Can Putin survive his 'catastrophic' war with Ukraine?

When Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February 2022, his goal was to erase it as a sovereign nation in a matter of days. At the time, it seemed a plausible goal, in Russia and in the West. Now, Ukraine's survival is a much safer bet than Putin's.

Russia's aspiring empire-rebuilder is nothing if not a shrewd survivor, but to paraphrase the Prussian field marshal Helmuth von Moltke, no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. Or, as Mike Tyson said: "Everybody has plans until they get punched in the mouth." And from the first punch, Putin's war has been disastrous.

Ukraine has lost a lot in the war. But Putin's invasion is also "turning Russia into a failed state, with uncontrolled borders, private military formations, a fleeing population, moral decay and the possibility of civil conflict," Arkady Ostrovsky said at The Economist. And the war could pose an existential problem for Putin himself: He could die, resign or be involuntarily retired.

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Putin's life

Putin fashions himself a physically fit, hockey-playing judo champion who hunts wild game and occasionally rides shirtless on a horse. But as he emerged from extreme Covid-19 isolation, rumors started spreading that he was ill or even dying.

Valery Solovei, a Russian political analyst and Kremlin critic, alleged in 2020 that Putin had cancer and Parkinson's disease and had undergone emergency surgery sometime that year, according to Newsweek. In May 2022, Michael Weiss said at New Lines magazine that a "growing chorus of those close to Putin or in his domestic intelligence apparatus" are murmuring about his poor health, and an unidentified "oligarch close to the Kremlin" had been secretly recorded describing Putin as "very ill with blood cancer."

Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine's military intelligence, said to ABC News in January 2023 that "Putin is terminally ill, he will die before the war ends and there will be a transfer of power." Based on their human sources, he added, "we think it's cancer." Putin has surpassed the "average life expectancy of a Russian male," CNN said in March 2024, "but his recent public appearances appear to show someone in rude health." Video that appeared to show Putin's leg shaking uncontrollably during a November 2024 speech in Kazakhstan revived speculation he has Parkinson's disease.

"There are two ways of explaining why there are so many rumors circulating around Putin's health," The Economist's Arkady Ostrovsky said in June 2022. "One, of course, is political, if you like: That there are so many people around Putin now who realize he has made this extraordinary blunder that has driven Russia into this catastrophic war, there are a lot of people who see and wish for the best way out, which is Putin dying in office."

"The other, of course, is the possibility that he is very, very seriously ill," though "we can't verify this," Arkady said. "The fact that [these rumors] are circulating, however, is politically significant. It is evidence of how brittle this regime is and how quickly it could unravel, how much is held together by Putin, and how many people want him dead."

The Kremlin has disputed the health reports, as did former CIA Director William Burns, who told the Aspen Security Forum in July 2022 that "there are lots of rumors about President Putin's health and, as far as we can tell, he's entirely too healthy."

Putin's power

Almost as soon as Putin launched his Ukraine invasion, "there has been ongoing deliberation about how long Putin will remain in power, his hypothetical demise an outcome of failing health or domestic political ouster," Shawn Cochran said at War on the Rocks. Certainly, there is no shortage of people who would be happy to take his place.

"I think there are chances Putin could be forced from office," former Russian diplomat Boris Bondarev, who quit Russia's United Nations mission in May 2022 over the war, said to Britain's Daily Mail in December. "But first he must be regarded by his own people as a loser, as someone who lied and made them fools," and "that will happen only if he is truly and widely defeated in Ukraine." If that does occur, Bondarev said, Putin's elite "may force him to go to sleep and never wake up."

Putin so far has fended off threats to his rule, jailing critics and short-circuiting a serious challenge from former ally Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner mercenary army. Two months after humiliating the Kremlin with his short-lived mutiny, Prigozhin died in a mysterious plane explosion alongside other group leaders outside Moscow in August 2023. Prigozhin "was almost certainly executed as surely as if he had been shot by a firing squad in Red Square," Max Boot said at The Washington Post. "That is how you hold on to power when you rule a gangster state." The apparent "mob hit" on Prigozhin shows that Putin, "Russia's mob-boss-in-chief," remains "very much in charge," Fred Kaplan said at Slate, "and that those who think otherwise, who see countersigns of a loosening grip, are indulging in wishful thinking."

Moreover, "Putin is a student of Russian history and aware of the connection between failed wars and leadership changes," the Foreign Policy Research Institute's Philip Wasielewski said in August 2023. If he loses the war — or even loses Crimea — it could lead to his "downfall."

Putin's prospects

So, can Putin survive? "By some measures, Russia has already lost this war militarily and politically," Ivan Gomza and Graeme Robertson said at the Post, and "research suggests that leading a country to defeat in war is politically costly." But "highly personalistic" dictators like Putin "are far less vulnerable to losing office after a defeat in war" than democratically elected leaders, and "so long as Putin continues to provide sizable personal benefits to his close allies, they are likely to hang together, for fear of hanging separately."

Still, "Russia has a history of regime change in the aftermath of unsuccessful wars," from the Bolshevik Revolution after the Russo-Japanese War and World War I to the collapse of the Soviet Union following its defeat in Afghanistan, Liana Fix and Michael Kimmage said at Foreign Affairs. "Revolutions have occurred in Russia when the government has failed in its economic and political objectives and has been unresponsive to crises" as its legitimacy is punctured. With Ukraine's incursion into Kursk province, Putin has already lost more Russian territory than any leader since Josef Stalin in World War II.

President Donald Trump appears to have thrown Putin a lifeline, suggesting Russia will get to keep much of its pilfered territory and Ukraine will not join NATO. Still, Kyiv isn't throwing in the towel and if it becomes clear Ukraine will not be defeated to Putin's specifications, the "most likely" scenario is that he leaves office, and a "vicious power struggle" ensues between various factions — pro-war right-wing nationalists seeking a reckoning, authoritarian conservatives committed to the status quo and "semi-democratic" reformers, Alexander J. Motyl said at Foreign Policy. "We don't know who will win, but we can confidently predict that the power struggle will weaken the regime and distract Russia from what remains of its war effort."