Does Putin Fear Peace More Than War? - You Bet He Does

All eyes are on Presidential Envoy Steve Witkoff and his team as they pursue a final deal that will bring peace in Ukraine.

Conventional wisdom holds that a final deal is close and that the remaining sticking points are territorial concessions by Ukraine, as well as security guarantees by Europe and the United States.

During crucial this time, the media's focus has been exclusively on President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and what concessions the Ukrainians may make to Russia.

This is all wrong.

The fighting is in Ukraine, but a move toward peace will come only when the Russian government sees the war as being more costly politically than continuing the fighting.

Russians generally and Vladimir Putin in particular, are weigh decisions through the lens of history far more do than westerners. What's happening with Russian society also is a significant variable in Russian diplomatic calculus.

Here's what everyone is seemingly missing:

The Russian government is actually afraid of their own troops coming home.

There are currently 700,000 Russian troops in Ukraine.

Many of them are violent criminals there for remission of sentence, while others are draftees impressed into service.

Moscow already saw one rebellion in 2021 with the abortive Prigozhin march on Moscow.

Presently, violent crime is already a significantly large problem in Russian society; this, due to Russian soldiers who have already come home.

Russia already reports violent crimes being up by 10% and has a national shortage of nearly 100,000 police officers.

Bear in mind that the problem is certainly far worse as these are only the numbers admitted to by the Russian government.

The return of 700,000 poorly cared for, and brutally treated troops (by their own side) would be destabilizing for Russian society overall.

A significant spike in public discontent, as well as the collapse of Russian government narratives, an increase in crime, and possible rebellion by many men of military age, coming home to a society unable to

reintegrate them are not unreasonable predictive scenarios.

And this problem is one that Russian officials have already lived through.

One of the footnotes to the end of the Cold War almost never mentioned in histories of that time is the role the Russian War in Afghanistan played in the downfall of the Soviet Union.

By the late 1980s the Russian economy was rapidly deteriorating as living standards of its citizenry markedly declined.

The Soviet government went to extraordinary lengths to conceal the horror of the Afghanistan quagmire, via propaganda and censorship.

What they couldn't control and what had a devastating effect on attitudes toward the Soviet government were the stories of individual soldiers coming home many of whom had developed drug dependencies.

Despite the Soviet government's best efforts to sanitize the war, the human, economic and societal costs of the war played an outsized role in undermining the legitimacy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Army in Afghanistan only had roughly 100,000 troops serving at one time with a total of 640,000 serving during the entire 10 year war.

With 415,000 of that number coming home after suffering from typhoid fever and hepatitis.

Recall, these are These are "19th century" military disease rates, but easily preventable by hygiene, good treatment and adequate medical services.

In terms of numbers, this is child's play compared to what the Russian government now confronts.

One of the 20th century features of the Russian Army in Ukraine is the Stalin era use of "blocking units" with troops behind the front lines shooting deserters and even troops needing to retreat.

Until the political calculus of the Kremlin is altered, fear of this, what shall we call it? Perhaps "Legion of the Damned"? . . . Coming home with stories of mistreatment at the hands of their own government, violent crime, and economic dislocation is why the Russian government persists as it does, as war is far safer for them than peace.

John Jordan, former Navy intelligence officer, pilot, attorney, international economist, overseer at Stanford's Hoover Institution and conservative political consultant. He is a regular contributor for Newsmax. Read more John Jordan Insider articles — Click Here Now.