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Although this perspective is absent from mainstream Western media, the not-Russia hostile map-watchers and independent commentators, particularly those with some military or intel expertise, are increasingly arguing that Ukraine has no hope of prevailing in the war. That means Russia will decide how far to take the conflict, in terms of territorial conquest.
Most further posit that Russia in the end will impose terms. The fact that Ukraine committed its last reserves to its Kursk gamble strengthens their position. Despite that incursion being a huge embarrassment to Russia as well harming the citizens in the area, strategically, Douglas Macgregor deemed the terrain to be as valuable as New Jersey’s pine barrens. And rather than requiring Russia to pull troops from the extended line of contact to contain the Kursk invasion, Ukraine instead has wound up thinning its forces there to bolster its Kursk operation.
As we will unpack, it remains an open question as to whether Russia being able to take all of Ukraine is a high-class problem or risks becoming the dog catching the car. What Putin’s critics see as undue slow-walking of the campaign may not simply reflect his characteristic caution but bona fide concerns.
We’ll work though how some likely Russian boundary conditions in fact make it tricky for Russia to come to fully satisfactory outcomes.
Back to a high-level review of the current state of play. The result on the battlefield has been that Ukrainian lines are stretched even further than before, with Russia’s grinding through naturally well-fortified (and often further fortified) towns and small cities much faster than before. Even the Anglosphere press occasionally registers that Ukraine is now very much on the back foot.
Add in that Russia resumed attacks on the electrical grid, after a bit of a lull, turning out the lights over much of Ukraine. Three days ago, the Kyiv Post reported that the best case winter scenario was 12 hours of power a day, the worst only four. Note that the latter estimate does assume additional Russian attacks.
To state what should be obvious: a country with barely any power is not able to operate. Think of all the essentials that are crippled, from elevators to sewage plants to refrigeration to banking and payments systems. As John Helmer pointed out early on, this is Russia’s easiest way to prostrate Ukraine. And with Ukraine’s air defenses severely diminished, Russia can readily take this decisive step.
However, one constraint on Russia may be not wanting to create a large-scale humanitarian crisis. Despite the US regularly engaging in nation-breaking (for instance, in the aftermath of the Iraq War, the media in Australia reported power was barely operating in Baghdad and hospitals were looted), it gets a free pass. Putin, who while this war is on is also trying to play midwife to a multipolar world order, is attempting to present Russia as a responsible superpower.
Yet Helmer has also reported on the considerable impatience in the General Staff with Putin not accelerating the tempo of the war anywhere nearly as much as he could. One countervailing force, as we have discussed, is Russia’s need to keep the good will and economic (as opposed to military) support of key allies, particularly China, India, and Turkiye. They have stood up to Western sanctions despite persistent US and EU efforts to make them more stringent. But more and more companies are being blacklisted, and in some cases, that does entail costs to them, if not so much to the broader economy.
These backers, on the whole, appear to suffering from cognitive dissonance. They do seem to accept Putin’s argument that the Collective West actions after breaking up the Istanbul peace talks particularly their dogged insistence that Ukraine will indeed eventually become part of NATO, leaves Russia with no choice but carrying on until the other side recognizes its position is untenable. They understand that having a hostile military organization on a border is unacceptable.
Yet these major powers (ironically save perhaps Turkiye, which likely does have a keen appreciation of Russia’s predicament but has other issues to navigate) don’t like the fact of Russia’s invasion and don’t like the trade and other economic costs imposed on them by the conflict. China ought to want Russia to continue to bleed the Collective West so as to save China the trouble, so it is likely more supportive of Putin’s position privately than publicly, where it continues to present itself as wanting peace and positioning itself as a potential negotiator.
As an aside, even as India and China talking up negotiations, as in signaling that is their preferred outcome, yours truly also has contacts who bizarrely maintain that they are confident Russia will enter into negotiations after the US elections. The wee problem here is that Russia is not seeking negotiations. Putin has simply maintained the door is open, even after Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has recently declared US-Russia relations to be at an all time low.1 That level of distrust and hostility does not make for having successful talks.
Since Russia is not actively seeking a deal, the US would have to make an offer that will seen both attractive and credible to Russia. The credible part alone is a bridge too far, given that Russia even before the war the US to be not agreement capable.2 And even if a current Administration were to experience a Damascene conversion and make Russia a shockingly meaningful offer (say releasing the frozen $300 billion and unwinding the sanctions over a protracted timetable, in return for Russia meeting certain conditions for each phase of the rollback), how could Russia trust that it would not be reversed with a new President, as in as soon as four years later?
On top of that, even if the Collective West were to swallow its considerable pride, and make a proposal that reflected current realities, there are huge procedural hurdles. The US/NATO combine will feel compelled to maintain the fiction that Ukraine has agency. But Putin took to pointing out not long after Zelensky stayed as President after the Presidential election date came and went, that the reading of his experts of the Ukraine constitution was that executive power should pass to the head of the Rada. Obviously, nothing of the kind has occurred. Russia could entirely reasonably refuse to negotiate with Zelensky and insist Ukraine offer up a legitimate negotiating counterparty and watch that rattle around the Western political and press pinball machine. Putin more recently has reminded listeners that Zelensky signed a decree barring negotiations with Russia if Putin was president, and that would have to be rescinded before Russia could entertain any peace offers.
Another Russian requirement would be a solid commitment that Ukraine would not join NATO. Again, Putin has pointed out that not only did Ukraine agree to that in Istanbul in March-April 2022, but an official in Ukraine’s Rada initialed the draft terms. So having established decisively that Ukraine is not in the drivers’ seat, Russia would need more than Ukraine’s say-so that it was really renouncing NATO.
Even though the US is the not-so-secret NATO decider, the US could not be seen to be forcing NATO to commit to “No Ukraine as member, evah” or making its own deal outside NATO (Well, take that back, Trump has so little respect for NATO he could try, but then NATO would have a hissy and refuse to go along). So NATO would somehow have to agree never to admit Ukraine (you can see how far we have gone into alternative universe land to come up with a pact that might satisfy Russia).
But that is pretty much structurally impossible for NATO. Aurelien, in one of his extensively detailed posts, described how NATO formally is a weak alliance (as in not asking for much in the way of impingement on national sovereignity) to get more countries to join. For instance, even the much-vaunted Article 5 is not much of an obligation. Each state decides on its own if and how much to defend an attacked NATO member.3 So NATO cannot impose additional obligations on NATO members without going through a lot of hoops (an amendment to the charter). This problem is now in focus as Turkiye has petitioned to join BRICS. Some NATO officials and former national leaders re objecting to the idea. Yet NATO has no mechanism for kicking Turkiye out (there is a material breach provision, but using that would be a stretch, aside from the other wee problem that the exclusion of Turkiye would considerably weaken NATO).
