Putin Went From Ambitious Conquest to Scrambling for Control

When Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine earlier this year, it was seen by some as an escalation of Russian irredentism in Eastern Europe and the culmination of the ambitions of a leader largely seen as the face of resistance to the Western world.

Putin's armies stormed into the country, a full-bore assault on Ukrainian military and civilian infrastructure that left thousands dead and even more displaced. And even after the disastrous implications of an ill-informed springtime assault, Russian firepower continued to rain down upon the country, devastating cities, disrupting critical infrastructure and killing hundreds.

Today, Putin—once compelled by the ambitions of empire—now appears to be scrambling to maintain control of the lands he managed to take.

On September 1, Putin established a goal of taking over the long-occupied Donetsk region—one of four territories Putin claimed for Russia earlier this year—within a period of two weeks. Its capital city remains under heavy siege.

Zaporizhzhia—home of a critical source of nuclear power—remains under consistent Ukrainian fire despite Putin's October 5 declaration that the facility is now Russian property. And on Wednesday, the Russian-occupied city of Kherson, a city seen as key to a Russian spiritual victory in the war, was evacuated by its Russian-installed leadership as Ukrainian resistance forces have begun their push toward the city's borders.

Recent moves by the Kremlin suggest Putin's grasp on the regions he'd annexed might be slipping even further. Early in the week, Putin announced he would be imposing martial law in the newly annexed areas of Ukraine—an escalation of the Russian occupation global observers saw as an indication his armies lacked the fortitude to rule what they'd sought to conquer.

"These are the acts of a desperate country, a desperate government, a desperate president," Jim Settele, a onetime military assistant to former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld from 2001 to 2003 and executive director of the School of Policy and International Affairs at the University of Maine, told Newsweek.

Largely because the use of martial law—i.e. the military takeover of the regional government—does little to change the status quo. Beyond the ability for the Russian military to rule with additional impunity, all four regions under the proclamation are already combat zones under active Russian occupation, which hasn't helped the country hold its ground.

"Vladimir Putin finds himself in an incredibly difficult position," President Joe Biden told reporters Wednesday. "It seems his only tool available to him is to brutalize individual citizens, to try to intimidate them into capitulating. They're not gonna do that."

However, the Kremlin also issued authorizations to regional governors along the Ukrainian border to mobilize any forces necessary to defend themselves from Ukrainian attack—a tactic not yet seen this century—signaling that Russian prospects in the region are only getting worse in a war once seen as a show of the country's strength.

"Mobilizing thousands of troops certainly didn't play well, and the annexation didn't play well," Settele said. "Declaring martial law is a desperate act of a desperate man. That's not going to play well with the Russian people, who thought they were winning this war. 'Why do you have to declare martial law?' It's gonna hurt him as his opposition continues to build in Russia and toward his special operation."

The biggest implication of imposing martial law in those territories, experts say, could be for strategic effect.

Cynthia Hooper, director of the Russian and Eastern European Studies program at the College of the Holy Cross, told Newsweek the country's historic application of martial law was largely intended to control the flow of information and preserve secrecy to reduce the potential for dissent—a template most notably deployed in the wake of the violent suppression of a 1962 workers' strike in Novocherkassk or a Gulag revolt, like the 40-day Kengir labor camp rebellion in 1954.

In 1980s Afghanistan, the Soviet-installed government in Kabul imposed martial law at the height of violent protests against the USSR's ongoing occupation of the country, which was already flailing under the weight of a successful insurgency by Afghan resistance groups.

While martial law had not been deployed during Putin's era, elements of the practice have remained a steadfast characteristic of contemporary Russia in controlling the flow of information about Russian activities, whether it was the Soviet downing of Korean Airlines Flight 007 in 1983, the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986, or the handling of the 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis, the reporting of which was strictly controlled by the government.

The Kremlin modus operandi in each instance, she noted, was always to deny wrongdoing, deflect criticism and downplay tragedy, working to control the narrative not only in the places where the atrocities occurred, but in the cosmopolitan population centers of St. Petersburg and Moscow, where public opinion is ultimately shaped.

There are signs Kremlin officials are feeling the pressure. On Tuesday, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin announced that the military mobilization for the war in Ukraine was over for the Russian capital region, while recent methods of rounding up conscripts in the city of St. Petersburg have drawn condemnation and scrutiny from the Russian public.

Meanwhile, the Russian military has shifted its focus to sustained attacks on more civilian targets and Ukraine's energy grid, knocking out approximately 30 percent of Ukraine's energy infrastructure, according to Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko.

As a battle for Kherson looms, the element of martial law only grows more prescient in the greater context of the war—particularly as many strategic positions remain sympathetic to the Ukrainian cause.

Russian soldiers recently shot and killed internationally renowned Ukrainian music conductor Yuri Kerpatenko in his home in Kherson for refusing to participate in a concert that they planned in the city to "celebrate" the Russian annexation.

And even before the announcement, citizens of Kherson were attempted to be assimilated into Russia by programs requiring pensioners to give up their Ukrainian passports and accept Russian ones if they wished to receive monthly payments—an offer many residents refused, per the Ukrainian government.

"This suggests to me that authorities are either afraid of a possible Ukrainian victory with heavy, heavy Russian casualties (including from among freshly mobilized, poorly trained soldiers rushed to the frontlines over the past few weeks)," Hooper said, "or that the Russian authorities are prepared to use whatever means necessary to inflict maximum harm against the Ukrainian army and any urban spaces they are able to occupy—as we saw during the siege of Mariupol this past spring."