In another sign of Ukraine’s rising military might, its expanding drone and missile strikes across Russia are driving Kremlin Commander-in-Chief Vladimir Putin underground – literally.
Four years after launching his blitzkrieg invasion of Ukraine, expecting to seize the capital and its iconic freedom-fighter Volodymyr Zelensky within days, it is Putin who now seems to be on the run, moving from subterranean shelter to shelter as he faces Ukraine’s strengthening fleets of bomb-tipped drones.
While President Zelensky marked the start of the invasion by webcasting himself and other torchbearers of Ukrainian democracy guarding the streets outside his presidential palace to trumpet their open resistance, Putin has steadily retreated since then, isolating himself inside an archipelago of massive sub-surface bunkers, says one of the West’s top scholars on Ukraine, Russia, their diametrically opposed political systems and the war that will decide whether European-style democracy prevails over tsar-like autocracy.
Peter Dickinson, who heads the magazine UkraineAlert, which chronicles the conflict that will determine whether European democracies will continue their spread across the continent, or fall under the shadow of a revamped Russian empire, tells me in an interview: “Ukraine’s drone and missile strikes are a key reason why Putin has increasingly retreated to his bunkers.”
An internationally acclaimed scholar at the Atlantic Council, one of the top defense and diplomacy think tanks in Washington, D.C., Dickinson says Russia’s would-be neo-Tsar Vladimir Putin is now scuttling from refuge to refuge because “he also fears his own people and knows all the talk of 80% approval ratings is nonsense, and is well aware that he has enemies within the Russian establishment.”
“But primarily he [Putin] knows Ukraine has the ability to strike deep inside Russia and has a very sophisticated intelligence service that has penetrated deep into the Russian state apparatus – so he is becoming more and more paranoid,” says Dickinson, who was initially despatched to Ukraine two decades ago, as an officer of the British Council.
These days, as the two leaders are observed across the world stage, “Zelensky has demonstrated true leadership by standing with his people while Putin hides in a bunker.”
Forced into the Soviet Union during the Russian revolution a century ago, Ukraine regained its independence in 1991, with the break-up of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
A world-watched model of democratization, Ukraine even gave up its arsenal of Soviet nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles, under an agreement guaranteeing its sovereign borders brokered by the U.S., the UK and the Russian Federation, then led by liberal democrat Boris Yeltsin.
But after Putin gained power, and began assassinating liberal rivals around the Kremlin, along with pro-democracy activists and journalists across Russia, he set his sights on forcibly rebuilding the Soviet empire, starting with the reconquest of Ukraine, Dickinson says.
Inside Russia, Putin tries to portray himself as the absolute ruler of Soviet Union 2.0, a superpower with the globe’s largest nuclear stockpile, and he has shot out a fusillade of threats to use this atomic arsenal against Ukraine or any NATO ally that attempts to help the besieged democracy expel its invaders.
The onetime KGB officer, calling the disintegration of the Soviet empire one of the great geopolitical catastrophes of the 20th century, has restored the massive hammer and sickle symbols of the Bolshevik revolution all around Moscow and its Red Square, icons of the Soviet imperium when the country emerged from World War II as a one-party superpower rivaling its American democratic nemesis.
Despite its decline in military power and standing on the global stage since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Putin has aimed to project a phantom-like rebirth of the Russian super-state, partly by staging quasi-religious ceremonies inviting his subjects, stretching from Saint Petersburg to Vladivostok, to worship Moscow’s triumph in the last world war during a colossal Victory Day Parade staged every May before the ornate imperial palaces and cathedrals that surround Red Square.
Initially orchestrated by Joseph Stalin, one of the commanders of the Allied win over the Nazis, Victory Parades choreographed by Putin have been much more massive and ornate, with colossal doomsday ICBMs and state-of-the-art tanks moving across the grand stage of Red Square, with the imagery beamed around the world.
During Putin’s reign, “Victory Day has been elevated in status to the level of pseudo-religion, complete with its own saints, symbols, dogmas, and heretics,” Dickinson says in a just-published feature for UkraineAlert.
“The Victory Day military parade on Red Square,” he adds, “has traditionally served as an opportunity for Russia to demonstrate its military might to the watching world, with Putin himself presiding over proceedings as the all-powerful ruler of a great nation.”
But since Putin started deploying his tank formations and missile brigades in the quest to conquer Ukraine, losing many of them in the process, finding enough impressive war machines to parade through Red Square, and exposing them to potential Ukrainian drone attacks at the heart of Moscow, has become an impossible dilemma.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov recently told the world that the Russian leadership has decided not to risk sending its tanks and super-missiles into the heart of imperial Moscow, with an extraordinary admission that Ukraine’s exploding squadrons of drones and indigenously produced cruise missiles present too great a threat of striking the parade.
Only a greatly reduced version of the parade, without the presence of armored personnel carriers and transatlantic missiles as potential targets, will be staged this year, Peskov revealed in a post on the messaging platform Telegram.
“The Kyiv regime, which is losing territory every day, losing ground on the battlefield, has now launched a full-scale terrorist attack,” Peskov said of the purely retaliatory aerial strikes Ukraine has fired off after being bombarded by Russian drones and missiles for four years.
