> Every Kremlin ruler knows that one of the quickest ways to end a Russian dynasty or regime is to lose a war.
> In October, Rasputitsa turns firm ground into mud. In March, the frozen steppes thaw, and the land again becomes at best a bog, and at worst a sea of mud.
> The key to thwarting Russian ambitions is to prevent Moscow from having a quick victory and to raise the economic, political, and military costs by imposing economic sanctions, ensuring political isolation from the West, and raising the prospect of a prolonged insurgency that grinds away the Russian military. In this war, Russia might have the watches, but the West and Ukraine may have the time.
> tried to start the war by having NATO flirt with Ukraine.
They've been trying to do this for over a decade. The reason the war started now is because this was the peak moment for Russian advantage - the Ukraine Maidan coup had been frozen for years in the east and the US was paying attention to other things, but the actor that the Ukrainian population had desperately and cynically elected for relief from the tug-of-war between the US and Russia (parallels with Trump) was a lightweight owned by an oligarch who would give the US whatever they wanted. That meant that assaults on the East would escalate, Ukraine would join NATO, and Russia would have anti-Russian troops stationed on its borders.
Russia's military and economy are horrible though (although not as bad as the poorest and most corrupt country in Europe, Ukraine.) If they were going to win they would have to win quickly before the US was able to ramp up again. They failed this, so now they're going to have to use nukes on Ukraine.
Another way to view it, is that the West is waging a proxy war against Russia.
One might say that confrontation started with the West instigating a coup against democratically elected president of Ukraine and installing a pro-Western, pro-NATO regime. Another might say that it started when the West has methodically sabotaged all Russian actions to find peaceful solutions to the crisis in Eastern Ukraine and instead pushed for military options [1]. But these are technicalities.
There are two steps left before the possible direct military confrontation between the West and Russia. One step is the West officially sending troops to Ukraine, and another is Russia officially sending troops to Ukraine. Most probably, neither of them would be taken, but the situation is already dangerous enough.
Many say, that after we have left our military bases in Eastern Germany in exchange of the failed promise of NATO non-expansion, after many other actions of good will by USSR and then Russia, the West has been methodically showing us that it doesn't accept Russia as a peaceful partner.
By sanctioning Russia, by turning the blind eye on atrocities carried out by Kiev government, the West is waging the war against Russians, not only against Putin.
I do not know, how this crisis would end, but it is for sure going to set back our relations with the West for decades to come. And this is not all Putin's fault.
> Some things, however, are never allowed, such as sending military forces to invade and annex the sovereign territory of another nation.
Before the Russian actions in Crimea, there was a popular uprising against coup government.
The main powerhouse of the uprising was the city of Sevastopol, which was home for Russian military bases for hundreds of years. The residents of the city have in 20+ years never been allowed to have democratic elections of the mayor, because all Ukrainian governments felt that they would elect pro-Russian mayor. Instead, for 20+ years, they got mayors appointed from Kiev, some anti-Russian.
Crimea has de facto not been under the coup government control even before the Russian actions and was lost by Ukraine before it was gained by Russia, just after the coup government has started to pass one of it's first laws, the one that revoked the rights of the Russian-speaking regions to use Russian as second official language.
Personally, I don't like how Russia used it's military in Crimea and think that people of Crimea should have been allowed to fight for the independence themselves, possibly with some help. This was important technical issue and Russia has most probably got it wrong.
The situation is complicated by the fact that in reality there are different parts of Ukraine with completely different mindsets, preferences and interests.
But it is the Western Ukraine that has invaded Eastern Ukraine (with the help of US), not the other way around. This is the core point. This is why the people of Eastern Ukraine have the moral high ground in their fight. This is why Russia is not an aggressor.
P.S.
The coup government has also been waging war against the population of Crimea [2], "it's own population". And it also doesn't allow for every citizen from Crimea to freely enter Ukraine, some of them are sent back home [3] [4].
[1] Great article by Stephen Cohen (professor emeritus at New York University and Princeton University), which more or less summarizes not only my personal POW, but POW of many Russians and Ukrainians as well:
http://www.thenation.com/article/180466/silence-american-haw...
