Russia’s 24 February invasion of Ukraine, writes Philip Short in his expansive new biography, Putin: His Life and Times, was to be Vladimir’s ‘crowning achievement’. Now, seven months into that disastrous war, a Russian pro-war military blogger, Igor Girkin, has appraised his 430,000 viewers of the discomforting truth: ‘The war in Ukraine will continue until the complete defeat of Russia. We have already lost, the rest is just a matter of time.’

Girkin’s pessimism was deepened by two recent Russian setbacks on the battlefield, starting with the long-expected Ukrainian counter-offensive in the Kherson region on the southern front. Sceptics had insisted that the lack of Ukrainian air-cover and long-range assault weapons would turn any attempt to recapture Kherson into a suicide mission. Nevertheless, early updates issued by the UK Ministry of Defence tell a different tale: ‘Ukrainian formations have pushed the front line back some distance in places, exploiting relatively thinly held Russian defences’.

Russian soldiers caught in the Kherson region now find themselves not only confronting a highly motivated enemy but cut off from reinforcements and supplies coming over the Dnieper River. Ukraine’s expert use of its sixteen American High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) has methodically destroyed all permanent bridges – along with the improvised replacement ones – across that river. Over the next few weeks, many of the 25,000 Russian soldiers trapped on the wrong side of the Dnieper River are going to be captured or killed; the luckier ones fleeing Kherson Oblast on whatever make-do craft are available to them. Putin’s coveted land-bridge between Russia-annexed Crimea and Russian-occupied territories in the Donbas will be history.

Moreover, Russia’s eight-year hold on the Crimean Peninsula is now in jeopardy. Already, Ukrainian Armed Forces have generated a series of large explosions at the Saky military base in the Crimean city of Novofedorika, destroying ten Russian aircraft and killing up to 60 pilots and technicians. The Kremlin initially claimed the Novofedorika explosions were a result of an ‘accident’. Russian tourists, for once unpersuaded by Putin’s 24/7 propaganda, terminated their summer vacations and sped in their cars over the Crimean Bridge – back to Russia and away from Putin’s War.

If Russia’s challenges on the southern front are not enough, last week Ukraine launched a surprise counter-offensive in the northeast region of Kharkiv, advancing more than 50 kilometres in its opening gambit and retaking the town of Balakliia. Russian soldiers have not retreated with such alacrity since the fiasco of the Battle for Kyiv in March this year. President Zelensky, in one of his recent nightly addresses to the nation, reported that a total of 1,000 square kilometres of territory had been liberated by the counter-offensives in the north-east and south of the country. Forty-eight hours later, he was talking about 2,000 square kilometres of land regained. Now it is 3,000 square kilometres.

Even Russia’s occupation authorities acknowledged on state television that the Ukrainian Armed Forces were surging in the Kharkiv region. Kupiansk, a key railway junction, was seized and large swathes of the Donbas were suddenly vulnerable to Ukraine’s counter-offensive. Soon Russian forces abandoned Izium, their major logistics centre in the region, and entire units were being lost to the enemy, the first time since World War II.

Putin cannot go on being humiliated in this manner. Some would argue that the so-called ‘vertical of power’ in Russia makes him an unassailable autocrat along the lines of Xi Jinping. Nonetheless, as Philip Short argues in his book, for more than two decades a majority of the Russian people have invested in Putin. This – rather than poisoning journalists, jailing oligarchs, manipulating the media, assaulting demonstrators and so on – is the bedrock of his authority.

The Putin years actually did bring the Russian people a genuine rise in living standards and a renewed pride in their country’s place in the world. Military accomplishments in the second Chechen war, the Georgian war, the Syrian civil war, the war in Donbas and the annexation of Crimea suggested to a lot of Russians that Putin could be trusted. If he wanted to tamper with the constitution so he might remain president until 2036, when he would be 83 years old, then it was his call. That kind deference must have already diminished somewhat after catastrophes such as the Battle for Kyiv and the sinking of the Russian warship Moskva, flagship of the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet. The current debacles on the battlefield will only further lessen Putin’s aura of invincibility.

So how to turn things around? The one option, according to Igor Girkin, is for Putin to ditch the ‘special military operation’ demeanour and declare outright war on Ukraine.

The entire nation needs to be mobilised and total war unleashed in order to match the ferocious commitment of the Ukrainians. This, however, ignores the reality that for ordinary Russians, as distinct from Vladimir Putin himself, the invasion of Ukraine represents less a war of necessity than a war of choice. For Ukrainians, conversely, there is no avoiding Putin’s war. Even the five million who fled the country have left behind friends and relatives to fight and die defending the homeland.

Another seven million Ukrainians are internal refugees, their homes and livelihoods now in ruins. Arising from this horror is the indefatigable spirit of Ukrainian resistance.

Nothing even vaguely comparable has taken hold in Russia, not least because Putin’s special military operation was meant to be (a) instantly triumphant, and (b) minimally inconvenient for the Russian people. With the estimated 50,000 death toll of Russian soldiers – estimated, to be fair, by Kyiv’s Ukrinform agency – Igor Girkin and the other pro-war ultra-nationalists in Moscow are, in a sense, right to be calling for a total war to be undertaken if ‘the complete defeat of Russia’ is to be averted.

Putin, however, is in a lose-lose situation If he mobilises Russia for total war his popularity is likely to dissipate overnight, his presidency suddenly untenable.

The Russian people have not signed on to reprise the nightmare of World War II. If, on the other hand, Putin persists with the current course of sub-par military action, his eponymous war will become unsustainable.

Either way, the complete defeat of Vladimir Putin is just a matter of time.