The impediments to creating a permanent bar to Ukraine entry would appear to be even greater, given that that blocking a prospective member is not contemplated in the treaty. There’s the additional issue that the Baltic states and probably the UK and Poland would be opposed. So would bi-lateral treaties with most NATO members do for Russia? And pray tell, how long would that take?
So shorter: the US/NATO doubling down on its position that Ukraine will someday be part of NATO leaves Russia with no option other than to subjugate Ukraine.
But what does “subjugate” amount to? The dog-catching-the-car problem that Russia faces is that it seems vanishingly unlikely that Russia ever thought it might have to occupy nearly all of Ukraine (We are skipping over the idea of creating a puppet state since that would presuppose occupation).
Recall that Ukraine is very big, the second largest European nation after Russia. That would almost certainly require an even larger military, including service members tasked to administration.5 Putin remarked a few months ago, in what seemed to be a planned aside, that Russia didn’t need to mobilize further unless it decided to take Kiev.
A big and basic conflict is that the need to subjugate Ukraine is at odds with a major Putin boundary condition of not wanting to do much more in the way of mobilization, or otherwise put Russia on more of a war footing.
One good part of this picture from the Russian vantage is that it has greatly ramped up the level and caliber of its arms production without impinging much on the consumer economy. But there are some complaints that the high military pay is pulling some men out of civil jobs. This problem will get worse if Russia needs to beef up force levels.
The more bloody-minded, which includes Deputy Security Council chairman Medvedev and the General Staff, think that amounts to occupying most of Ukraine, save probably the area around Lvov.4 We’ve repeatedly commented on one solution that John Helmer published very early on, that of creating a big DMZ in the form of a large de-electrified zone.
I do not even remotely buy the idea of Russia taking Ukraine east of the Dnieper only. First, as we have explained, Russia will take all of Kherson and Zaporzhizhia oblast since Russia deems them to be part of Russia. Both of them straddle the Dnieper. Russia will thus need to secure pretty much all of the Dnieper watershed to protect those territories.6 The division of Berlin is not a precedent for Ukraine; Berlin is on marshy land and its river is not a major tributary.
If one very optimistically assumes a military and/or no-power-induced economic collapse resulting from Donbass operations plus additional grid-pounding, so that Russia does not have to greatly increase force levels to conquer major cities, the levels conventionally assumed for occupation (10 soldiers for every 1000) does not seem impossibly high given an ex-Ukraine Prime Minster’s estimate of late last year that only 19 million remained in the Ukraine controlled by the government in Kiev. That would work out to 190,000.
But if thing do not break Russia’s way, it will have to conquer major cities. Again it is over my pay grade, but given that Russia has declared all of Zaporzhizhia and Kherson oblasts to part of Russia, securing control of their capital cities would seem to be a priority. Russia occupied Kherson city, including west of the Dnieper, but famously pulled out. Russia has heavily shelled that part of the city, and it’s reportedly largely emptied out. Nevertheless, Kherson had a population of 290,000 before the war, so it is smaller than Mariupol, but still pretty hefty. Zaporzhizhia’s population was nearly 750,000, so it will be bigger than any city Russia has taken so far.
In other words, Russia already has a lot of work cut out unless and until the Ukraine military obligingly falls apart. Recall that other cities on the minimal “subjugate Ukraine” list are even bigger: Odessa at just shy of a million, Kharkiv city at 1.4 million, and Kiev at 2.9 million.
But Russia also has the “you broke it, you own it” problem. It already faces the need to rebuild huge swathes of the Donbass that have been reduced to rubble. That is particularly important to keep some level of good will with the ethnic Russians who have been suffering since 2014 and whose interests served as a major justification for this conflict.
Even if Russia can subdue most of the rest of Ukraine via the destruction of the power system, it will take a very long time to restore it unless the damage has been very surgical. In the Iraq War, the US took out over 90% of Iraq’s electrical system in mere hours at the start of the conflict. Three years later and after billions in expenditure, according to Western sources, Baghdad had only about six hours of power a day. Of course, the Russians would likely be more serious about trying to get things back to some semblance of normalcy, but this gives an idea of the magnitude of the task.
We have skipped over the wee problem of denazification. It appears that a lot of the Banderite soldiers have gotten themselves assigned to role of stiffeners, which means among other things being just behind the front lines so as to shoot anyone who tries to retreat or surrender. That of course means their survival rates are vastly higher than those of other battle forces. Presumably they won’t be able to continue to (significantly) hide from actual fighting as the Ukraine manpower situation gets even more desperate.
But will neo-Nazis continue to be advantaged if the military collapse scenario takes place? Will they be afforded routes to Lvov or out of Ukraine not available to others save perhaps top officials? Russia can hope that continued prosecution of the war will thin the Banderite ranks, but how much is very uncertain.
The point of this somewhat long-winded discussion is that the security needs of Russia are at odds with its domestic economic priorities. Russia has managed through good luck and even better management to finesse this problem so far, but that looks likely to become more difficult soon.
Putin has repeatedly stated his intent to invest more in communities in the hinterlands, to reduce the gap in their amenities as compared to bigger cities in Western Russia. Making a commitment to rebuild in Ukraine, even if merely to the level of stabilizing the Russian-dominated parts of Ukraine, is a tall order. The demands increase the more Russia feels it has to occupy.
Perhaps Russia will succeed in precipitating the much-anticipated Ukraine collapse soon. But what might it do then to secure and stabilize the country? What happens when state and local officials are no longer being paid, let alone have no or almost no funds to pay for outside services? How about when the country descends into hyperinflation? Do government entities continue to operate on some sort of chits? Do many decamp to the countryside to go survivalist or head to Poland? And does Russia let these swathes of Ukraine descend into chaos and desperation in the hope that at least some communities seek to have Russia take over to provide minimal services? Alternatively, what does Russia do if the West instead uses the disintegration as a pretext to move its own peacekeepers in, allegedly to restore order? That risk would argue strongly against Russia letting Ukraine fall apart without a large-scale intervention to forestall that move.