> Ukrainians would have been much better off had they worked with Russia to avoid or quickly settle the war, especially after heroically successfully resisting the blitzkrieg-style initial invasion
The war started immediately after Ukraine threw out the Russian puppet government.
They didn't successfully resist the initial anything; Russia seized Crimea and infiltrated and set up proxies in Eastern Ukraine, and Ukraine was unable to do much about it.
> Instead, goaded on the by the USA and Europe, they are fighting a losing war that will hurt tens or hundreds of thousands over the coming years.
The war Russia initiated and bears full responsibility for has hurt millions already (and in fact had hurt millions before the 2022 escalation), not mere tens or hundreds of thousands.
> There is 0 chance Russia will back off
They will back off before or after they collapse from the cost of the war, but either way they will back off. They’ve lost vastly more in lives and treasure in a few months than the much larger USSR did in a decade in Afghanistan. Putin may dream of recreating the Empire of Peter the Great, but he's heading more toward Nicholas II.
> Putin fell right into their trap
I mean, if you mean by the 2022 escalation, it was a pretty well-marked trap. The US and other friends of Ukraine spend most of a decade openly arming and training Ukraine after the 2014 invasion, repeatedly saying Russia should stop interfering and warning, with increasing urgency, of their knowledge of and commitment to opposing Russia’s plan for a new, large scale invasion in 2022, going so far as to release detailed intelligence of the orders for that invasion that Putin has given.
Pretty easy trap to avoid if you don't want to fall into it, what with everyone pointing out where it is, how bad it would be to step in it, and how to avoid it.
> On any given day you can read both that Russia is struggling and that Ukraine is ceding territory fast.
That's true on different fronts. Recently Ukraine lost territory in Donetsk & Lugansk while recovering territory at Kharkiv and Kherson.
Russia concentrated forces at Donetsk & Lugansk, it's their biggest offensive. Ukraine concentrated forces at Kherson, it's their offensive.
In other words both sides are trading territory with no clear winner while losing a ton of men and equipment where Russia is apparently losing a lot more. Giving this it's said that Russian campaign is unsustainable on the long term but Ukrainians are also under equiped and depend on donations & leases.
> The war started immediately after Ukraine threw out the Russian puppet government.
Neglecting US involvement in that revolution/coup hides a big part of the story. The US ambassador to Ukraine and Victoria Nuland were discussing who should replace Russia's puppets a full two weeks before the people actually got rid of him - which Russian spies discovered and published.
> The war Russia initiated and bears full responsibility for has hurt millions already (and in fact had hurt millions before the 2022 escalation), not mere tens or hundreds of thousands.
Right - I was thinking more of deaths, but you're right harm has indeed come to millions of people, from Russia's unjust war.
> They will back off before or after they collapse from the cost of the war, but either way they will back off. They’ve lost vastly more in lives and treasure in a few months than the much larger USSR did in a decade in Afghanistan. Putin may dream of recreating the Empire of Peter the Great, but he's heading more toward Nicholas II.
I honestly believe there is a high chance Russia would rather throw the dice and nuke Ukraine before allowing the war to end, unless they get down guarantees that NATO involvement in Ukraine will stop completely. What would happen next is impossible to predict, as we would be stepping into an entirely new world.
> I mean, if you mean by the 2022 escalation, it was a pretty well-marked trap.
The trap was constant escalation of NATO presence in Ukraine, culminating in the joint military exercises in 2021, forcing Putin to react.
> without the several billion USD in free high-tech weapons from the Western countries (mostly though not exclusively NATO members) Ukraine would probably have lost the war by now
And without the navy Russia annexed [1], or it’s Soviet military kit, much of which was designed and built in Ukraine, Russia wouldn’t have much of a start.
Ukraine repelled Putin’s forces on its own in the early days of the war, when Western intelligence was predicting another Kabul. That it later attracted sympathy is further testament to its diplomatic strength (and the Kremlin’s isolation).
Russia has the most to gain because they'll simply sell the natural gas to Asia or through another pipeline, meanwhile they want to pressure Europe into not supporting Ukraine any longer.
