Russian President Vladimir Putin is now reliant on Moscow's war with Ukraine to maintain the Kremlin's kleptocracy, a NATO foreign minister has said, as Western leaders scramble to help Kyiv retain its warfighting capability amid delays in military aid and battlefield defeat.
"Putin is a warlord now," Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna told Newsweek on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in southern Germany on Friday, as reports emerged of Ukraine's retreat from the embattled city of Avdiivka after two years of intense fighting there.
"His legacy will be war," Tsahkna added. "Probably, without the war, he's out of office." He continued: "He must have the war continued because his society is war law, war economy, the war regime without any kind of democracy."
In response, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Newsweek in a statement: "The Baltic states and their representatives have [an] extremely aggressive stance towards Russia. This is groundless, since our country has not threatened them, nor is [it] threatening them now. As for the war, we are trying to bring an end to the war that the Kyiv regime started against its own people in 2014."
The Russian victory at Avdiivka came at a high cost for Moscow but represents a significant gain on a front for months characterized by stasis and attrition.
As with the capture of Bakhmut in summer 2023, the fierce fighting in and around Avdiivka has left little of the settlement. But ejecting the Ukrainian garrison that has held the fortified town—located outside Donetsk City, a key hub for the Kremlin-controlled separatists fighting Kyiv since 2014—is nonetheless a boost for Russia.
Ukrainian politicians and commanders have for months been warning of the critical situation in Avdiivka, where Kyiv's units were suffering from a severe lack of munitions and air defense. Commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Saturday that Ukrainian forces, outgunned and under constant aerial bombardment, would "move to defense on more favorable lines."
Tsahkna said all Western allies bear some responsibility for the defeat, given their failure to deliver the military aid needed.
"All the countries have this responsibility," Tsahkna said. "The European Union promised 1 million rounds of ammunition—it was an Estonian initiative—for this March. We have done half of that."
This weekend's Munich Security Conference was dominated by the complaint that Ukraine's Western allies are giving too little too slowly to help Kyiv in its defensive war.
The defeat at Avdiivka underscored the human and material weight of Ukraine's efforts. For all Moscow's staggering losses—per estimates from Ukraine, the U.S. and other Western allies—Putin's forces are still on the offensive, though they appear incapable of the sweeping mechanized tactics envisioned at the start of the full-scale invasion, which began in February 2022.
Baltic leaders in particular have repeatedly warned that victory for Russia in Ukraine would leave Putin eyeing NATO's eastern flank. Moscow, Tsahkna said, intends to "restore capabilities for the next time," a process he said may take "three to four or five years."
"Nobody knows exactly," he added. "But we know definitely that there are plans for these kinds of reforms. So, this is time that we have to use to prepare more. And also, to send the message to Putin that we are ready, we are more ready than ever before."
Update 2/21/24 10 a.m. ET: This article has been updated to include comment from Dmitry Peskov.
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David Brennan is Newsweek's Diplomatic Correspondent covering world politics and conflicts from London with a focus on NATO, the European ... Read more
