Realising Kyiv will not be occupied, Kremlin searches for “new ideology” – Russian media

Kateryna Tyschenko — Thursday, 31 March 2022, 16:58

The Kremlin is beginning to realise that Kyiv is unlikely to be captured and that Russian will have a difficult time under the severe Western sanctions. It is therefore currently searching for a way to present a "peace deal" with Ukraine to Russian citizens.

Source: Medusa, quoting sources close to the Russian President and government

Quote: "As of the end of March, the Russian military leadership has become completely reconciled to the fact that Kyiv cannot be taken easily, i.e. with the forces that have been engaged in the "special operation" to date."

Details: Medusa received this information from three sources close to the presidential administration of the Russian Federation, and two sources close to the government.

According to Medusa’s sources, in the first days of the invasion, the Russian military leadership and President Vladimir Putin thought that the war would be easy and had not anticipated there would be such fierce resistance on the Ukrainian side.

At the end of February, Medusa’s source close to the presidential administration was certain that one of Russia’s main problems would be not occupying major cities but organising the work of their "new administrations". The source had no doubt that these territories, particularly Kyiv, would be captured.

However, as early as the beginning of March, the rhetoric of Medusa’s sources in the government had changed. Currently, they consider full occupation of the entire territory of the Donbas region (Donetsk and Luhansk Regions) the "most probable scenario".

Russia’s battlefield losses are the main explanation of the softening of the Russian position referred to by the five sources.

Furthermore, Medusa’s sources state that at the end of March, government officials showed Putin the reports on the state of the Russian economy. According to these documents, a source said, "the country will not be able to live normally in any way under such sanctions."

"[The government] is holding consultations on different industries, but the content is approximately the same: the old reserves will last only for a few months. What will happen after that, if sanctions are not lifted at least in part, no one knows. More precisely, it is clear that everything will turn out really badly. There will be infrastructural problems and transport problems," said the source close to the federal cabinet of ministers.

Three sources close to the Russian presidential administration stress that Putin has not yet approved a final decision on what to do next.

According to one of them, currently the president is "under the influence of different groups and people", while he himself "would like to see a kind of social discussion" on the war in Ukraine.

At the same time, the presidential administration is concerned that the "potential peace deal with Ukraine could affect Putin’s ratings".

"The citizens have been worked up into a fever by the propaganda. Let’s say the decision is made to limit ourselves to the territory of the Donbas. Then what to do with the "Nazis"? Are we not fighting them anymore? The people have been fed this word for so long, I cannot imagine how it would be possible to stop at the Donbas without the leadership going down in the ratings," — said one of the political pundits working for the Kremlin.

The publication reports that since mid-March, the Russian presidential administration has been trying to figure out through population surveys what the Russians think of the war.

Medusa’s source, who is familiar with their results, said that until recently, Putin’s ratings had been growing on the backdrop of the war. However, it is unclear what will happen next, and whether potentially giving up on the occupation of Kyiv would spark protests among the pro-government electorate.

According to Medusa’s sources, the administration held a meeting where they discussed strategies for explaining to the Russians the possible peace negotiations with Ukraine. However, there are "no reasonable strategies for explanation left".  

"So much coal has been thrown into the furnace of the locomotive that it will not be possible to stop it all at once," – said one of the political pundits at the meeting, according to Medusa’s information.

The difficulty, by administration’s estimations, is also that some of the Russian propagandists of the Vladimir Solovyov type are openly demanding that the war be continued. Other propagandists do not know how to back down and save face.

Two Medusa sources close to the Russian presidential administration have stressed that the disappointment of Russia’s so-called "patriotic public" can be great indeed. "Let’s say, for them it's like watching a TV series with a spoiler: in the last episode, they will take Kyiv. And then, in the middle of the series, some kind of negotiations [happen] and suddenly, it seems, [there will be] no Kyiv."

In this regard, the domestic political bloc is preparing for an inevitable drop in the government’s ratings after the war and the economic crisis that is taking shape, particularly in the largest cities – especially Moscow and St. Petersburg.

According to closed polls commissioned by the administration, the war in these cities is now supported by no more than half of the population. Against this background, according to Medusa’s sources, political pundits close to the government were given the task of thinking about "a new ideology for the country," about "some new national idea".

"In some form, there will still be peace, and people will ask the question: what was it for? Kyiv has not been taken, most sanctions have not been lifted, it is bad to live with them. Why tolerate all this? That vacuum will need to be filled by something, before someone else does it," said the source.