Expert Garisons: prolonged war may push Russia toward increasingly risky decisions

Entrepreneur, drone manufacturer and former state secretary of Latvia's Ministry of Defence Jānis Garisons said on TV24's programme "Nedēļa. Post Scriptum" that prolonged involvement in war can cause a country's leadership to gradually lose an objective view of the situation, leading to increasingly risky decisions.

A historical parallel with Germany

Garisons pointed to the conduct of Nazi Germany's leader Adolf Hitler during World War II as an example. According to him, early in the war Hitler tried to avoid fighting on multiple fronts simultaneously and was reluctant to launch an invasion of Britain. However, as the war dragged on, Germany's leadership increasingly lost touch with reality, in Garisons' assessment.

He referred to decisions Hitler made in the final phase of the war, when German forces were repeatedly redeployed across different sectors of the front despite an increasingly difficult military situation. As a specific example, Garisons cited Germany's 1944 offensive in the Ardennes region on the Western Front, a decision he said reflected a growing unwillingness to abandon previously set military objectives even as they no longer matched the actual situation on the ground.

Possible parallels with Russia

Garisons said similar tendencies could potentially be observed in Russia's current actions. In his view, a prolonged war combined with failure to achieve initially stated goals can create a risk that decision-making becomes increasingly shaped by perceptions detached from reality.

The expert stressed that this kind of loss of touch with reality is precisely what can increase the risk of irrational and difficult-to-predict behaviour.