Putin’s miscalculations apparent

Sunday’s devastating bomb blast in a St Petersburg cafe that killed Russia’s most notorious pro-war blogger, Maxim Fomin, who wrote under the pseudonym Vladlen Tatarsky, leaves no doubt that the internal strains caused by the conflict in Ukraine are reaching dangerously closer to home for Vladimir Putin. Kremlin attempts to blame Kyiv for the targeted assassination of Fomin, whose bloodcurdling posts regularly attracted 600,000 followers, are unlikely to be accurate. Rather, according to reporting by The Times, the killing of Fomin in a cafe owned, significantly, by the head of the Wagner Group of Russian mercenaries reflects a “splitting of Putin’s elites, the brutalisation of domestic politics and the gangland mentality that has taken over in wartime Russia”.

Russian military bloggers such as Fomin have become increasingly outspoken in their criticism of the snail’s-pace progress of the tactics being used in Ukraine. Those close to Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin have been unrelentingly scathing about the failure of Russia’s generals. Fomin has been their most outspoken voice, applauding the Wagner Group for its use of freed Russian convicts and other thugs to commit atrocities. They have blamed Russian generals in the more orthodox military establishment for standing in the way of Moscow achieving victory. Such criticism has enraged the generals. The suspicion is that it is not Kyiv that arranged the bomb planted in the St Petersburg cafe but more likely members of the military establishment.

Mr Putin’s serial miscalculations are becoming more apparent. On Tuesday, Finland, which has a 1340km border with Russia, the EU’s longest, formally ended decades of post-war neutrality and non-alignment and was inaugurated as a full member of NATO, the world’s leading military alliance. In launching his invasion in February last year, Mr Putin claimed he had no alternative because neighbouring Ukraine was about to become a NATO member, posing a dire threat to Russia’s security. Now the Russian despot has got that anyway, with Finland’s long land border adding substantially to the strategic advantages NATO already has from Estonia’s, Latvia’s, Lithuania’s and Poland’s borders with Russia. Sweden is similarly poised to abandon decades of neutrality and become a NATO member. The self-destructive, wildly inaccurate miscalculations Mr Putin made when he launched his lawless aggression are coming home to roost.