Galeoti: Russia's war against Ukraine could last for years, the shadow of Prigozhin still over Russia

Russia's war against Ukraine could last for years - believes Russia expert Mark Galeoti, who is a political analyst and honorary professor at the School of Slavic and East European Studies (SSEES) at University College London.

In an interview with Radio Free Europe (RSE), Galeoti said that while Russian President Vladimir Putin has put his country on a "war path," Ukraine's Western partners have not.

He predicts that Russia's war against Ukraine could last several years, with neither side strong enough to defeat the other. Galeotti predicts that the fighting will determine "where the lines will be drawn and what the emerging shape of Ukraine will be."

Galeotti is working on a book about Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the "Wagner" mercenary group, who died in a mysterious plane crash in August 2023, two months after starting the rebellion.

He believes that "the shadow of Prigozhin is still over Russia" because "the various things we see inside the Russian Ministry of Defense are proof that much of what Prigozhin said was actually true."

On the occasion of the death of opposition member Alexei Navalny in a Russian prison at the beginning of this year, Galeoti, when asked about the fate of the Russian opposition, said that it exists in emigration, but is irrelevant, while there is no organized opposition in Russia at all. But, "she could come back and bite Putin's regime", although if she gets stronger, "you have someone to deal with".

There is a lot of general discontent in Russia because of the war and the fear of mobilization, or because some people are making a lot of money but many people are experiencing all sorts of hardships, there is discontent "whether it's just because you're fed up with the old man who seems like he'll never leave or whatever it is," Galeotti said.

"The risk is that at some point it will catalyze, and the parallel that the Russians are using, including one person from the security apparatus, is what happened in Poland with the Solidarity movement" in the 1980s, he said, adding: "Who would have thought that will some electrician named Leh Valensa emerge victorious? There is a risk that a movement (in Russia) could emerge almost out of nowhere."

But today or tomorrow there is no chance of that in Russia because, firstly, said Galeotti, the current economic jump, the progress of the Russian economy, is basically the result of the government spending a lot of money and reserves, "and frankly, a lot of it is 'blood money' ' " which is paid to the people fighting or to the families of those killed in battle.

Or it's money spent on the defense-industrial complex, attracting workers to factories.

And that increases everyone's wages, which is good for them at the moment, but it's also inflationary.

"I think we will inevitably see an increase in the economic cost of this war, as well as human losses," Galeoti said.

Asked if there will be a sudden collapse or a gradual decline of Russia that will somehow fight it, Galeotti said that a parallel with former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev emerges - "a kind of slow decline into stagnation - no money for research and development or investment, people are not happy, but they are not very unhappy either."

Nevertheless, "the point is that things are happening. The regime is no longer good at dealing with crises," as indicated by the Prigogine problem, which was "very poorly resolved," Galeoti believes.

He expects that there will be major crises, and it could be Putin's health, it could be a sudden Ukrainian breakthrough through the front lines, it could be some kind of big economic crisis.

The problem is predicting when the unpredictable will happen, Galeoti said.

When asked about the reconstruction of Russia's government, Galeotti said that the long-term Putin regime foresees that it will essentially be a warring state for the foreseeable future because it now believes that it is essentially at war with the West, and Ukraine is just one battleground.

In the Ministry of Defense, it is clear, he believes, that it is an attempt to achieve greater efficiency and it is not a question of a large, but a small elimination of corruption "because every ruble that is saved is a ruble that can be spent on war" - that is " a kind of whole government structure as a war machine".

Another part of the structure is generational politics because the 70-year-olds, the next political generation, "are getting a little impatient because Putin and his collection of XNUMX-year-olds are still in power."

"And these are kleptocrats, they didn't sign up for some big existential war with the West. They wanted to be able to steal and then enjoy the wealth which basically means they can travel and buy spare parts for BMWs and everything," he said. is Galeoti.

"They want the old days, when they stole at home and accumulated wealth abroad," and "that's why what we see now, and that's especially thanks to the plan of Sergey Kiriyenko (the first deputy chief of staff of the president), is to raise the next generation. The plan is to find the ambitious and encourage them to be Putinists."

Putin likes the tactic of "divide and conquer" and that's how he manages the system - Galeotti believes and adds that he can oppose 40-year-olds to 60-year-olds, as indicated by the distribution of places, companies and assets not to oligarchs, but to small "mini-gars".

The idea is to create a new generation of people who can be relied upon and who will hopefully be more loyal. In addition, everyone has to fight against everyone else.

Galeotti does not think that Putin will act like Shakespeare's King Lear pitting his daughters against each other, although the analogy is mentioned. He explained that "the Russian system is good at maintaining the security of the Tsar and the central system", and believes that "it is much more likely, unfortunately, that (Putin) will 'limp' until death or ill health knock him out of the mix".

On the other hand, the West does not see what the internal state of Russia is, because "no one really wants to admit that the Ukrainian conflict is not that important for the West", although all politicians say so, but they do not act like that. Because while the Russians officially spend 6,9 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on war, which is certainly more in practice, some NATO members do not even give two percent of their GDP for defense, which they have committed to.

Thus, it will only be seen at the end of this year whether European ammunition production becomes serious, but in general, Europe is not willing to completely reorient its economic and political systems to fight the war, which now "does not represent a great threat", said Galeoti.

He explained that "there is no thinking about the defeat of Ukraine, which means that Russian tanks will reach the Romanian border", and the defeat of Ukraine will mean that the Russians will take part of the country, impose certain political restrictions to subordinate the rest, and "that is the worst possible scenario ", he believes.

Galeoti said that neither Russia can "slide" into the whole of Ukraine, nor will "Ukrainians manage to squeeze out every Russian soldier from every square centimeter of Ukraine", and that "victory and defeat will be found in the gap between that".

Since neither side has the capacity to sustain this pace of war indefinitely, he believes Ukraine could be divided like Korea, though it could still explode into violence again.

Galeotti predicts that the current pace can be maintained for a few more years, but for economic and human reasons, the conflict will not inevitably end, but will be more like "a fight between two punch-drunk boxers in the ring hanging from the ropes and occasionally coming out with a series of punches ".

The question is where the borders will be drawn and what form Ukraine will be in, because there is a big difference between an impoverished, miserable Ukraine that is constantly threatened by Russia's attack, or whether it will be accepted into NATO or the European Union - Galeoti told RSE.