Afghanistan, and someday, they'll say "enough" about Ukraine.
Putin will then have a two-front war on his hands: one front manned by the privileged rich, the other, the commoners. Putin's military brass are likely to join in a third front, once the zeitgeist of the had enough ethos is plain to see — everywhere.