So my guess, and this is a guess, as opposed to a prediction, is that even if the Ukraine military starts cracking up soon in a big way, Russia won’t make a bold move. Some of this posture would be to build up very good supply lines before doing anything. But it would seem to be in Russia’s interest to continue to kill Ukrainian men, further deplete NATO weapon stocks, and (via intermittent power as the cold kicks in) get more Ukrainians to leave Ukraine before determining how to proceed beyond the four oblasts. Russia has very complex and difficult decisions in store. Diminishing Ukraine as much as it can without advancing all that much further will give Russia more information and could allow it to rule out at least a few options.
____
1 US/Russia relations appear to be a cratering stock. A search showe Russia has been saying its dealings with the US are at new lows since at least 2017.
2 Remember the Western parties did not honor the Ukraine grain deal. Russia was to allow seaborne shipments along side a second and equally important part of the deal, which the Anglosphere media bizarrely or predictably, depending on your degree of cynicism, never mentions. The sanctions on the Russian agricultural bank were to be lifted so as to allow Global South countries, particularly in Africa, to purchase Russian fertilizer. This key element was never honored. Putin bent over backwards to try to be fair, agreeing to a renewal of the pact (IIRC subject to 90 day renewals, otherwise it expired) despite the US and EU being out of compliance. To add insult to injury, Ukraine also used the presumed safe shipping corridor to launch an attack on Sevastopol. The Western press inaccurately depicts Russia as withdrawing from the agreement as opposed to failing to renew it.
3 You can see this is pretty thin gruel. From NATO:
The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security .
4 Medvedev has published a map showing how Western Ukraine could be partitioned among neighboring states like Poland, Romania, and Hungary, with a tiny Greater Kiev as the remaining Ukraine. But that was some time ago and the thinking among the hawks has moved on.
5 This was a problem for the US after World War II. The US wanted to purge Nazis from the administration of Germany. Patton argued publicly and privately against that, arguing that most Nazis had been camp followers as opposed to enthusiasts. Some of this unduly charitable view was based on a belief that they were needed to run the defeated state; another was that they would be valuable in fighting the Soviets. Keep in mind, with far less fanfare, the US kept many officials from Imperial Japan in place, partly out of bureaucratic convenience, partly out of seeing them as less bad than the socialists that were filling the power vacuum.
6 We have to keep re-hoisting this explanation from PlutoniumKun, apparently due to widespread reluctance to accept its implications:
Another reason that Russia will in some form have to control a significant part of Western Ukraine is the Dnieper watershed. Recall Russia by its own law now deems all of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporzhizhia oblasts to be part of Russia:
Note that Kherson (in particular the city of Kherson) and Zaporzhizhia (including the city of Zaporzhizhia) both straddle the Dnieper. We hoisted this comment from PlutoniumKun last month, and it bears repeating:
PlutoniumKun noted recently in comments:
I’m glad for once to see someone mention water and sewerage, something often overlooked in all the high level military/geostrategic theorising. Ukraine is topographically flat, which means that nearly all its water services require active pumping.
This has clear strategic implications (nevermind the hardships this will cause for millions of Ukrainians). There is a good reason why most uncontentious national boundaries follow watersheds, not the obvious boundary of rivers – because once a river is shared, you need intensive co-operation on a wide range of issues, from fishing to bridges and dams and flood controls and… water quality. This is obviously unlikely for many years after whatever resolves the war.
Since Russia needs to control the mouth of the Dnieper for strategic purposes, and needs to control the lower dams and canals for water supply, the obvious question is what happens if a rump Ukraine state is either unwilling or unable to maintain infrastructure upriver. Not just dams – what happens if they pump all of Kiev’s sewerage into the Dnieper? Russia can hardly complain if its crippled Ukraines infrastructure.
So Russia has three choices – seek complete control over most of the Dnieper watershed (which is most of Ukraine), or accept that it has no control over it becoming a sewer and construct alternative infrastructure, or it can try to ensure that whatever deal finally finishes the war includes a comprehensive watershed management. The latter seems very convoluted and unlikely, not least because Russia might then have no choice but to pay for a lot of Ukraines infrastructure repair. So this may well be a major factor in Russias calculations – maybe even more so than the more obvious military calculations. Water infrastructure is very, very expensive, i’ts not something that can be overlooked.
The Dnieper watershed map:
By Francis McLloyd, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1729444
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In regards to footnote 3, it’s worth noting that NATO has yet to invoke Article V for the numerous attacks by Daesh on Europe, Canada, and the USA, both on civilian and military targets. (To say nothing about Nord Stream.)
I did find an interesting article in which it was stated that NATO only is obligated to defend islands in the North Atlantic. (Which leaves out islands between Greece and Turkey, and Lampedusa, which Libya attacked in 1986.)
Nevertheless NATO forces, including Canadian aircraft and ground troops, took part in the fighting in Syria and northern Iraq.
NATO: “Come for the weasel words. Stay for the warfare.”
This is the first I have heard of Canadian ground troops in Syria/Iraq – assuming you mean under a Canadian flag, what is the source of this information.
Canadians will be surprised to hear this.
thanks
You can check Operation Impact on Wikipedia, it mentions special forces on the ground.
Didn’t know about Syria, but several stories concerning JTF-2 snipers in Iraq, including a very long shot by someone who was nominally in Iraq as a ‘trainer’…
You could try reading Article VI ….
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_17120.htm
There are, of course, lots of other mutual cooperation regimes for other things including terrorism.
There is a new interview with Vicky Nuland(er) and Russian expat and SPIEGEL-columnist Michail Sygar where Vicky admits that the Istanbul talks were ended by the US and Brits due to RUs demands of missile and arms limitations on Ukraine.
This is the 2 min. clip
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UChawL8_xoI&t=13s
From the entire interview, which I frankly skipped (I just cannot stand the artifical dishonest voice of that woman. She is insufferable. Regardless of what she says.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiS2dg_atfc
the passage translated from German (although the interview on YT is English):
“(…)
“Relatively late in the game, the Ukrainians started asking for advice on where this thing was going, and it became clear to us, the British and others, that Putin’s main condition was hidden in an annex to this document they were working on. It contained restrictions on the exact types of weapons systems that Ukraine would be allowed to have under the agreement, so that Ukraine would basically be neutered as a military power. There were no similar restrictions on Russia. Russia was not obliged to withdraw. Russia was not required to establish a buffer zone on the Ukrainian border, and it was not required to impose the same restrictions on its military facing Ukraine. And so people inside and outside Ukraine began to question whether this was a good deal, and that was the point at which it fell apart.”
