Always unachievable is ascertaining whether demagogues and warmongers believe what they say, or believe only that the commoners will believe what they say. Scholars of rhetoric say the difference is irrelevant; what matters is that the demagoguery and warmongering are real, and it is this which must be countered by people of conscience.
The downside to this rhetorical theory is that authoritarians — those of the above ways of governing — deny their people outside sources of legitimate news and information. They cultivate a kind of mass social psychosis via disinformation; "psychosis" being defined as the deracination of actual reality from the popular mind.
Such is the political lifeblood of authoritarian leaders, and yesterday, the Russian personification of this ilk gave it to the populace good and hard. Using the Battle of Stalingrad's 80th anniversary as his rhetorical prop, Vladimir Putin evoked the Russian people's vast suffering at the hands of ill Western winds. "Unfortunately," he said, "we see that the ideology of Nazism in its modern form and manifestation again directly threatens the security of our country."
He spoke in Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad, which features the massive Motherland Calls monument to the Soviet Union's fallen during the historic, 1943 battle. In Putin's telling, nothing has changed: "We are again and again being forced to resist the aggression of the collective West," he said. Indeed, "it's incredible," he added, "but it's a fact: We are again being threatened with German Leopard tanks with crosses on them."
Nevertheless, because of Mother Russia's "righteousness" — as well as its "legacy of ... values and traditions" — "We aren’t sending our tanks to [Germany's] borders." On the other hand, the motherland's patience can be tried. "We have the means to respond, and it won’t end with the use of armor," said Putin in an unconcealed reference to the alternate use of nuclear means. "Everyone must understand this."
His Stalingrad speech was a corollary to his remarks last month to a group of WW II veterans, a talk in which he identified the proximate cause of Russia's dire, international predicament today. "The neo-Nazis who have gained ground and are running the show in Ukraine" are carrying out "crimes against civilians." Russia is keeping tabs: "It is essential to record everything they"— those Ukrainian Nazis — "are doing now, especially to civilians."
To the rational mind it is nearly inconceivable that Mr. Putin could genuinely believe this rot. Yet the former KGB counterintelligence agent has lived under a mushrooming cloud of clinical paranoia for decades — the old Soviet Union was virtuously meant for the ages; the West, forever aggressive toward it. Believe this he might. Or, his tale is merely one of knowing bombast and emotional demagoguery.
Russia's populace, meanwhile, is largely ignorant of the actual "crimes against civilians" in Ukraine — most recently, Putin's missiles raining down on a four-story apartment complex in the city of Kramatorsk. Like all good terrorists, Russian forces waited until rescuers sifted through the rubble for survivors before sending two more missiles screaming into the flaming chaos.
In his Thursday speech, Putin remained mum about the bubbling rumors that he's about to conscript thousands more Russian men to fight Ukraine's phantom Nazis and the West's imaginary aggression. Because what's not imaginary are Russia's nearly 200,000 casualties to date. And the deadly toll is swiftly mounting as the Russian army — in its revised strategic approach — sends swarms of undertrained youth and recently imprisoned troops into battle.
Says Colin Kahl, the U.S. defense undersecretary for policy, "They’re running low on artillery. They’re running low on standoff munitions, and they are substituting by sending convicts in human waves into places like Bakhmut and Soledar.The Russian military has been following the Wagner playbook and deliberately using the poorly trained troops to draw, and deplete, Ukrainian fire."
Which is working. Norway's defense chief, Gen. Eirik Kristoffersen, estimates that Ukrainian forces have sustained casualties of about 100,000 troops. He also estimates that Russia has killed — murdered — roughly 30,000 of the nation's civilians.
Kusti Salm, Estonia’s deputy defense minister, observes that "the exchange rate is ... not one to one because for Russia, inmates are expendable. From an operational perspective," this is "a clever tactical move from the Russian side." As historians of the Second World War's European theatre of operations have also observed, Joe Stalin, too, sent prisoners to the front — about one million of them.
Vladimir harbors the same level of remorse as Uncle Joe did. He's feeling better these days, what with Russia's new strategy of hurling thousands of men into the slaughter, thus putting Ukrainian forces at a severe disadvantage in retaliatory manpower.
What's more, Putin has no domestic opposition, for in addition to demagoguing the war in Ukraine as a replay of Russia's battle against German Nazis, he has effectively shut down outside sources of news and information. Of those 30,000 Ukrainian civilian deaths? Virtually no Russians are aware.
Given his fresh, wartime edges, Putin, or so U.S. officials believe, can now politically withstand hundreds of thousands more casualties in Ukraine. And President Zelensky believes his country is not yet at the end of any beginning; he is seeing huge accumulations of Russian troops in eastern Ukraine, also pronounced increases in artillery strikes — which, he's convinced, are but the preliminary maneuvers of a new Russian offensive.