Vladimir Putin used to call out America for its hubris. Now he appears to have fallen into the same trap

By Lucia Stein and Rebecca Armitage for the ABC

After railing against the dangers of Western imperialism for more than 15 years, Russia's President Vladimir Putin now finds himself in the type of military quagmire he once claimed was a uniquely American error.

The Ukrainian invasion he thought would take a couple of days in February is about to enter its eighth month.

A well-armed and surprisingly nimble Ukrainian army has killed or injured up to 80,000 Russian soldiers, according to US Pentagon estimates.

And with no end in sight, the Kremlin could be spending as much as $US500 million (more than NZ$894 million) every single day to fund this war.

Now, as Ukraine grabs land back from Russian forces, Putin has ordered a partial mobilisation of 300,000 reservists to head to the front.

He has also stepped closer than ever to the precipice, threatening to use Russia's nuclear arsenal if he deems it necessary.

"I think you've got to question his state of mind because it's really not going well," said Joel Hickman, the Deputy Director for the Defence and Security Programme at the Centre for European Policy Analysis.

"They've lost a huge number of troops. They lost a huge amount of equipment. They're an international pariah. Much of the world has sanctioned them. Their economy is tanking."

So why would a man who has regularly warned the West of the dangers of getting stuck in foreign conflicts keep wading deeper and deeper into the muck?

'No one feels safe!'

Putin has historically used global summits to lecture the West about its failure to learn from its own mistakes.

In 2007, he strode into a conference room in Munich and dressed down the US for what he said was a ruinous invasion of Iraq.

"Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force - military force - in international relations, force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts," he said.

"This is extremely dangerous. It results in the fact that no one feels safe. I want to emphasise this - no one feels safe!"

Eight years later, he would stand at the UN General Assembly and again rail against what he perceived as American imperialism and unfettered hubris.

Enraged by America's intervention in Arab Spring uprisings across the Middle East, he said the US was making an "enormous mistake" by not backing Syria's regime as it fought off an insurgency.

"Far from learning from others' mistakes, everyone just keeps repeating them," he said.

And last year, he lamented the two decade-long US occupation of Afghanistan which saw the Taliban swiftly take back control of the country as soon as American forces left.

"The United States intruded into Afghanistan in defiance of the traditions, culture, and history of the Afghan people. The result was tragic," Putin said at a Moscow energy forum.

While his comments on America's foreign interventions might make him seem like an isolationist, in reality Putin was quite the opposite.

In 2008, he sent Russian tanks over the border into the small neighbouring country of Georgia.

And in 2014, he violated international law after he launched an audacious annexation of the Crimea peninsula.

In both instances he faced muted criticism from the West, which may have emboldened him to go further in 2022 with a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

"I think they certainly overestimated the strength and effectiveness of their own forces," said Hickman.

"I think the key thing is they underestimated the way the West would respond, but mainly how the Ukrainians have responded and other Ukrainians have kind of come together and stuck it out and are continuing to stick it out."

But despite both Ukraine and his own military confounding his expectations, Putin appears to be ignoring his own advice and digging in.

Putin doubles down on his ruinous war

Ukraine's recent lightning fast counter offensive has enabled troops to reclaim huge swathes of territory, landing a stinging defeat on Russian forces and forcing the Kremlin to desperately recalibrate with online referendums in occupied territories.

But instead of pulling back, Putin chose to double down last week, announcing a partial mobilisation which directly challenged Moscow's narrative that the special military operation had been going to plan.

It's not yet clear how effective those additional 300,000 reservists will be.

Military observers believe Russia's forces will struggle to train, equip and mobilise these troops effectively given underlying issues with Russia's military industrial complex.

In recent weeks, Russia's campaign has suffered from a lack of high-class weaponry, morale problems and a shortage of available trainers, prompting some analysts to doubt the new reservists will have much of an impact on the ground.

Russia is also waging war against a united and highly motivated force and in attempting to mobilise troops, it has prompted thousands of young men to flee the country.

"Look at the images from Georgia right now where you're seeing thousands of Russian men and women fleeing Russia because they just have no desire at all to be caught up in Putin's war and to lay down their lives for war," Hickman said.

"This was a decision made by one man, and it's completely backfired."