(…)”
Needless to point out how she spins the truth implying that the Putin was hiding his true evil demands in some “Annex” of the treaty draft. As if that was written in secret code or somethin´ (what is she even talking about?!).
With this in mind it becomes obvious (again) that the US will never get what would be necessary for a serious settlement. Because that would be nothing short of stategic surrender by RU.
Here I am not quoting Yves´s final assessment since everybody has read it.
Last week Andrei Martyanov suggested that soon Ukraine´s last coal reserves will be in Russian hands and with this the country´s entire heavy industry.
p.s. Of course US could abandon Ukraine and set up shop in the willing suicidal countries of Eastern Europe by putting the missiles there and transform them into serious military frontlines.
However that could lead to clash with the EU´s own interests in keeping refugees at bay via Hungary and Serbia and Greece, a task which is one of the last common denominators between Orbán and Brussels.
The current state is good for the US, keeping RU occupied. Europe will bleed to death or some election miracles will happen. Unfortutanely I am not religious and don´t believe in miracles. Or will Ukraine rise up against the machine? Nope.
With those forces which are traditionally at the forefront of any such seachange pro-US, it´s not possible. Everyone else daring to contradict will be crushed.
The Nuland remark is a great find. Thanks.
Good points, and I also personally share your sentiments; “…I just cannot stand the artificial dishonest voice of that woman. She is insufferable. Regardless of what she says…”
That goes for many more of her ilk, but then I can be grumpy and intolerant sometimes :-)
I echo Ms. Smith: thanks very much for this clip! It might serve to identify those responsible for the death of one million plus people, the prostitution of as many, the displacement of tens of millions and the wrecking of a country in a court some time in the future.
Imo Russia post Ukraine is not Russia pre ukr. Russia clearly has the most powerful military in Europe and possible the world given the vulnerability of navy ships. russia might simply say countries near Russia can’t have missiles, particularly nuke capable ones, whether nato or not.
Interesting notion, that Russia is or could be developing weapons that could be used to ensure that no one in shooting distance of Russian vital organs has any weapons that could do that. That would be quite a ukase, that would.
I’m wondering how far out the Russians have gamed this. The Russians have to be fully aware that “the Rest” believe God has laid it on their hearts, as one particularly obnoxious Methodist lay preacher used to say to invoke the divine sanction on whatever little power play he was cooking up, to bleed, fracture and engulf the entire Eurasian landmass. “Jesus is coming, and if you people have not used up the planet like He said in the Holly Bibble you are supposed to do, He will be really pissed.”
There are articles circulating that indicate the “West” continues to pursue pathogens that selectively kill Slavs. Wonder what the Russians have in hand to reduce the risk of an insane release of such pests. It’s not like the “West” doesn’t have form for accepting the eugenic opportunities of plagues, if not demonstrably guilty of turning them loose.
Touched on here is the issue of what to do with the fully-invested Nazis. I believe the structure of the Gladio network is still part of the CIA’s/State’s DNA. As is clear from the last time, viz. Nulander and her chums, and cretins like Yaroslavl Hunka, lauded by the Canadian parliament — I have not seen it noted elsewhere, but Hunka acknowledged the applause of his murdering self with 7/8 of a Nazi salute. https://www.newsweek.com/nazi-veteran-canada-parliament-yaroslav-hunka-trudeau-1829773 note that the Canadian speaker offered one of the most oleaginous no-pologies and mea culpas to the mopes, even the Jewish lobby, for. His stunt. And Canada, like the Secret Squirrels in the US, will never vomit out the “rough men (and women like Christia Freeland).” The people who make up the Nazi political bloc obviously have an enormous, insatiable drive to power.
So the roaches might get encouraged to move to a different apartment while the current application of pesticide evaporates, but there’s a lot of them that have their nests buried deep in various cracks and crannies and can just wait out the fumigation. Where they have already stored away a whole lot of explosive and likely toxic and infectious stuff, ready to pop out and do it all again.
Will the Chinese see any utility in having a Russia that breeds Putins and Lavrovs (and who or what will replace him when he retires?), but also produces Medvedevs, right next door, running an economic engine that must maintain a huge component of war materiel and a large population of soldiers? It’s a blessing for Russia that it encompasses so many resources (other than maybe a sufficient population.) Also a curse,, of course. Unlike the nascent US empire, Russia has land boundaries with hostile entities, and new weapons constantly being invented and improved to take down a renascent Slav like Russia. Greed and dominance will always be significant elements of the global political economy, far as I can see. Multipolar and multinodal just describe an architecture, a system. How the energies flow is another set of elements.
I hope and pray for the sake of my children and grandchildren that Russia encompasses a healthy set of really wise people with a strong streak of goodness in them. My fear is that the Nazi disease is a perpetual attractive nuisance. Wish Russia all good luck in figuring out what to do with the car. Here’s a hint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y67CddGdLnM
I don’t know how it would be possible to target Slavs without also targeting Ashkenazi Jews.
*Sigh*
The Ukrainians apparently did try, they gathered a lot of Russian blood samples.
But Slavs are no way, no how a distinct population genetically. There’s no risk here (or if there were, the Ukrainians themselves are just as exposed). This is just Ukrainians buying into their own racial superiority nonsense and then others who don’t know better treating it as real.
Of course, the US wants unlimited missiles in Ukraine!
US left the INF treaty and already the US Army has Mid-Range Capability (MRC) known as Typhon missile system. It was originally developed as the Strategic Mid-range Fires System (SMRF), So much for INF restrictions!
A reprise of Ground Launch Cruise Missiles banned by INF treaty, as well as loading modified SM 6 from the same launch tube, which is similar to the vertical launch tubes on Arleigh Burke destroyers/Aegis ashore (Poland Rumania) systems. This is why Russia is not happy with Aegis ashore, the tubes are nuclear capable!
Four batteries of 16 launchers are scheduled. One battery is in service and was deployed to the Philippines for an exercise this year. Typhon is transported by C-17 or C-5.
Typhon is most likely nuclear capable!
A stupid person, giving what is, in all probability the most stupid reason ever for the US and UK to go to war against a great power brimming over with nuclear weapons and a culture and military history which makes it obvious that no one in their right mind should ever go to war with an enemy which has the space to use retreat as a weapon and the most effective strategy to attrite an advancing military opponent. That is why my immediate (and final) assessment of the Kursk operation is that the Russians were fully aware of the plan just by looking at events on the ground in the Ukraine, and then, classically, offered the enemy an exploitable vulnerability, including retreat and the loss of some conscripts as POWs, before baring it’s teeth and opening up a series of undefendable killing fields.
