Putin Believes He's Winning In Ukraine. What Will He Do If He Thinks Russia Is Losing?

Insider: Putin believes he's winning in Ukraine but will become 'most dangerous' when he thinks Russia is losing, expert warns 

* Tatiana Stanovaya, a Russia expert, in a NYT op-ed said that Putin believes he is winning in Ukraine. 

* "That might seem hard to believe," Stanovaya said, "But it's what the Kremlin seems to believe." 

* But Putin will likely become "most dangerous" if his perspective shifts and he believes he's losing. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin believes his forces are winning the nearly five-month war in Ukraine, despite failing to take Kyiv and suffering heavy troop losses, according to Tatiana Stanovaya, a Russia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 

In an op-ed for the New York Times, Stanovaya warned that Putin will become "most dangerous" when he begins to think he's losing the war. 

"Everything is going according to plan. That's the line from President Vladimir Putin. The war in Ukraine, in its fifth month and with no end in sight, may be grueling. But senior Kremlin officials keep repeating that Russia, gaining the upper hand in Ukraine's east, will achieve all its goals," Stanovaya wrote. 

"That might seem hard to believe," Stanovaya added, "But it's what the Kremlin seems to believe."  

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WNU Editor: The Western narrative is that Putin is the hard-liner in Russia. But in Russia, he is regarded to be the moderate. The people who we should be afraid are the people who are around Putin. 

In March the perception in Russia was that the Kremlin was losing in Ukraine, and many Russian officials and media personalities became very blunt on what should be done (i.e. declaration of war/full mobilization/destroy all of Ukraine's infrastructure/target Western allies/etc.). 

Fortunately this type of escalation did not happen. Putin stopped it. But if the Russian war effort does unravel, I suspect Putin will be under tremendous pressure to unleash the Russian war machine to a greater level than what we have been seeing for the past five months, and God help us then..