Honestly I have no idea how's the fighting going there...it seems like we've reached peak interest a few months ago unfortunately. Russia can just keep Ukraine in this weak state, maybe fire a few rockets now and then. It doesn't even have to keep up the invasion if it doesn't want to...Ukraine would still be a very dysfunctional country with the threat of Russian invasion always on the background. No one sane will want to invest or buy an apartment there. What does Russia gain out of all this shit I have no idea but my point remains is that Russia can keep this up if it wants to. The average Russian citizen is either fine with what's happening (surprisingly many) or too afraid to do anything. It's very hard to predict but the chance of Russia making it like this cannot be ignored imo.
If you want to this how a country can make it like this look at Iran.
Even if Russia could make their own chips invading Ukraine would still be a very bad idea and has completely dragged down Russian future prospects. They have isolated themselves on the world stage.
Invading the entire country would be very costly. Russia has a superior military but Ukraine’s is still very large, and the attacker needs superior numbers to begin with (a general principle). And they would have to deal with a lot more insurgency warfare as they move into the west of the country.
I think Russia might possibly have ambitions of conquering the east of the Ukraine up to Dnieper but no further. Which is still a large area, to be sure.
Let’s be clear the only reason for this war is Russia not Ukraine. No one else made the decision to invade except Russian.
The world would be a much worse place if Russia won, be happy that the Russians are getting routed by western weapons, it means that Russia is getting much weaker and poorer per day.
Ukraine is currently getting hammered by Russian artillery in Donbas, and suffering 100+ dead soldiers per day (as reportedly is Russia). They will only win with large amounts of ongoing foreign military and economic aid from committed partners.
Why would they try to go to Moscow? They don’t have the logistical capacity to pull it off and it would be in nobody’s interest. Unlike Russia they don’t seem to be ruled by crazy people.
More realistically Ukraine will lose a bit more ground and a few more towns in Donbas before the Russian offensive culminates, and then as more supplies come in they will eventually counter-attack when they get a chance. The Russian military will run out of soldiers and equipment while the Russian economy sputters, and will be slowly pushed out of Ukrainian territory. What happens as a result to domestic policy in Russia will be highly volatile and is hard to predict.
Why doesn’t Putin just have his army start on the east end of Ukraine and proceed west, killing every single person and destroying every piece of infrastructure in their way?
Anything up to (and perhaps including) that point clearly won’t result in direct intervention, whether due to the fear of nuclear holocaust or for other reasons.
So then why not? If he needs to win at all costs, and he doesn’t care about anything but power, what is holding him back?
Is it because he wants to occupy Ukraine and get its people to contribute to his GDP and their resources to sell? Russia is already devastating Ukraine to such a degree that there will be constant guerrilla fighting as an occupied state and it will take substantial investment to rebuild industry. Russia doesn’t seem to have the people or resources for a long term occupation.
Because there are escalations that can still happen besides direct intervention? The US and EU could do more, but not that much more. China is the only one that can really put the heat on at this point, and they probably do have a limit at which they would.
Or is it because he can’t? Even with the total commitment of all of Russia’s resources, can they not utterly annihilate Ukraine? That seems unlikely (although the cost seems to be far greater than previously believed), although it may require nuclear escalation.
So it seems to me like we’re in a waiting game for Russia’s other trade partners (mostly China) to drop severe sanctions, or for Russia to escalate to nuclear conflict and let that genie out of the bottle, or for Russia to bow out due to lack of resources or regime change.
I think of those options, the most likely is that Russia continues throwing bodies into the Ukrainian meat grinder until they can finally claim a pyrrhic victory. I can’t imagine NATO intervening, no matter how terrible the events, when nukes are on the table.
Realistically, Russia just wants to cause chaos in Western Ukraine whilst rolling over the parts of Ukraine in the East where they have popular support.
Russia doesn't want to take areas it doesn't have popular support in. It just wants to do exactly what it did to Georgia, punish its opponents and annex the friendly bits.
Everyone's doom-mongering, but Russia has a clear strategy.
I can't imagine that Russia has planned to take over such a large country.
It only makes sense if they only planned to bomb Ukraine into handing over Donetsk, Lukhansk, recognising the loss of Crimea, and agreeing not to join NATO.
From this perspective, it's hard for Russia to loose. A destroyed Ukraine won't fight for their lost territories and won't be accepted into the EU or NATO.
The invasion already happened according to the article, it's just Russia lost plausible deniability for it with this document. Full scale invasion to defeat Ukrainian government is very unlikely: Russian military prefers information wars to the offline operations now and makes them part of the strategy. The news about troops deployed on the border are intended to create sense of danger and uncertainty that can be used in the negotiations process to strengthen their position. Public in Russia is now very critical of the government and will not tolerate a new big war: this is the main constraining factor and probably the only one that is really taken into account.
Nobody believed Russia would actually invade Ukraine? They've been at war since 2014. A full blown invasion was a legitimate possibility for anyone paying attention since Russia invaded Georgia in 2008
Or did you mean they would invade real Russian territory, like Moscow? Why would they do that?
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