Russian elites are tired of Putin's war

Discontent is growing among Russian elites who no longer see the war in Ukraine as a conflict that can be won on the battlefield according to a report from Bloomberg News. 

The best outcome most elites are hoping for are negotiations that allow the Kremlin to freeze the conflict and declare a victory over Ukraine by holding some occupied land. 

Bloomberg spoke with seven unnamed people familiar with the situation, four of which told the news organization that people's belief in Putin’s leadership had been shaken.

“There is elite deadlock: they are afraid to become scapegoats for a meaningless war,” former Russian government advisor Kirill Rogov explained to Bloomberg News. 

Photo credit: Telegram @KiRogov

Rogov left Russia after Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine and he’s been running the Vienna-based think tank Re:Russia, which provides expert analysis on the country. 

“It is really surprising how widespread among the Russian elite became the idea of a chance that Putin won’t win this war,” Rogov added, hinting at wider issues in Russia. 

In April, a phone conversation between two high-profile Russian elites—Iosif Prigozhin, a Moscow music producer, and Farkhad Akhmedov, a businessman and former senator —was leaked to the public and revealed the problems Putin is facing behind the scenes. 

Photo credit: Wikicommons

In the phone conversation, Prigozin and Akhmedov called Russia’s leadership “stupid cockroaches” who were “gnawing on each other…dragging their country downwards… destroying its future” according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 

Alexandra Prokopenko is a non-resident scholar with Carnegie and wrote in a tweet at the time Prigozhin and Ahkmedov’s phone call was leaked that their conversation was roughly the same criticism she was hearing in her discussions with Russian elites. 

Prokopenko wrote: “The content of their conversation is roughly similar to what I have heard in my conversations with [Russian] elites: Putin screwed up the whole country. Same expressions, same whining tones, same disappointment multiplied by despair.”

However, it would seem opinion among Russian elites has gotten far worse since the world learned about Prigozhin and Ahkmedov's disillusionment with the Kremlin's current leadership. Facing infighting and a Ukrainian counter-offensive, how will Putin manage?

Bloomberg noted that there is a growing public division between the Russian Ministry of Defense and nationalist hardliners set against the backdrop of a counter-offensive that has the country’s most important people soured on the chances of significant advances.

“There have been too many big mistakes,” said Sergei Markov, a political consultant that Bloomberg said had close ties with the Kremlin.  

“There were expectations a long time ago that Russia would take control of the majority of Ukraine but these expectations didn’t materialize,” Markov added. 

However, there are those in Russia that say the country will do whatever it must to win. Former Russian President and fierce Putin supporter Dmitry Medvedev said while in Vietnam at the end of May that the war in Ukraine could go on for decades. 

"This conflict will last a very long time, most likely decades," Medvedev said according to a Reuters translation. "As long as there is such a power in place, there will be, say, three years of truce, two years of conflict, and everything will be repeated."

Medvedev isn’t alone in his thinking. Konstantin Malofeev is a Russian Orthodox nationalist and a prominent Putin supporter who rejects the idea that Russia should sign a ceasefire according to Bloomberg because Moscow will soon have the advantage.

“In six months, we’ll have clear superiority in ammunition and shell production and we’ll be ready to go onto the attack,” Malofeev said, and he’s one elite who put his money where his mouth is by sponsoring a volunteer force currently fighting in Ukraine. 

Sentiment among Russian elites may be varied, and there may even be a growing part of society that’s become disillusioned with the war. But as long as President Putin and his supporters hold power in Russia, we’re unlikely to see elite opinion change the war.