But instead of fixing these issues, Putin has shifted his rhetoric more firmly towards the nuclear domain, adopting an established Russian nuclear doctrine of "escalating to de-escalate".

"I think Russia is trying to draw a line now, because every year the conventional strategy so far has failed abjectly," Hickman said.

As well as amping up his threats to the West, Putin is reportedly taking a more hands on approach with the war effort in Ukraine.

The Russian leader is giving orders directly to military commanders in the field, CNN reported citing two US officials.

He is also rejecting requests from his commanders on the ground that they be allowed to retreat from the vital southern city of Kherson, US officials told the New York Times.

The decision to take lower level operational control over decisions in the middle of a war and "micromanage what the commander is doing on the ground" will not serve Putin in the long run, according to Jennifer Mathers, an expert in Russian politics, history and security at Aberystwyth University.

"I wouldn't hold out a lot of hope for a military coup overthrowing Putin, but I think it will create more tensions, it will create more frustrations probably, possibly some confusion even on the ground," she said.

Ultimately, Mathers says, it appears as if Putin and others began to believe their own propaganda to some extent, like many others authoritarians before him.

The authoritarian leader's dilemma

Political experts who study the rise and fall of autocrats, strongmen and dictators say they almost always fall into a trap of their own making.

For Moisés Naím, a writer and political expert with Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, it's best understood as a mousetrap.

"By taking the cheese, the mouse triggers a spring that shuts the trap door and leaves it stuck inside. It's trapped," he wrote in early 2020.

"The same thing happens to contemporary dictators. They enter the presidential palace attracted by the cheese - which in this case is power - and before they know it they are trapped there."

Others have termed it "the dictator trap" - a metaphorical place that leaders like Putin fall into by adopting strategies to stay in power that tend to trigger their eventual downfall.

"When you take away ... the media's right to free speech, when you basically co-opt all the political parties and the ones you can't co-opt, you ...outlaw and make sure that they can't exist, when you co-opt all of the officials so ... they're all beholden to you ... then you build in this enormous weakness," Mathers said.

Under this system of governance, Mathers explains, everybody depends upon the patronage of the person at the top and in order to survive, they have "got to keep their boss happy".

Nobody has an incentive to speak out against their leader or raise objections to silly or potentially dangerous ideas.

"They've all got a stake in the system and the penalties for raising your head above the parapet are really, really significant, so I think what we're seeing is Putin is reaping what he has sown over the past number of years, particularly since he came back into the presidency in 2012," she said.

For Mathers, Putin's preoccupation with restoring his nation to its former glory has ultimately led him astray.

"Based on what [Putin] says and what he does, he does appear to believe that he has a particular mission, really, in regards to Russia," she said.

"It's about restoring Russia's greatness, it's about standing up to Russia's opponents, it's about showing that Russia is important and strong and it's about looking after Russia's interests. And one of the interests that he claims for Russia is the necessity of controlling and dominating its nearest neighbours."

Will the sham referendums bring Putin victory?

Focused on winning at all costs, Putin is returning to his old playbook, hoping his tried and tested strategies will turn around his fortunes.

On Tuesday, residents in four regions - Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Luhansk and Donetsk - were forced to participate in Kremlin-orchestrated elections, paving the way for Russia's annexation.

In a speech on Friday, Putin declared the regions would be folded into Russia.

"Therefore, any continued attack by the Ukrainians would be considered an attack on Russia, and the nuclear doctrine allows for the use of nuclear weapons if Russia's being threatened," Hickman said.

US officials are taking Putin's threat of nuclear escalation "seriously," despite seeing no immediate indication he is planning on following through with it, according to CNN.

Putin, for his part, has made his position abundantly clear: he's all in.

In his high-stakes gamble, he is prepared to let thousands more Russians die for his cause, risk his relationship with the few allies he has left, and weaken decades of efforts towards nuclear de-escalation.

"I think there's … an element of [Putin] feeling that he has … a particular view of what would make Russia secure and anything less than that is not going to fit the bill," Mathers said.

In aiming for a win at all costs, however, Putin may have simply led Russia into a war from which it is bound to emerge weaker than when it started.

"I think the key question is, how is he envisaging it playing out over the next six to 12 months?" Hickman said.

"What is the endgame in Putin's mind?"

It's a question only the Russian leader can answer.

- ABC