The Ukraine war could literally end modern Russia as we know it, more defeats and the entire current government and structure could collapse. If somehow they survive the war, years of sanctions will. The Ukraine war is an existential threat for the Putin government...
And that's not even counting the fact they love false flags and blaming others...
> Otherwise Russia will just keep sending warm bodies into the meat grinder until they either win or collapse. They could drag it on for a decade.
> Russia still could win by just grinding their opponents down. They don’t seem to care how many they lose in the process. Just keep grinding until the West loses the will to keep helping Ukraine or Ukraine loses the will to resist.
At a certain point this will just turn into a huge one sided meat grinder just for Russia if they keep it up, eventually Russia will run out of tanks, armoured vehicles and other equipment they need to properly conduct combined arms warfare.
> Russia is fighting for its existence against vastly superior enemy.
If Ukraine is a vastly superior enemy to Russia then my god what have they been doing with all of that money for the military?.
And Russia is not fighting for its existence, if they withdrew from Ukraine no one would invade.
> Russia wanted to avoid this war, even though not realizing fully how much superior the enemy was. Everyone who tells you otherwise fell victim to western propaganda, or is a propagandist himself.
It’s quite clear they didn’t want to avoid this war cause the easiest way to do that would be to not goto war and withdraw from Ukraine.
But they don’t they insist on staying and escalating there terrible war crimes into new uncharted territory.
Russia overtly wants a sphere of influence that includes (among other neighbors) Ukraine, and Ukraine isn’t voluntary giving in to it's desire for that, so Russia keeps waging war and taking bits of Ukraine. Ultimately, that obviously ends with Russia taking the whole country to achieve that goal, unless it gives it up.
Russia would rather have surrender without further invasion (it's too late for “without war”), but it's also clearly willing to fight an escalating war to achieve it's goals.
No, it doesn't, except in the sense that the conflict would have to shift to favoring Russia for it to be plausible for it to be “drawn out.”
Russia has already seen casualties that are probably on the order of those the (much larger) Soviet Union saw in its decade long war in Afghanistan, and significantly higher among senior officers—and that wars toll was a significant factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union. And the toll on equipment which they have basically no way to replenish has been high as well.
> Last time I checked Russia had a 10/1 advantage in heavy artillery
Don't know when you checked, but Ukraine has been getting a flood of artillery from the West, with longer range guns than the Russians have.
> has not mobilized its army
They haven't done a formal mass conscription, instead doing a backdoor mobilization, but that's kind of irrelevant since they are running out of first-tier combat-ready equipment, pulling older stuff out of stores to send to the front.
> fighting with 1/5 of its available peacetime forces
Maybe in total manpower. One of the many reasons for the high casualties in senior officers (besides the inability to delegate in land forces) is that their combat-capable pilots are a narrow corps that is senior-officer heavy, and they have a similar issue with other critical specialty forces, and those can't be replenished on any reasonable timescale.
> has suffered massive casualties among its most capable forces.
Russia has suffered massive casualties both overall and among its most capable forces, and expended a lot of its most capable equipment, and no one is rushing them replacements.
>>Russia has failed to achieve most of its objectives in Ukraine because...
>The opening comment makes its seem like this is now all in the past. I think its a bit early to comment on how much Russia achieves here - this is very much WIP with a lot dependent on the solidarity in the West and the reaction of the populations to the cost of the war and the war effort as it drags on.
Essentially, the manner in which Russia will have to prosecute to the military side of the war to 'win' their military objectives, will make the political objectives that were the reason for the war in the first place, unachievable.
In the first few days of the war it was possible to imagine Russia achieving those political objectives. Ukraine might have given up the capital immediately. Huge parts of the country might have decided they preferred to join Russia. But it soon became apparent that those assumptions were wildly off. Any victory now will, at best, include absolutely massive quantities of troops perpetually kept in Ukraine at an incredible cost of resources and lives over future years.
>They just conquered 10% of Ukraine, so they might do that 10 more times.
How? Meatgrind the rest of the country? That's going to cause immense losses among Russian troops and sowing as much discord as possible in Russian civil society seems like a great strategy to prevent that.
