Can Putin survive his 'catastrophic' Ukraine war?

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

Ukraine has systemically and strategically taken back half the territory Russia seized, inflicting humiliating loss after debilitating setback. As Ukraine's battlefield victories pile up, the U.S. and its NATO allies are giving it increasingly sophisticated weapons.

"If 2023 continues as it began, there is a good chance Ukraine will be able to fulfill President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's New Year's pledge to retake all of Ukraine by the end of the year — or at least enough territory to definitively end Russia's threat," Liz Sly suggested at The Washington Post.

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War is unpredictable, and Ukraine's blood and gifted treasure are not infinite. But if Russia, the erstwhile superpower, does lose its war in Ukraine, will that end Putin's grip on power? Or his lease on life? In other words, will Putin survive his invasion of Ukraine?

There are a number of ways Putin's war can ruin Russia — it is already "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 wrote at The Economist — but there are really only three ways it can topple Putin himself: He could die, resign or be involuntarily retired.

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 Solovey, 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, per Newsweek. In May 2022, Michael Weiss wrote 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."

"The evidence for the preponderance of disparate if not contradictory claims of Putin's imminent demise is Putin himself," Weiss said. "He certainly looks bad. The bullfrog mien, awkward gait, fidgety behavior at televised events." Putin "really does not feel very well," especially after Russia's military defeats, Solovey told Ukraine's UNIAN news agency in November 2022. "He has problems, stomach pains, and so on. Most likely, he has difficulty controlling himself."

Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine's military intelligence, told ABC News in January 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."

"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 added. "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 has CIA Director William Burns, who told the Aspen Security Forum 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, and certainly since it started going poorly, "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 wrote 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, told 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 continued, Putin's elite "may force him to go to sleep and never wake up."

So far, Russian nationalists and pro-war military bloggers have kept their strident criticisms of the Ukraine war aimed at the Russian defense ministry and military generals, not Putin. But one prominent military blogger, former Russian militia commander Igor Girkin, "heavily implied" in January that he would support Putin's removal from office, even if such a statement had "suicidal" consequences, the Institute for the Study of War think tank reported.

"Putin, that old KGB man," is "shrewd enough — and paranoid enough — to see threats everywhere around him," Charles Lipson wrote in The Telegraph, and he isn't ignoring these dangers to his rule. Girkin was arrested on July 21, 2023, after accusing Putin of weakness, "cowardly mediocrity" and indecision in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner mercenary army, died in a mysterious plane explosion alongside other group leaders outside Moscow on Aug. 23, two months after a brief but humiliating aborted Wagner mutiny.

Prigozhin "was almost certainly executed as surely as if he had been shot by a firing squad in Red Square," Max Boot wrote at the 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 agreed 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 assessed 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 noted in 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. Of course, it is also possible that in the face of defeat, as with Josef Stalin's failure to conquer Finland in 1939-40, Russia's subdued elites may be "unlikely to pose a serious challenge to Putin," Maria Snegovaya mentioned at the Journal of Democracy in April 2022.

If it becomes clear Ukraine will not be defeated, the "most likely" scenario is that Putin 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 argued 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."

Updated Sept. 5, 2023: This article has been updated throughout.