A18 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2 , 2022
russia invades ukraineBY PAUL SONNEThe early days of Russia’s inva-
sion of Ukraine have shown that
the Kremlin’s plans for its mili-
tary campaign were flawed at
best. Its assumptions about what
comes after may be equally un-
sound.
Minutes after Russian Presi-
dent Vladimir Putin announced
his military campaign against
Ukraine, the political theater to
usher in a puppet leadership ap-
peared to get underway.
On his Telegram channel, an
exiled former Ukrainian parlia-
mentarian allied with Russia an-
nounced he had returned to
Ukraine and began positioning
himself as a leader who could
sweep in and replace Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“Friends! As I promised you,
we’re taking action! The opera-
tion to denazify Ukraine has
started,” Oleg Tsaryov wrote on
the messaging service. “I’m in
Ukraine. Kyiv will be free from
fascists!”
After more than a day of fight-
ing, Tsaryov promised his follow-
ers, “We’re already close.”
But two days later, as the Rus-
sian military faced unexpectedly
fierce resistance, Tsaryov was ad-
dressing his messages to those
who “for some reason have begun
to lose heart,” promising that
“everything has just begun.”
If the Kremlin believes usher-
ing in someone like Tsaryov —
seen as a traitor by a huge swath
of Ukrainians — will provide an
easy path to indirect rule of the
country, or big parts of it, Moscow
may be underestimating the diffi-
culty of securing a nation with
foreign-imposed regime change,
according to scholars who have
studied such scenarios.
Russia executed similar plays
in Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk
in 2014, elevating fringe pro-Rus-
sian elites to control territories
ripped from Kyiv’s control. But
the scenario this time around is
entirely different, with Ukraini-
ans across many cities viewing
Russia as an aggressive invader.
Moscow would be attempting to
impose control on Ukrainian cit-
ies just recently destroyed and
occupied by its forces, and seeth-
ing with hostile populations — a
far different proposition.
“Even if you are able to grab
Zelensky and say, ‘Okay, we have
so and so, who is going to ride in
on the back of our tank and take
over,’ that is just the beginning,”
said Alexander B. Downes, a po-
litical science professor at George
Washington University. “This is
what regime changers don’t look
at. They focus on the short-term.”
Historically, when an external
power tries to impose a leader
with an opposed ideology or eth-
nicity on a resistant population —
as the Soviet Union did in Poland
and Hungary after World War II
or the United States did in Iran in
1953 — the common way to retain
control afterward is to rely heavi-
ly on brutality and repression,
said Downes. But even that may
work only in the short to medium
term, he said, because it is costly
and involves an extended occupa-tion, which Moscow may not have
envisioned in Ukraine.
Ukrainians, backed by Western
weapons and funding, have sig-
naled that they are prepared to
wage an insurgency in what could
turn into a grinding and protract-
ed conflict that would increase
the costs for Moscow to retain
control.
“There is not going to be a
Vichy Ukraine,” said John Herbst,
senior director of the Atlantic
Council’s Eurasia Center and a
former U.S. ambassador to
Ukraine, referring to the regime
in southern France that collabo-
rated with Nazi Germany. “There
may be an effort to create it but
the Ukrainians are not going to go
gently into the good night. They
are going to fight like hell.”
In his writings and speeches,
Putin has presented Ukrainians
as brother people who have been
taken hostage by Western nations
in a plot to destroy Russia and
now must be freed. That misread-
ing — complete with its underes-timation of Ukraine’s sense of
nationhood — may have led the
Kremlin to assume Ukrainians
would embrace a new Russian-
backed leader with minimal re-
sistance.
“I think the biggest obstacle to
Russia is the fact that Ukraine is a
real nation and it has tens, if not
hundreds of thousands, if not
millions, of people who are will-
ing to lay down their lives in
defense of Ukraine,” said Mitchell
Orenstein, professor of Russian
and East European studies at the
University of Pennsylvania.
Orenstein said even if Russia
manages to capture all the major
cities in Ukraine and install a
puppet government, “that gov-
ernment would have a very, very
difficult time controlling the ter-
ritory.”
Foreign-imposed regime
change generally does not im-
prove relations between the in-
tervening country and the target
nation and often makes them
worse or sparks a civil war, ac-cording to research published by
Downes and Boston College polit-
ical science professor Lindsey
O’Rourke.
Nearly two-thirds of leaders
installed in overt foreign regime
changes are either assassinated,
swept out in revolutions or vio-
lently overthrown, their research
has shown, including Carlos Cas-
tillo Armas in Guatemala,
L aurent-Désiré Kabila in the
Democratic Republic of the Con-
go and the shah of Iran.
O’Rourke said any new author-
ities have a huge motivation to
round up and eliminate any rem-
nants of the previous regime and
its supporters — an incentive
Russia would have in this case if it
proceeds with an occupation.