The question which really fascinates me is why anyone in the West thought it possible to defeat Russia in a ground war, not least given its capacity for armaments production, in the first place?
Given the triumphalism with which the early sanctions packages were announced, I think a lot of western decision-makers thought that the economic warfare would work. In retrospect it looks silly, Russia has enormous resources, their own military industry and from China access to essentially all industrial goods. But hindsight is 20/20, and at the time the Russian government was also afraid of an economic collapse.
Well the sanctions would have crippled Russia were it not for one (not so) tiny detail.
The US needed China to cooperate. And in typical Biden/Blinken style they fucked that up when China went “quid pro quo” and the US basically replied: “Do this or else”.
Once China refused it stiffened the spines of the rest of the world (the part that aren’t effectively US vassal states) so that other nations could say no and not be threatened by the US for not complying. And forcing the US to go on the secondary sanctions path where they piecemeal punish countries by targeting companies/industries the US deems as supporting Russia.
The defeat of Russia has been a long-term plan of the Anglosphere at least since the Bolsheviks killed Queen Victoria’s grandchildren.
If this assault fails, despite heartfelt cheerleading, the Anglosphere’s victory over the Western Continent and the onshoring of its colonial industry to North America will be considered a substantial victory in all the finest clubs surrounding Washington and London.
It’s not sinister; it’s almost poetic, because Europe will sacrifice itself out of love!
Brit animus towards Russia is older than the Revolution — it goes at least as far back as the Crimean War and was likely rooted at the outset in fears that the Bear would threaten India via the overland route through Afghanistan. You know, “the great game” and all …
There’s a good novel about this in the Flashman series…Flashman and the Great Game….
The defeat of Russia has been a long-term plan of the Anglosphere at least since the Bolsheviks killed Queen Victoria’s grandchildren.
If this assault fails, despite heartfelt cheerleading, the Anglosphere’s victory over the Western Continent and the onshoring of its colonial industry to North America will be considered a substantial victory in all the finest clubs surrounding Washington, DC.
It’s not sinister; it’s almost poetic, because Europe will sacrifice itself out of love!
NATO decisions are unanimous, so it’s perfectly possible for USA (or anyone else) to block Ukraine accession just by its one vote. If they can take Germany, France and perhaps couple other countries on board to embellish the optics, the Balts and other crazies can pound sand. After all that’s how it’s being stalled for 15 years now. But that leads back to the problem of how much is USA agreement capable.
Relying on any future NATO vote is no way, no how a guarantee. The fact that it could get as far as a vote would not be acceptable to Russia.
You don’t know what those voting will get in their (e)mail or coffee, to get an unanimous vote, in the day of the voting…
In looking at the big picture, Russia seems to be even more powerful now militarily than during the previous Cold War. Russian allies in the Middle East, for example, were humiliated by Israel. Now Russia has shown that its military can stand up to the US in Syria and Ukraine. The US has to go on the defensive in the Middle East to maintain its hegemony there. Iran, and Hezbollah are trying to buy time to get more of the latest military technology and Russia can help them in this regard. So the US will want to tone down the new Cold War and get things back to the way they were in the Middle East. Russia has a lot of leverage given its demonstrated military prowess.
Just as only Nixon could go to China, only a Democrat or establishment Republican can go to Moscow. This is beyond Russia’s control.
So Russia will continue on the current path which is working reasonably well for them. In the meantime, the US will have trouble managing the empire given that China and Russia have a lot to offer economically and militarily in various contested spots around the world, from Africa to the Middle East to Myanmar and Thailand and beyond to Singapore and Indonesia. Latin America and east Asia may be easier to keep solidly in the U.S. led empire.
As Ukraine becomes more of a forgotten outpost, Russia will be able to control most of it without continued opposition from NATO. The US attention will be elsewhere, and with it NATO’s.
Grudges in that part of the world carry across generations. Chrystia Freeland and Vicky Nuland are carrying and acting aggressively on the wrongs they believe their grandparents suffered at the hands of Russia, which they seek to have modern Russia pay for. Look at how the Baltics are still hopping mad over Soviet rule. Just because US officials and most of the public has the memory of goldfish does not mean that there won’t be plenty of people who will be seeking to harm Russia, above all Banderite irredentists. The US kept funding them after WWII and look how that has paid off.
No doubt. But the Middle East will be a bigger concern for the US and Russia has leverage there.
The Israel lobby > the Ukrainian lobby. If you are AIPAC, which would you accept Iran with hypersonic missiles with nuclear warheads in exchange for crossing more Russian redlines? Or would you work behind the scenes to make sure this doesn’t happen, Nuland be damned?
Imo the ME is slipping away from the us. BRICS are drawing some locals, Israel’s war doesn’t seem sustainable, and what is the armada going to accomplish? They’re already saying they can’t stay long. So just hello/goodbye? Granted Gaza genocide is disastrous to gazans, and West Bank is suffering, too. Maybe hizbollah could target Israeli West Bank bases?
Haaretz survey found 1/4 of Israelis are thinking of leaving. That might be half of the seculars.
I wonder if Russia takes a greater interest in ME if/when ukr surrenders.
Russia would like to get back to the global economy where it’s not sanctioned and threatened militarily. That is the context for any increased Russian interest in the Middle East. There may be business opportunities there too.
But the West is all in with Israel and, to a lesser extent, the Gulf oil monarchies. If it’s slipping away from us, we will change course to stop that from happening, and that means making a deal with Russia. The US leaves Russia alone in eastern Europe, and Russia will leave Israel alone in the Middle East. Both sides will want to get back to the status quo from before the Ukraine War. But Russia will be seen as the winner and respected for its military success.
The best case scenario is that Iran is strong enough to deter escalation across the Middle East, while US, Russia, Turkey, and others mediate a settlement in Palestine.
I think we’re past the point where Israel is perceived as an acceptable state by the rest of the world and Arab leaders are too aware of the fragility of the legitimacy of their own power and are conscious of the depth of rage felt on the Arab street. I think most European countries are becoming very aware that there is a genocide taking place in Palestine and this is melding with the general perception of the corruption and incompetence, the sheer lack of morality and any sense of shame, on the part of Western leaders. This is why institutions of government feel the need to bind social media in the chains of censorship.
