So he is not asking for anything to “save face”. His problem is that he needs substantive gains but none are on offer through either military action or diplomacy. Anything that might be achieved now in negotiations will appear trivial compared with Putin’s opening demands. Even his propaganda machine at its most creative will struggle to turn vague reassurances about future security arrangements, promises about protecting the Russian language, or, at most, an acknowledgement of the status quo in Crimea, into a great victory – especially as the costs begin to be tallied. If saving face means avoiding any reputational damage, that is a battle already lost.
Moreover, Putin may have more to save than merely his face. The priority for Russia could soon shift from demonstrating gains to mitigating losses. Sooner rather than later, it will need some relief from the sanctions. As I noted in my previous post, the economic pressure may not persuade Putin to abandon this campaign, but the conditions under which they might be eased will be an important part of any peace negotiations.
This leads into one of the perplexing aspects of the “saving face” argument. Because this is one man’s war, launched from an isolated but apparently secure position in the Kremlin, governments, diplomats, intelligence agencies, and even lowly commentators, are spending an inordinate amount of time trying to work out what is going on in Putin’s head. Winston Churchill’s famous quote about Russia – “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma” – now applies to Putin as an individual. For Churchill the key to the riddle was the “Russian national interest”. That is a good realist answer but what is Putin’s personal interest and how can we address it?
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