Does Putin think he is winning the war?
In his annual address delivered this week, Putin suspended Russia’s participation in the New Start treaty, signed between Russia and the US in 2010, designed to prevent nuclear war.
Although the 70-year-old upped the ante, Mr Ponomarev believes the speech only made it “pretty obvious” that Putin was not speaking as someone who is winning the war. Another blow came during the speech itself.
Russia carried out what appeared to be an unsuccessful test of an intercontinental ballistic missile — called “Satan II” — when President Joe Biden was in Ukraine. This failed missile test was meant to emphasise the withdrawal from said treaty, Mr Ponomarev believes, but it failed, “humiliating” Putin in the process.
While the immediate outlook may not be positive for Putin, the question, Mr Ponomarev believes, is not whether Putin is winning, but whether he thinks he can still win.
“Here, unfortunately, my answer is yes,” he continued. “I think that he still is convinced that there is a positive endgame for him, and that’s why he’s going to continue with hopes that the West cannot sustain a very long-term strategy, that the West would split, that the unity of anti-Putin coalition would not stand, and that he would prevail just by surviving this in terms of time, for longer than Western politicians can afford.”
Putin remains incredibly powerful — and, thanks to his KGB training, “a very talented manipulator”, as Mr Ponomarev experienced firsthand when he met the Russian leader.
Had Mr Ponomarev not been aware of Putin’s manipulation when meeting him, he would have thought that Putin was like his “best friend” and “the first person who understood him better than his wife”.
He continued: “I think that’s what helped him a lot when communicating with global leaders. They always see him as very sensible, reasonable, and thoughtful. That’s what he was trained to deliver and that’s what he was doing all the time.”
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