“And therefore, against this backdrop, against this backdrop of this terrorist threat, of course, all measures are being taken to minimize the danger.”
“The [Victory Day] parade will still take place, albeit in a reduced format,” added Peskov, one of Putin’s top lieutenants.
The labelling of “the Kyiv regime” as a terrorist organization, after Ukraine’s race to build up its squadrons of bomber drones to protect its democracy, is doubly ironic because the Netherlands-based International Criminal Court has already prepared arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin, and his top commanders spearheading the invasion of Ukraine, for committing offenses punishable as war crimes.
While Putin attempts to supercharge the Victory Parade by pillorying the rule of the Nazis, his Kremlin commandos now rival Hitler’s storm troopers in terms of shelling cathedrals and synagogues, arresting priests and slaughtering civilians, and might face a Nuremberg-style trial in the future for these atrocities.
With the ICC warrant now hanging over his head like a gigantic Sword of Damocles, the most wanted man in Russia does not dare to travel to any of the 125 nations that are members of the International Criminal Court, and would be required to detain him if he stepped inside their borders, Dickinson told me.
“Putin’s decision to scale back his parade is certainly an indication of Russia’s growing weakness and loss of status,” Dickinson says.
“Few would now regard the Russian army as one of the most powerful in the world, as was the case prior to 2022.”
Putin’s retreat with the jingoistic pageantry of the Red Square parade, and into his network of underground hideouts, he says, is “confirmation of Ukraine’s emergence as a major military power.”
“Since 2022, Ukraine has undergone a remarkable transformation to become the most important military force in Europe.”
With its strengthening armed forces, already nearly a million-strong and larger than the combined armies of France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom, Dickinson forecasts Ukraine could become a leading protector of Europe, and the spearhead of a collective defense against an expansionist Russia in times ahead.
“Today, Ukraine is recognized as indispensable for the defense of Europe and is also an attractive security partner on the global stage.”
With its skyrocketing airstrikes across Russia, Ukraine is also perfecting its ability to overcome Kremlin air defenses.
“Crucially, these attacks rely on domestically produced drones and missiles, providing Ukraine with greater leeway to act as they see fit rather than coordinating offensive actions with often overly-cautious allies, as had previously been the case.”
“Ukrainian attacks inside Russia,” he adds, “are a key element of Kyiv’s security strategy as these airstrikes impose costs on the Russian war machine while also creating deterrence.”
“The message to Moscow is clear: Kyiv is signaling that it has the capability to strike back hard if Russia continues bombing Ukrainian cities and civilian infrastructure.”
Yet the Atlantic Council defense scholar says there is little chance that Kyiv will rain down thunderbolt missiles on Putin’s parade.
“While it is possible to argue that the parade features military personnel and is a legitimate military target, the parade is also attended by many civilians.”
“Ukraine has generally refrained from attacks on Russian civilian targets, even as Russia increasingly targets the civilian population in Ukraine.”
“So I assess the chances of a bombing raid on Putin’s Victory Day parade to be slim.”
Instead, he predicts Ukraine will aim to keep Putin guessing with ambiguous messaging.
Kyiv’s military strategists might encourage the Kremlin to concentrate Russia’s limited air defenses around Moscow.
“This will create vulnerabilities elsewhere, which Ukraine will then seek to exploit with bombing attacks.”
By hiding away his intercontinental missiles during the state’s most important, almost sacred, ceremony, and hiding himself in a warren of subterranean sanctuaries year-round, Dickinson says, “Putin has tacitly acknowledged that he is no longer able to guarantee security in his own capital city.”
“This represents a huge blow to his credibility.”
“As the invasion of Ukraine falters, Putin’s position is becoming more and more fragile.”
“He knows the war has gone badly wrong and is aware that more and more Russians now recognize this fact.”
“But he sees no way out without admitting failure.”
“So for now, he is doubling down while going deeper into bunker mode – this means an ever-shrinking circle of advisers and deep distrust of the broader Russian elite.”
At the same time, “he is certainly well aware that big changes in Russian history have typically come following military defeats.”
The tremendous loss of Russian lives during the First World War of a century ago led to the collapse of the Russian empire, its takeover by Bolshevik rebels and the communist-ordered execution of the last tsar and his martyred children.
“While Russia is not yet on the verge of defeat in Ukraine,” Dickinson says, “he has no obvious pathway to victory and cannot explain his vision for continuing the war.”
“With murmurs of discontent already growing in Russian society, Putin will likely respond by cutting himself off even further and embarking on new waves of repression.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Andrew Forde, assistant professor of European Human Rights Law at Dublin City University in Ireland, told me in an earlier interview that while President Putin now seems a world away from the international judges and prison that await his arrest, so did the leaders of the Third Reich when the Western powers originally conceived the future Nuremberg tribunal to try the most outrageous war crimes carried out in all of human history.
Putin’s arrest and extradition to the ICC in The Hague would likely depend on “regime change” inside the Kremlin, potentially brought about by a rival military faction that staged a coup d’état or by Russia’s long-persecuted democratic underground gaining power in a popular revolution.
Crystal-gazing into the future, Dr. Forde predicts Vladimir Putin “could only be arrested under a new, hypothetical, future Russian administration.”