The war of choice in Ukraine, the genocide of choice in Palestine, and the resources pushed into these crimes by the West, whose own people are sinking into levels of Dickenian poverty as de-industrialisation takes it’s toll, the cost pressures on farmers and the ever increasing problem of unregulated immigration, and the refusal to accept the electoral decisions of the people (strangely enough, most felt in the UK where the electorate held their nose and voted Labour on the assumption that they would actually try to change things and not just be a continuity goverment pushing us deeper into decline) means that electorates, particularly in the US and Western Europe, recognise the fundamental illegitimacy of their current governors and will increasingly support nationalist parties, whether of Left or Right (themselves fairly meaningless distinctions in a time of crisis), or just revolt, but on a larger scale than the yellow vests or the so-called rioters that Der Starmer has flung into jail following the Biden administration’s treatment of the people who wished to visit their Capitol of January 6, 2001.
And before them, we had Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski. He was no fan of Russia either.
In some respects the neocons were the successors of the John Birch Society as hard line cold warriors. They will go the way of the Birchers as fringe nut cases, in my opinion. Who can identify with Chrystia Freeland and Vicky Nuland these days? Or the Cheney family…
Buckley chased the Birchers out of the conservative movement when they came out against Vietnam. Birchers, whatever their warts, were not proponents of “American Primacy”.
Thanks. I hadn’t been aware that the Birchers were against Vietnam. Learned something!
Still, there is a point there I think. The neocons may soon be recongnized as fringe nut cases. Nuland lost her official post and her Ukraine project is failing spectacularly. Freeland had to back off after sending a WWII Nazi veteran to speak before the Canadian parliament. Cheney presided over the Iraq 2003 fiasco. Maybe they are the successors to Joseph McCarthy, in that their brand of cold war fanaticism will be recognized for what it is.
On the other hand, the fact the the Birchers lost clout after OPPOSING the Vietnam War is sobering.
Most neocons came out of the former “anti-Stalinist left” intellectuals (Trotskyites for the most part) that got pulled into an alliance with the CIA at the close of World War II. The original intelligence and defense bureaucrats skewed heavily “liberal” in their own minds, which is why they felt so threatened by McCarthy and his ilk. The other source was the Congress critters and lobbyists for the big and growing military industrial complex, where Henry “Scoop” Jackson was the grand old man of the circle. In response to the black power and counterculture movements of the 1960s, the onetime leftists and corporate militarists all moved sharply toward the right. But toward “big government conservatism”—using government power and big budget allocations for spreading capitalism by force.
Thanks Lefty. That’s the story of my life, I guess, since I came of age during Vietnam. Actually, the McCarthy stuff was before my time.
There are advantages and disadvantages to being born into the empire at its peak.
One would think he wasn’t terribly fond of Ukrainians either: his ancestral hometown, Brzezany, is no longer part of Poland and there are, likely, no Poles left there now. (One guess as tp whoch it is part of today…
“Russia seems to be even more powerful now militarily than during the previous Cold War.”
What makes even more puzzling studies likes this one:
“Masters of the Air: Strategic stability and conventional strikes”
by Dan Plesch and Manuel Galileo
here
https://scrapweapons.com/
summary:
https://interestingengineering.com/military/us-allies-edge-over-china-russia
In essence the authors argue that NATO could disarm RU/CHINA with conventional missiles.
I haven´t had time yet to go through the report.
But I did a quick term search on hypersonics.
And neither does the report point out that NATO has NO hypersonics as of August 2024.
And it claimes – seriously – UKR MoD´s reports of having shot down Zircons.
“(…)
In 2023/24 several Russian hypersonic missiles including the Zircon were purportedly destroyed by Allied equipment.100 Which exact system can be linked to this destruction is presently unknown, but the Patriot has been speculated as being responsible for destroying Kinzhal missiles
(…)”
This is clearly falling for PR.
Furthermore:
“(…)
Richard Garwin espoused the attractiveness of boost-phase interception (BPI) a generation ago.102 CSIS’s 2022 study examines some of the assumptions behind boost-phase interceptions;103 however, it does not discuss boost-phase defeat with respect to Russia and China in the context of counterforce. AMRAAM in the boost phase and Aegis in mid- and terminal-phases of ICBMs have some capability,104 demonstrated through successful testing,105 although not fully representing “real-world conditions”.
(…)”
Garwin would be the last person to argue that ICBMs, lest true hypersonic interception is a real thing.
And mind me: Ted Postol is conventiently quoted merely twice in the entire paper.
I am not in the position to discard everything in it. That would be Martyanov´s task, I assume.
And apparently the intentions behind it are said to be good since pushing for disarmament talks.
But no study taking Ukrainian government statements verbatim has my layman approval or trust.
As well RU´s alleged inferiority could as much be instrumental to justify increased arms spending.
Which I frankly believe this report will end up being used for. Whether intended as such by the authors or not.
“Russia seems to be even more powerful now militarily than during the previous Cold War.”
What makes even more puzzling studies likes this one:
“Masters of the Air: Strategic stability and conventional strikes”
by Dan Plesch and Manuel Galileo
here
https://scrapweapons.com/
summary:
https://interestingengineering.com/military/us-allies-edge-over-china-russia
In essence the authors argue that NATO could disarm RU/CHINA with conventional missiles.
I haven´t had time yet to go through the report.
But I did a quick term search on hypersonics.
And neither does the report point out that NATO has NO hypersonics as of August 2024.
And it claimes – seriously – UKR MoD´s reports of having shot down Zircons.
“(…)
In 2023/24 several Russian hypersonic missiles including the Zircon were purportedly destroyed by Allied equipment. Which exact system can be linked to this destruction is presently unknown, but the Patriot has been speculated as being responsible for destroying Kinzhal missiles
(…)”
This is clearly falling for PR and not a serious argument.
Furthermore:
“(…)
Richard Garwin espoused the attractiveness of boost-phase interception (BPI) a generation ago. CSIS’s 2022 study examines some of the assumptions behind boost-phase interceptions; however, it does not discuss boost-phase defeat with respect to Russia and China in the context of counterforce. AMRAAM in the boost phase and Aegis in mid- and terminal-phases of ICBMs have some capability, demonstrated through successful testing, although not fully representing “real-world conditions”.
(…)”
Well, if it weren´t for the last three words: “real-world conditions”…
Garwin would be the last person to argue that ICBMs, lest true hypersonic interception is a real thing.
