Putin faces 'game changing' 2024 - and only one way to stop him, says expert
Vladimir Putin's 2024 has all the hallmarks of being a “bumper” year for him but “disastrous for everyone else in the free world”, a world affairs expert has gloomily predicted.
Professor Anthony Glees, security and intelligence expert at the University of Buckingham, said the way the West is ‘appeasing’ the warmongering Russian leader harks back to Adolf Hitler and the lead up to the Second World War. He believes the best chance of seeing off Putin’s aggression is to “step up to the plate” and back Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s calls for arms to enable a successful counter offensive.
“If Putin can be pushed back then we can all breathe a sigh of relief in 2024,” Prof Glees told the Mirror. And while he’s unsure Putin would have the manpower to come again, he does have “resolve” to continue to push if his war isn’t finally stamped out, added Prof Glees. “It would be catastrophic to let Putin have anything by force because if you give him anything by force in Ukraine, then he will go around that, particularly the new NATO members, the Baltic states, but also Poland, Hungary, Romania - he will go around those states and do the same thing bit by bit.”
He continued: “The dream of Putin, the people who are behind Putin, is to restore the territorial integrity that was the Soviet Union. That’s what they want, with its satellites, buffer states and its interconnections. I have no doubt that will be Putin’s intention. Does he have the manpower to do it? The weapons to do it? I’m not sure he does. But he has the resolve to do it.
“Whereas we have the weapons but we seem to lack the resolve to ensure this state of affairs does not come about, by giving Zelensky the weapons he needs now. That’s our best insurance policy to ensure Zelensky wins, to give him what he wants and needs and to help him in any way he needs.” Prof Glees added: “It could be very different but it’s a question of resolve. If you ask me, I’m rather gloomy.
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“As we know from the Second World War, if you appease someone like Hitler and give him what he wants without a fight, you don’t realise that actually if you’d had a fight then you could have probably stopped him. Germany got stronger, paradoxically, as the war went on.” In a similar trend, Putin and the Kremlin will take confidence the longer the stalemate continues, Prof Glees said. He believes the Russian President will be “heartened” by the Gaza war. “I think that’s quite significant,” he emphasised.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visits with wounded Ukrainian soldiers (AP)US President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken are “telling [Israeli leader Benjamin] Netanyahu to stop bombing civilians” but “Netanyahu is giving the two-fingered salute to Biden and Blinken”. “That’s a 20th Century war being fought in the 21st Century. A terrible war of revenge, breeding terrorism,” said Prof Glees, not so dissimilar to what’s happening in Ukraine - and not so dissimilar is the West’s response. As a result, it’s “wonderful for Putin…A bumper year, a bumper Christmas for Putin and his supporters”, added Prof Glees.
The coming year also means a swathe of key elections too, particularly in the US and Russia itself, but also - to a lesser extent - in the UK “who isn’t a major player but is a player”, and it adds to upheaval and uncertainty. Prof Glees said the prospect of Donald Trump being re-elected as US President will be a major cause for hope for Putin.
Trump has promised if he is brought back into the White House for a second term he will “make peace” with Putin within 24 hours. Prof Glees said: “Many Russians are doing everything they can to try to ensure Trump wins because that will change the situation.” He added that the prospect of Trump “looming on the horizon” has made it harder for Biden to be abe to “sell Ukraine to the US congress” as the former Republican leader is not in favour.
Donald Trump with Putin after a meeting in Vietnam in 2017 (TASS via Getty Images)Prof Glees said Trump in the Oval Office also brings about the prospect of him trying to force Zelensky “to accept Russian domination”. However, he said: “I would find it very hard to think that Zelensky ever would. I would think he would sooner take his own life than bow to Trump’s forcing him to do it. But, you know, politics is hard and real and warfare is even harder and realer.”
“If you said to me 2024 might be the year when people start telling Zelensky in public that Russia won’t be budged from the eastern territories that it has taken and he’s got to sue for peace, if one was to say that, I would not frankly be surprised. But that would be disastrous.” But he accepted: “People are tired. Where I live in Oxford there’s still people flying the Ukrainian flag. I haven’t seen it on shirts for some time. We still feel strongly with Ukraine, we associate with Ukraine. But war weariness is a feature of war.”
Putin is also facing elections in 2024. Prof said: “He knows there is no question he will be re-elected.” However, he believes the prospect of Russians going to the polls may have enabled him to attempt to soften his own image and amplify the “fakery” around him. On December 14, Putin held a mammoth annual press conference in which he moved between brutal directness and joviality. Despite the war dragging on far longer than the Kremlin ever envisioned, the President was sure, saying his goals “have not changed” and that “peace” can only be achieved when these have been met. “The denazification of Ukraine, its demilitarisation, its neutral status”, he added.
Anthony Glees, British historian and political scientist and professor at the University of Buckingham (DPA/PA Images)This was coming from a man who is rumoured to be suffering a catalogue of health issues - and if some reports are to be believed suffered a near fatal heart attack in October at his residence in Moscow. He met new British ambassador for Russia Nigel Casey in Moscow a couple of weeks ago but refused to stand any closer than 70ft, claiming it was down to “sanitary reasons”.
Prof Glees said: “Does he not want someone who’s not on his side to get too close to him? We’re told he’s worried about infection but it could be he doesn’t want people we would trust to get a close look at him. We can’t know. He’s clearly alive, or someone who looks very much like him is alive.