“They would have good intelli-
gence and the means to oppress,”
O’Rourke said. “It sort of paints a
scary picture.”
Tsaryov is part of a small cadre
of Ukrainians who have spent
much of the past decade in exile
or political obsolescence deepen-
ing their ties with Russia.
The former factory owner from
the Ukrainian city of Dnipro
served as a member of parliament
for Russia-friendly President Vik-
tor Yanukovych’s Party of Re-
gions. Then, in 2014, a pro-
European uprising in Kyiv forced
Yanukovych to flee to Russia and
ushered in a Western-leaning
government. Tsaryov emerged as
an opponent of the protest move-
ment, promoting a staunch pro-
Russian position.
While attempting to run for
president in 2014, Tsaryov was
beaten up by a crowd in Kyiv,
prompting him to pull out of the
race. Ukrainian authorities ac-
cused him with violating the
country’s territorial integrity and
sovereignty. He fled into exile.
In mid-February, the Financial
Times, citing a Western intelli-
gence official, reported that U.S.
spies believed the Kremlin might
try to install Tsaryov as Ukraine’s
new leader. Tsaryov dismissed the
report in later interviews. He did
not respond to requests for com-
ment from The Washington Post.
The suggestion that Tsaryovcould assume power was dis-
missed as laughable among many
Ukrainians. In a 2014 interview
with the Russian newspaper
Novaya Gazeta, Tsaryov admitted
to being the “most hated man in
Ukraine after Putin” but noted,
“You see, people respect those
who fall and then rise.”
The United States in recent
weeks informed the United Na-
tions it had credible information
about Russia compiling lists of
Ukrainians “to be killed or sent to
camps” following a military occu-
pation.
Ukrainian tycoon Viktor
Medvedchuk, who counts Putin
as the godfather of his daughter
and runs a pro-Russian political
party in Ukraine, is often see as
the obvious choice for a Kremlin-
installed leader — or if not him,
someone else from his party.
Medvedchuk had been under
house arrest in Ukraine facing
treason charges, but Ukraine’s
general prosecutor said in a tele-
vision interview that during the
invasion, Medvedchuk may have
escaped.
Any of Russia’s chosen leaders
would face an unsympathetic
population in much of Ukraine.
In a Feb. 5-13 telephone survey
conducted by the Kyiv Interna-
tional Institute of Sociology, 58
percent of Ukrainians said they
were prepared to take up arms or
participate in civil resistance ac-
tivities in response to a Russian
invasion. In a December survey
by the same organization, 67 per-
cent of those surveyed said they
wanted Ukraine to join the Euro-
pean Union and 59 percent said
they wanted the country to join
NATO.
Putin could attempt to over-
come that resistance by applying
the same brutal force he did in
Chechnya in the early 2000s, or
do something even worse, Herbst
said.
“To me the big question is: Is
Putin willing to go full barbarian
on Ukraine or full Strangelove on
nuclear stuff? That is question
one,” Herbst said. “And question
two is: Will the military appara-
tus carry out such instructions?”As its campaign hits resistance, Moscow risks a quagmire of regime change
2014 PHOTO BY EVGENIY MALOLETKA/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Oleg Tsaryov, an exiled former Ukrainian parliamentarian, has begun positioning himself as a leader
who could sweep in and replace Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.cials, who worry how he might
interpret comments in the West-
ern media about the European
Union sending fighter jets to
Ukraine or enforcing a no-fly
zone over Ukraine.
U.S. and European leaders are
unlikely to approve such mea-
sures, but talk of them may al-
ready be factored into Russia’s
next steps, officials fear.
“We need to manage the esca-
latory risk,” said one European
official. “Putin is not doing well.
He’s shouting at staff. His war is
behind schedule. This is a dan-
gerous time for Putin.”
“If the Russians hear that
Western leaders are thinking of a
no-fly zone, his mind goes back to
Libya in 2011, where NATO inter-
venes, and months later [Moam-
mar] Gaddafi is pulled out of a
hole and killed,” the official said.
In 2011, NATO intervened in
the civil conflict in Libya, imple-menting a no-fly zone designed
to close off Libya’s airspace to all
flights except humanitarian de-
liveries. The fighting resulted in
the ouster of Gaddafi, the coun-
try’s leader, who was killed by
rebels after fleeing his palace.
Some leaders have already tak-
en steps to try to avoid triggering
a disproportionate response
from Russia by ruling out unlike-ly policies, such as a no-fly zone.
“We have no intention of enter-
ing Ukraine by land or air,” NATO
Secretary General Jens Stolten-
berg said Monday, noting his
responsibility to make sure the
conflict “did not spiral out of
control, escalate or turn into a
full-scale war in Europe with
NATO allies.”
White House press secretaryJen Psaki also said there were
reasons a no-fly zone, which
would involve U.S. planes patrol-
ling the skies and potentially
shooting down Russian aircraft,
was “not a good idea.”