And mind me: Ted Postol is conventiently quoted merely twice in the entire paper.
(I am aware of the reports of RU S-500/550 and interception of MIRVs. But I am waiting for more data and people like Dmitry Stefanovich confirming Martynaov´s motions on this subejct.)
Apparently the intentions behind the study are said to be good since pushing for disarmament talks.
But no study taking Ukrainian government statements verbatim has my layman approval or trust.
As well RU´s alleged inferiority could as much be instrumental to justify increased arms spending.
Which I frankly believe this report will end up being used for. Whether intended as such by the authors or not.
p.s. If I could make a guess the study might skip RU EW capability against some NATO missile system. And the issue of tracking RU SSBNs as stated by now is also highly disputed and probably unlikely. As Martyanov says: This is not the 1990s any more.
The US has agreed to pull all its forces out of Iraq…Its base was simply a target…
Great stuff here, thank you.
I think this might be a typo: “…The division of Berlin is not a precedent for Ukraine; it is on marshy land and its river is not a major tributary…”
The reference is messed up. I did that a lot when writing my book. Fixing…..
My guess is that the endgame for Ukraine will resemble Germany in 1919 — a substantial part ceded to Russia, a large part not ceded but under Russian occupation for a fixed period, with a porous border with Ukraine proper, and a Ukraine with strictly limited armaments and obliged to pay reparations to Russia. And, probably, a new constitution guaranteeing rights for minorities and rejecting all military alliances, Russia reserving the right to intervene militarily if the constitution is amended against their liking.
It looks implausible, but the situation in Ukraine is so dire that they will have no choice but to sign on the dotted line. Sometimes you have to acknowledge reality no matter how much bullshit you have spent your life spouting.
Paraguay after the war of triple alliance, or, maybe, Carthage after the 3rd Punic War (ok, that might be tpo much). There will be no functioning Ukrainian state worth speaking of for decades to come.
A few thoughts regarding ,’Paying for rebuilding Ukraine’ . If Russia establishes a new Ukrainian political entity, it is unlikely to be recognised by the West . So when Old Ukraine’s creditors come looking for their money New Ukraine can tell them to go pound sand making its financial position relatively healthy . If run properly Ukraine is potentially quite prosperous , thus improving matters further . The costs for rebuilding Ukraine have been calculated as Western level costs . The bill for Russia would be a lot less .
Imo Russia continues until the army surrenders. The post war reconstruction can begin after a Russian-leaning gov is installed. Note that Russian leaners had formed a majority when voting into office the Russian leaner in 2014 (which prompted the us/nuland to overthrow that gov.). So, and with many west leaners having left by then, the remainers might be happy to have jobs and a hope for better lives in the ‘new’ ukr.
Ukrainians have considerable experience fixing blown up bits of their electric grid. Russia can supply replacement bits, Ukrainians can install.
Beyond that, the ruble can replace ukr currency and provide salaries to ukr workers/soldiers, the latter maintaining peace and hunting (I assume unpopular) Nazis in west ukr. In this case the decision of which additional oblasts would have an opportunity to formally join Russia can be delayed.
The west can pat itself on the back for fully resurrecting Russia after the disastrous 90’s, to say nothing if forging a strong alliance among the axis of evil, Russia.china/iran/n Korea, plus their new BRICS. Who knew that desperately clinging to former hegemony strengthens competitors? I wonder if Rome made the same mistakes.
I normally like your comments, but with all due respect, this is flippant to the degree that it comes off like MBA/PowerPoint thinking. Did you bother reading the post? Did you miss in this very high level discussion that occupation takes resources and costs money? And how does Russia install a government? Where does it get the many bodies? This is not just about the top level officials but the rank and file. What happens if many flee? How intensely does Russia go about purging any officials and operatives who chose to stay?
And fixing the grid will take years. So how does Russia take care of wellbeing of the population in the meantime?
It not just a war, it’s for a big part a civil war – there are currently a lot of (former) Ukrainian politicians in Russia in a forced refuge from their more nationalist brethren. The speaker of the Russian upper house was born in Ukraine, for that matter. There are more Ukrainians living in Moscow than in Vinnytsia!
While it’s not completely rational, counting together the self-identifying Ukrainians in Russia, the refugees, the emigrant workers and the people of “Novorossiya” who voted to join Russia the number comes to up about 10 million. Russians won’t have too much trouble finding half-decent administrative people among that lot. They already have done that in the four semi-liberated regions of Ukraine. Several times over, actually.
As for the grid, Ukraine was able to repair it for most of the 2023 while it was fighting a losing war. Sure, mostly because it had way, way much overcapacity, being built for 52 million people and heavy industry by 1990. Half the people left, and the industry is no more, which is why it was so resistant. The thing is that Russia doesn’t have to restore it back to what it was, but only for 15-20 million people. A slightly bigger piece of grid than Moscow alone. Before the war Russia exported over a million transformers of all sizes annually. If only a fraction of a fraction of those are suitable for distribution and transmission grids, it’s still a respectable capacity.
For most of the people it could be enough to have a higher pension, a job, have your kids able to speak Russian in school again, have your own church back and not having to hide from press-gangs while waiting for the electricity to return to feel well-kept.
As somebody in the Internets recently said (sorry, forgot where I saw it), there’re Ukrainians who can speak the language they want, who can vote and who don’t live in fear of “conscription” – and then there are Ukrainians governed by Kiev.
The grid destruction by Russia has changed markedly. In 2023, it was hitting transmission lines and big junctions (mainly) to force Ukraine to use up its air defense missiles. It was also to stress the grid and figure out how the electrical system worked.
This year, Russia has been taking out generation capacity and transformers. Totally different. Much harder to restore.. The authorities would not be saying 12 hours a day of winter power as a best case scenario if this were 2023 type damage.
Right! Few people in the US seem to really care about this. Rather, the decision makers focus on domestic politics. But eventually AIPAC notices that Russia is cooperating militarily with Iran. Business people notice that they have been cut off from many markets. Allies get pissed off about the empire’s loss of coherence which affects domestic politics (as in aftermath of Vietnam). There will eventually be some painful (to the old guard) change in the west’s political leadership.
Laid it all out beautifully–I love that you consider it all using logic. I hope that disease (for the oligarchs) spreads.
