Cracks are growing within the Kremlin over the war in Ukraine and the elite around President Vladimir Putin are looking for ways to escape the "sinking ship," John Herbst, the former United States ambassador to Ukraine, has told Newsweek.
"At a minimum, since last September, the fissures in Russian elite society have become apparent," said Herbst, the senior director of the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center.
Herbst, who served as ambassador to Ukraine from 2003 to 2006, was referring in part to clashes that have grown in intensity in recent weeks between Russian tycoon Yevgeny Prigozhin-whose paramilitary outfit the Wagner Group has been heavily involved in fighting in Ukraine-and Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov.
Prigozhin has threatened on multiple occasions to withdraw from the embattled city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine over an apparent lack of ammunition for his fighters.
A furious Prigozhin directly addressed Putin in his appeal for more munitions on May 5. He had previously aimed his attacks only at Shoigu and Gerasimov, blaming them and their failure to provide more ammunition for the deaths of his fighters.
Military blogger Igor Girkin, a Russian nationalist who was prominent in the war in the Donbas region of Ukraine in 2014, has also created a social movement that, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank, aims to increase pressure on Putin.
Girkin founded the Club of Angry Patriots with Russian political figure Pavel Gubarev and political activist Vladimir Kucherenko, also known as Maxim Kalashnikov, in April. The group has said it is concerned that Russia will lose in Ukraine, which could lead to a pro-Western coup and a Russian civil war.
"The thing about authoritarian regimes, is that they seem stable, but they are completely unstable," said Herbst. "The sharp criticism lies within the Club of Angry Patriots...criticizing all the leadership including Putin."
Herbst said that seen senior regime officials also distanced themselves from Putin's "partial mobilization" order last September. The decree supposedly targeted some 300,000 reservists with military experience, though observers say the number targeted in the call-up was likely much higher.
"All those are signs of a sinking ship, and [they are] wondering how they get off," he said. "That doesn't mean the regime will collapse tomorrow. But it does mean that the obvious failure in Ukraine is placing a significant and growing strain on Putin's regime."
Newsweek reached out to Russia's Foreign Ministry via email for comment.
The ISW assessed in December that Putin is "likely concerned" over the lack of support for his war in Ukraine among Russian elites.
Just weeks into Putin's full-scale invasion, in March 2022, Herbst told Newsweek that the war had been an "unmitigated disaster" for the Russian president. The former ambassador said on Tuesday that Putin has "failed miserably" in his war against Ukraine.
"A year ago, [Putin] had lost the battle for Kyiv and the battle for Kharkiv. But his forces had regrouped and were making slow but notable progress in Donbas [in] April, May of 2022," Herbst said. "There's no real Russian counteroffensive this year, and Ukraine is preparing for another counteroffensive. Moscow is doing even worse now than it did then. A year ago, analysts greatly overestimated Russian strength."
Looking ahead to Ukraine's anticipated counteroffensive to recapture its occupied territories, Herbst said there's a "decent chance" Ukraine will take back the city of Mariupol in the Donetsk region.
Putin "has to be defeated to retreat, and the defeat will have to be very large," he said. "I think the biggest defeat one could expect is breaking the [Crimea] land bridge, which will involve taking back a lot more than Mariupol in the South."
Herbst added: "If Ukraine is able to recapture either the cities of Luhansk or Donetsk or Mariupol, if any of those cities fall back into the hands of Ukrainians, it would be enormous symbolically, an enormous defeat."
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