Pavel Gubarev, the former neo-Nazi paramilitary who declared himself People’s Governor of the Donbas in March 2014 and helped ignite Russia’s war against Ukraine, has now told an interviewer that Russia has lost 1 million men in Ukraine and that the war is no longer a war but a sacrificial offering. He is not alone. Russian nationalist Igor Girkin, serving a four-year sentence for extremism, says Russia is heading toward military defeat. The May 9 Victory Day parade on Red Square was conspicuously small. Putin’s loudest hardline supporters are now his most damaging critics.
The Ukraine War Comes for Putin
Russian T-72 Tank Ukraine War. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
It may be time for policymakers to start planning for a post-Putin Russia. The embarrassingly minimal May 9th “victory” parade on Red Square is one sign that something is amiss with the great leader.
Vladimir Putin’s paranoia—in his case fully justified—is another.
Increasingly frequent open expressions of discontent, especially by high-ranking members of the elite who know that the primary cause of Russia’s economic distress is Putin’s self-defeating war against Ukraine, are yet another.
Putin Has More Problems Than Ever
Particularly painful for Putin must be the stab in the back by Pavel Gubarev, one of the key 2014 Donbas separatists who recently gave a hard-hitting interview that subverts the Kremlin’s narrative regarding its war with Ukraine.
Worse, Gubarev’s critical pessimism is running rampant in Russian hyper nationalist circles wont to venerate Putin. This ultimately amounts to a growing threat to Russia’s president and, perhaps, to the country.
Formerly a member of the neo-Nazi Russian National Unity paramilitary group, Gubarev declared himself the People’s Governor of the Donbas in March 2014, in the aftermath of the Maidan Revolution, Viktor Yanukovych’s hurried flight from Ukraine, Russia’s seizure of Crimea, and the eruption in Ukraine’s south-east of a separatist movement aided and abetted by Moscow. His star soon went into decline. Gubarev then wrote his memoirs, and in May 2023, he became one of the leaders of the unabashedly chauvinist and imperialist Club of Angry Patriots.
In October 2022, he made his views of Ukrainians crystal clear: “They are Russian people who are possessed by the devil. We aren’t coming to kill them, but we want to convince them. But if you don’t want to be convinced by us, then we’ll kill you. We’ll kill as many as is necessary: 1 million, 5 million, or exterminate all of you. Until you understand that you are possessed and need to be cured…. And the person who is most possessed is Zelensky. He is the devil’s spawn. He is Hitler 2.0 with his rabid nationalism and his rabid Russophobia… .”
Tim Murry, a foreign threats compound contractor, drives a T-72 battle tank into position to serve as adversary targets for a joint service exercise, Emerald Flag, at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., Nov. 30. Emerald Flag is a multi-service exercise aimed to unify information sharing across joint domain platforms. (U.S. Air Force photo/1st Lt Karissa Rodriguez)
A few choice quotes from the 2026 interview may be of interest.
Here’s Gubarev on the ongoing war: “We’ve been fighting for five years, and there’s no sign of the army’s revival. … And what’s happening on the front lines makes you think this isn’t a war at all, but a sacrificial offering.”
The war, says Gubarev, is going worse than even Putin’s critics suggest: “Russia’s losses in this war are 1 million people… dead, missing, and wounded. The death toll alone could easily exceed a million.”
Not even the Ukrainians, who estimate that Russia has suffered over 1.3 million casualties, place the number of dead at over a million. Unsurprisingly, front-line morale is abysmal, as officers drive poorly trained recruits to take part in suicidal meat-grinder assaults. No wonder that Russia’s spring offensive resulted in modest Ukrainian territorial gains.
The Russian supremacist Igor Girkin (serving a 4-year prison sentence for, of all things, “extremism”) concurs: “Unfortunately, we are heading toward military defeat. That is a fact. Let’s not just accept this, but let’s at least acknowledge this unpleasant fact and proceed on the basis that the threat is real.”
Putin, according to Gubarev, is just a puppet: “Russia… is under external control… half the country is in British offshore zones… Putin is either a label… or a systemic program. Putin is just an element and a name… most likely a manager.”
Putin Back in 2023 Speaking. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
President Putin of Russia in 2018.
Take a wild guess about who’s managing Putin: “Maybe the Rothschilds or the Freemasons,” says Gubarev.
Gubarev’s remarks reveal several things about him and, possibly, Russians.
First, as his comments from 2022 make clear, he detests Ukrainians and believes that the only final solution to the Ukrainian “problem” is genocide. In this regard, he differs little from Putin, his sidekick Dmitry Medvedev, and scores of Russian intellectuals, journalists, and policymakers who construct the narrative that many Russians take for granted.
Even Russian prisoners of war, who should be inclined to curry favor with their captors, detest Ukrainians. According to a recent study conducted by LingvaLexa, a Ukrainian NGO, “Almost two-thirds of Russian prisoners of war view Russia’s war against Ukraine as justified and necessary, while over 40% of captured troops said they do not regard Ukrainians as fully human.”
Second, Gubarev, like the military blogger Ilya Remeslo who recently said Putin is an illegitimate war criminal, knows the war is going badly. There’s no other way to interpret his belief that Russia may have lost over 1 million men—a comment that echoes eerily with his 2022 claim, “We’ll kill as many as is necessary: 1 million, 5 million, or exterminate all of you.” If Russian chauvinists such as Gubarev, Girkin, and Remeslo know this, so must many other Russians.
Finally, Gubarev just can’t shed Russian political culture’s conspiratorial beliefs. In response to the age-old Russian question, “Who is guilty?” [Kto vynovat?], Gubarev’s answer is not the Russians and not their leaders, but the Jews.
Like too many Russians inside and outside the Kremlin, Gubarev inhabits a make-believe world of make-believe friends and make-believe enemies. For better or for worse, delusional thinking is a surefire way to societal and political tragedy.
When Putin goes—it’s no longer a question of if— and Russia’s self-eradication as a state becomes the order of the day, Western policymakers would do well to be prepared and not, as in 1991, be caught with their pants down.
About the Author: Dr. Alexander Motyl, Rutgers University
Dr. Alexander Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia, and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires, and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, including Pidsumky imperii (2009); Puti imperii (2004); Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires (2001); Revolutions, Nations, Empires: Conceptual Limits and Theoretical Possibilities (1999); Dilemmas of Independence: Ukraine after Totalitarianism (1993); and The Turn to the Right: The Ideological Origins and Development of Ukrainian Nationalism, 1919–1929 (1980); the editor of 15 volumes, including The Encyclopedia of Nationalism (2000) and The Holodomor Reader (2012); and a contributor of dozens of articles to academic and policy journals, newspaper op-ed pages, and magazines. He also has a weekly blog, “Ukraine’s Orange Blues.”
