Any dictatorship needs a mythology. Putin’s mythology is the mythology of the victor, the one who “revives the Russian empire”. The war against Ukraine has been prepared for a long time. Literally from the very beginning of his rule, Putin looked at Ukraine as an important springboard for expanding his influence. Putin consistently built an ideological foundation on which the “problem of Ukraine” was to be solved. Therefore, Putin’s defeat in this war is not simply the restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty. It is the collapse of Putin’s entire concept. A dictator who loses his myth (and we are talking about a personal dictatorship) cannot retain power.
All the problems that have been driven deep into Putin’s Russia will come out. Let us not forget that the end of hostilities will not necessarily mean an end to confrontation with the West, which means that Russia will remain under sanctions. Right now, the sanctions pressure is offset by patriotic enthusiasm, and a large part of Russians believe that the war can be won. There is no sense of imminent disaster in Russian society. At the moment when the Ukrainian Armed Forces launch a decisive offensive and it becomes obvious that all will be lost, a completely different situation will arise.
We know from Russian history that people are willing to go to hardships in the name of a “high goal,” but defeats have always led Russia to a social explosion. Crimea is the basis of Putin’s mythology, which he has hammered into the heads of Russians for many years, so the Ukrainian flag in Sevastopol is the end of the war and the beginning of Russia’s liberation from Putin’s fascism.