>They want a stable Russia
They want a Russia that is economically advantageous to them. Too much Russian success will cause Europe to become even more reliant on the US and therefore antagonistic to China. China's and Russia's interests are not aligned.
>They walked in, were surprised by unexpected resistance, walked out and resorted to taking back the parts of Ukraine that prefer to speak Russian.
This is cope. Look at how much it took to take Bakhmut.
> On any given day you can read both that Russia is struggling and that Ukraine is ceding territory fast.
Those aren't incompatible situations in this kind of war. Russia is advancing fairly quickly (though not without significant reverses) since focusing on taking a strip of southern territory rather than decapitating and forcing the surrender of the Ukrainian regime.
There are also still taking insanely high casualties and material losses that cannot be replenished on any reasonable timescale (Ukraine is taking high casualties, proportionately more than Russia, but also defending their homes; this matters in terms of casualties that can be taken without collapsing the populations will to fight; and Ukraine is getting a flood of material from outside supporters.)
While there's wide variance in estimates, Russia's casualties in its four month war look to be at least in the neighborhood of those the Soviet Union took in its decade long war in Afghanistan, which was widely seen as the USSRs Vietnam and a major contributor to the fall of the country, and the USSR was much bigger than Russia. And it's ever worse when you look at the casualties among senior officers and combat pilots.
> The Russian forces seem to be trying to encircle or assault Kyiv.
Yes, but although Putin is a bloody bastard, he's not stupid.
His plan isn't to take entire control of Ukraine militarily but to swap the legit government with a puppet one he would control at will. Once he succeed, which is a matter of a few days, he'll gradually withdraw most of the forces, things will slowly return to normal and in a few years Ukraine will essentially (if not effectively) annex itself to Russia, with both the EU and US doing nothing but economic sanctions Putin and the oligarchs were long prepared against. Most of Europe depends on Russian gas, which means the moment those sanctions become too harsh is the moment he'll either cut our supply or further raise the prices (my last heating bill already doubled). That's his guarantee against any real action.
I'm sorry, but Ukrainian people are screwed.
> Realistically, this war is going to continue for another year or two, with the next presidential election in Russia playing a big role in how it ends. Food prices are going to increase unless there will be considerable government intervention to markets to cover the extra costs and to invest in production and logistics.
You're assuming there will be a next election in Russia... Putin and his pals are bent on turning what's left of Russia into North Korea, they don't believe in democracy.
The war will end when Putin is violently overthrown by a competing faction inside the Russian government. After all, most of these Russian politicians are just gangsters, not ideologues, and the war in Ukraine is bad for business.
> The situation in Russia right now in regards of Ukraine war is very simple -- everybody has rallied around Putin and against the West, everybody knows that this war is a proxy war against USA ands Ukraine is just an unlucky puppet. If you see some media telling you otherwise, you should know outright that it lies.
This isn’t a war against the west, it’s a war of aggression waged by Russia that is killing, torturing and raping civilians. This is a war of survival for Ukraine, if they lose they cease to exist.
The Russians have repeatedly said that Ukraine isn’t a real country.
The only way that this is a war against the west is that the west is supplying Ukraine against the genocidal Russian army.
> It's not entirely clear what the endgame is here
Fuck up Ukraine and go home. Belarus has already been turned into a puppet state, and if they manage to turn Ukraine into a similar puppet or at least a failed state, there will remain no prosperous alternative in Russian-speaking world to Putin's Russia.
Russians have massive inferiority complex since at least the 1960s when Soviet Union began to significantly fall behind the West and this is their way of dealing with it.
> Every Kremlin ruler knows that one of the quickest ways to end a Russian dynasty or regime is to lose a war.
> In October, Rasputitsa turns firm ground into mud. In March, the frozen steppes thaw, and the land again becomes at best a bog, and at worst a sea of mud.
> The key to thwarting Russian ambitions is to prevent Moscow from having a quick victory and to raise the economic, political, and military costs by imposing economic sanctions, ensuring political isolation from the West, and raising the prospect of a prolonged insurgency that grinds away the Russian military. In this war, Russia might have the watches, but the West and Ukraine may have the time.
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