“I continue to believe that there is something very odd about him. Something spooky, and not just because he’s a spook. But if you look at him, his face, he himself alluded to this in the press conference with that AI generated avatar of himself. He was playing a game with people like me who have been saying we can’t be sure that Putin is Putin. He hasn’t changed, physically, and has more or less looked the same for 30 years. His mannerisms need to be thought about very carefully.
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“The avatar illustrates that you can create someone who appears to be Putin who isn’t Putin. All these things are about the fakery that goes to the heart of it, which is that Russia is a Mafia state, it’s not a real democracy and it’s run by mafiosi, for who Putin, or this person pretending to be Putin, is the chosen figurehead.
“We might be encouraged to see him as the all powerful person. I continue to believe that he’s there because his being there is in the interests of all them ‘five families’ - you get the point - who are running Russia and bleeding it dry of its resources for their personal wealth.”
Prof Glees said the “flashy” televised briefing - which lasted four hours - was meant to give the impression “Russia is like us, that Putin is like Sunak or Macron or whoever in the West”. “That’s all deliberate fakery and we need to be very careful about taking any of this as gospel truth because it isn’t. It’s done for a purpose. I can’t stress that enough. That press conference was a propaganda exercise.”
Prof Glees described Putin as a “droid” with a “KGB tradecraft training behind him”. He continued: “He’s always been gifted and one of the gifts you have as a KGB officer is the ability to charm and cajole, whilst also being violent and threatening, and in Putin’s case a killer.” Ignoring the smiles and the jokes allows us to remember the thousands of people who have died since he launched his war.
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny makes a heart gesture standing in a cage during a hearing in Moscow (AP)“We’re encouraged to forget all that but we shouldn’t forget it. That should be the lens, not the western lens, the propaganda lens through which we should be viewing things. Putin’s good at it, he’s psychologically a droid because of his training because he knows there is no question he will be re-elected.”
His biggest credible opposition is Alexei Anatolievich Navalny, who survived a 2020 poisoning with the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok, and is serving a 19-year prison sentence after Russian courts convicted him on a slew of charges, including "extremism" and embezzlement.
Prof Glees described Navalny as the “only person with charisma” who poses a threat to Putin and his regime. “He very foolishly went back to Russia, in my opinion, and I have no doubt he will be killed unless he ceases to be ‘charismatic’, but he has no divisions behind him. “His power resides on the ballot box and that’s not worth a row of beans in Putin’s Russia,” he added.
The other threat to his power was Yevgeny Prigozhin, a co-founder of the private mercenary Wagner Group, who engaged in a “Mafia shootout” during an attempted coup before being killed in a plane disaster. The victory has also seen Putin and the Kremlin take over Prigozhin’s soldiers. Prof Glees said: “He’s using the Wagner Group in Africa, particularly in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali and Sudan, to make money for Russia. I saw a figure, 40 million euros a month, the Wagner Group are bringing in in Africa, either in cash terms or in protection money or in gold they are smuggling out.
Russian mercenary group Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin (TELEGRAM/ @concordgroup_official)“And what that means is that Putin can continue to buy weapons from Iran and North Korea. His supply of weapons is funded by the Wagner Group, who are now his people. After killing off Prigozhin in that awful but in that justly manner, falling out of the sky fairly slowly in his jet.”
Prof Glees said it only adds to Putin’s confidence and his “inexhaustible ability to wage war”, with this image of Russia having “an unlimited supply of manpower and weaponry” - whether that’s true or not. A declassified U.S. intelligence report estimates the Ukraine war has cost Russia 315,000 dead and injured troops, or nearly 90% of the personnel it had when the conflict began.
Prof Glees said despite such damning estimates, “the feeling is Russia has got these vast resources and this war for Putin can go on forever”. He added: “If it is the case that Russia has got a limitless supply of weapons from fellow Axis of Evil members, from the mad ayatollahs in Iran, from the mad Kim Jong-un, then we in the West have simply got to get on with it. Step up to the plate and give Zelensky the weapons he needs.”
NATO general secretary Jens Stoltenberg said earlier this month: “If Putin wins in Ukraine, there is a real risk that his aggression will not end there. Our support is not charity. It is an investment in our security.” Asked, on the back of the Mr Stoltenberg’s comments, if rather than just the buffer states are at risk of Putin’s wrath, but also the UK and the rest of the West if he is to win in Ukraine, Prof Glees said: “He wouldn’t go after us in the UK because we would obliterate him with our nuclear weapons. With our Trident submarine fleet, when they’ve finally got it in good working order.”
Protesters in London unfurl a massive Ukrainian flag in February 2022 (Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)Asked why it is then the West appears to lack the resolve that - for his flaws - Putin appears to possess, Prof Glees said: “Democracies don’t like war because people don’t like dying and it’s understandable. Where public opinion counts that has to be taken into account.
“In Russia, public opinion doesn’t count. It’s a secret police state. Putin will kill you if he needs to, end of story. And he’ll kill you even if he thinks you’re a threat but live in Salisbury. He will kill you when you can. We don’t do that in the West and public opinion is peaceful. We will fight if we are attacked but if we can avoid fighting we will try to appease. I think we, the British, are much better here, stronger here, than other people because I think we’re much more aware here of what we are fighting for.
“Every person in Britain ought to wake up happy that they don’t live in Gaza. That they don’t live in Ukraine. Where else would British people want to live? We wouldn’t want to live in America, for goodness sake. So, I think there is something there for us to fight for but I think we will appease. When we are provoked I think we will fight.”
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