Some European intelligence
officials also expressed concerns
that the harder Putin is pushed
on sanctions, the more he may be
compelled to “set an example” by
striking at more civilian targets
in Ukraine.
Understanding Putin is made
more challenging by the intelli-
gence community’s lack of hu-
man sources with close access to
the Russian leader.
In 2016, Russians spying for
the United States were able to
demonstrate that Putin had per-
sonally instructed his intelli-
gence services to interfere in the
U.S. presidential election.
Sources with that level of detail
about Putin’s decision-makingnuclear forces on a higher level of
alert, has prompted fresh re-
quests from U.S. policymakers in
recent days to the intelligence
agencies for insights on his
thinking, according to several
U.S. officials familiar with the
matter.
Understanding what’s in a
leader’s head is one of the most
difficult tasks intelligence ana-
lysts face. But in Putin’s case, it’s
crucial for decision-makers to
understand how he might act so
they can calibrate their responses
and to try to find some way to end
the war in Ukraine.
Intelligence agencies routinely
conduct analyses of world lead-
ers, and it’s customary for those
profiles to be updated and reex-
amined during a crisis. Now ana-
lysts are scrutinizing Putin’s ev-
ery utterance and movement for
indications about his mental
state, his temperament and his
plans and intentions.
“We ask a lot of our intelli-
gence colleagues these days
[about] Putin’s mind-set,” said a
U.S. administration official, who,
like others, spoke on the condi-
tion of anonymity to describe
sensitive discussions. “We under-
stand that he has been isolated
during covid and is surrounded
by ‘yes men.’ Everyone is looking
for fissures when it comes to his
grip on power, but we’re not
seeing any significant cracks.”
Before the invasion, U.S. and
British intelligence analysts had
warned that Putin was being
misinformed by his advisers, who
gave him an overly rosy picture of
how easily the invasion was likely
to go. Those concerns have been
heightened now as the Russian
military prepares for what may
be a long and bloody battle for
the capital city, Kyiv.
“Their circles tend to be insu-
lar,” a second administration offi-
cial said of autocratic regimes
like Russia’s.
“We’ve all seen the images of
Putin and the physical distance
between him and those around
him,” the official said, remarking
on photos of Putin sitting several
feet from his advisers at a long
table. “In some ways that could
be a metaphor of what’s taking
place.”
The West’s uncertainty about
Putin’s access to credible infor-
mation is particularly concern-
ing, said U.S. and European offi-
PUTIN FROM A1 are no longer in Russia, accord-
ing to current and former offi-
cials familiar with the situation.
Intelligence analysts aren’t en-
tirely without human insights.
An FBI report compiled in recent
days cites a source who has
spoken to another person who
claims to know that Putin is
extremely angry about the sanc-
tions, which he felt were a dispro-
portionate response to his inva-
sion, according to a person famil-
iar with the report.
Analysts are now reexamining
earlier reports from that source
to determine whether the source
truly has close enough access to
Putin to know how he’s respond-
ing and what he might be saying,
the person said. The report also
cautioned that the source could
be providing the information to
influence the U.S. government to
ease up on sanctions, by portray-
ing Putin as furious and ag-
grieved, the person added.
The FBI intelligence document
was first reported by CNN.
The FBI declined to comment.
Analysts are also paying close
attention to what Putin says pub-
licly. His televised address before
the invasion, in which he assert-
ed that Ukraine wasn’t a sover-
eign country, was a catalogue of
long-standing grievances against
Ukraine and the West, filled with
historical inaccuracies and false-
hoods. But, analysts said, it was
also a clear indication of Putin’s
resolve that Ukraine effectively
belongs to Russia and should
never be admitted to NATO.
“We underestimate Putin’s
words at our own peril,” a U.S.
official familiar with Russia said.
“And I think he has been extraor-
dinarily consistent in what he
said about what he wanted and
what he wants.”
To that end, Putin’s order to
put his nuclear forces on higher
alert should be seen as a serious
indication of how committed he
is to extract guarantees about
Ukraine’s future and NATO, the
official said, adding that he could
imagine Putin detonating a nu-
clear weapon in the atmosphere
over an unpopulated areas as a
warning to the West.
“He believes that we do not
take him seriously. He thinks that
we have always seen him as weak,
and that ultimately he will back
down,” the official said.
Matt Zapotosky contributed to this
report.‘Putin is not doing well,’ one European o∞cial surmises
ALEXEI NIKOLSKY/SPUTNIK/KREMLIN POOL/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, speaks to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, second from left, and First Deputy Defense
Minister Valery Gerasimov, c hief of the general staff of the armed forces of Russia, this week in Moscow.“We’ve all seen the images of [RussianPresident Vladimir] Putin and the physicaldistance between him and those around him. Insome ways that could be a metaphor of what’staking place.”
U.S. administration official