Right now prediction is impossible because we don’t know who will be the POTUS who will be the key player in all this. If Kamala wins then the same policy will continue and Russia must continue to inflict somewhat less than the fabled thousand cuts. It is in the interests of both Russia and a Kamala style regime in Washington to keep this thing going. Putin probably understands that the divisions that have developed in the world will be permanent. The Russians have managed to keep up a reasonably well-functioning domestic and support a now massive military on the cheap (compared to the corrupt West). The current situation is, in a way, perfect and it can continue close to forever so Russia will be perfectly situated to take on anyone. Constantly expanding front lines, no big arrow offensives, slow strangulation of the economy that the West must support, slow depopulation, increasingly less powerful military no matter what NATO chooses to do, and so on. There is no reason other than pressure from China and maybe India to end the war. Russia knows that it must focus on military strength because it knows the US and NATO (even if it falls apart) will always continue to want to destroy Russia unless Neocons totally lose power which is unlikely if Harris wins. The US gains by continuing to dominate Europe, by helping create a vicious “enemy” in Russia and its super-villain President because Washington knows how dimwitted Europeans in general have become and the campaign to create Orwellian enemies is genius–I was so shocked Scandinavians seem to have fallen for the con. At any rate, Washington must have, for domestic purposes, a clever evil-genius of an enemy that fits the cartoon-loving views of most Americans.
If Trump wins then everything is up in the air–does he listen to the dissident realists or the legions of neocons that infect and dominate every part of the national security structure?b I hope we get to see it but Putin prefers Harris, she would keep the ship of state on its fanatical and even silly course of world conquest. War is great for “leaders” so at some time we’ll wake up to the fact.
I doubt that it matters much who wins the election.
If Trump wins, he can be scapegoated for continued failure which he will be powerless to stop. He couldn’t get us ouf of Afghanistan and Syria when he was president, although he tried and did start the ball rolling in Afghanistan.
If Kamala wins, she will be stuck with the millstone of a losing war hanging around her neck, with no one to blame but her party.
I’ll be voting for Trump to show anybody looking where I stand. The folly of Ukraine and the renewed cold war is my top issue, above economic and cultural issues. Only when the empire gets back to reality on the global scale can we move forward domestically, in my opinion.
One scenario that I see as most likely is that the Ukraine itself fractures, reminiscent of Vietnam. Eastern part would be annexed by Russia and it’s easy to imagine that Zelensky government could be driven out of Kiev Maidan-style and new government installed that accedes to Russian peace terms (most importantly, arms limits).
Zelensky could reestablish his government in Lviv with Polish/EU support while rallying the nationalist elements of the military and society in Western Ukraine. The new government would control the central, largely demilitarized state with limited Russian military support, mostly focused on keeping the Western forces out. One side would recognize Zelensky as the legitimate government, the other the Kiev government.
Depopulation of Ukraine, especially in the younger age brackets, is conducive to this scenario, since it depletes the manpower pool for possible resistance movements. Rump Western Ukraine would be too feeble to present a serious military threat.
As Ukraine sinks into defeat, the scenario of warfare amongst various Ukrainian factions may well become realistic — that would be typical for regimes on their end-stage, when they are facing the prospect total loss.
Currently, apart from the naughties (Azov, Aidar, Right Sector, and the like), I am unable to distinguish some cohesive factions with meaningful power in the big mess of Ukrainian politics. With whom is the (depleted and exhausted) military allied? Whom are the feared intelligence services supporting? Have the pre-war oligarchs (Poroshenko, Timoshenko, Kolomoyskyi, etc) lost their power and influence after losing their Eastern possessions?
Vietnam offers another possibility: Zelensky goes the way of Diem.
Please look at the Dnieper watershed map. Russia can’t allow the country to be divided that way. One country needs to control the whole shebang and it will be Russia.
One possible solution if the US and its poodle dogs can’t figure out when to quit, and I’m only being half flippant here – Russia eventually takes back all the former Iron curtain countries to its west, including East Germany, lobs a few khinzals into Berlin to help the West get its mind right, and then renames the West German rump state “Ukraine” and lets it have all the NATO missiles it wants.
And it can keep the old “Ukrainian” symbols, too, I guess?
This article completely forgets how the British ruled their Empire, co-opt local groups to rule it for you.
Russia has a more than ready group in the ethnic Russian population who would be more than happy to extinguish the Banderites and police the West of the country.
The massive natural resources of Ukraine would also more than support its rebuilding.
I’m with you on that Roger. The Soviet Union was able to not only keep its union of 15 or so separate republics under control but also most of Eastern Europe post WWII. I also believe that given a chance at peace most Ukrainians may begin to question the wisdom of ever going to war against its powerful neighbor. The Banderites may not be so welcome once this war ends.
The Donbass militia has already been overtaxed. I don’t think they can be asked to do that, or relocate their families to a hostile area. The Chechens particularly like killing Nazis but that would be a gig, not a long-term activity, for similar reasons.
You miss that in a big chunk of Western Ukraine, the antipathy for Russians (or any other supposed non-Ukrainian save select deemed to be white enough groups) runs very deep, as in this is more than a Banderite problem.
A contact here contracted for software development in Russia and Ukraine years back, as in before Maidan made the schisms worse. He’s Scottish and pretty blond. He was told to keep his mouth shut in meetings, that if any Ukraine counterpart got wind that he spoke Russian, it would be a deal killer. Mind you, that was with him as a potential buyer.
How big is this chunk? There are Hungarians and Romanians and Poles in Ukraine, who may not like the Banderites, especially when they’ve led the country into a losing war. The majority of the Ukrainian diaspora will probably want to get on with their new lives in their new countries. What will be the attitude in Romania, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Czechia, and other east European countries after the great Ukrainian adventure proves to be a bust? Nature abhors a power vacuum, but the Banderites may not be the ones to fill it. Zelensky himself isn’t even a Banderite. Russia and its allies might like to make a deal with the west that apportions much of western Ukraine to its eastern European NATO neighbors. The rump Ukraine could be the size and power of Armenia.
In return, Israel would get Palestine and the West Bank, while everybody would pitch in to help the Palestinians in their new homes.
You are talking over the issue. The hatred for ethnic Russians in western Ukraine extends beyond the Banderites, who are thugs who enjoy torturing people, to a considerable level among regular, as in not pathologically sadistic, people. You are asking me to give numbers when I can’t.
The Ukrainians have been targeting Hungarians for military service, so their numbers in the West, as least men, has been thinned by design, to the degree Hungary has complained. I would assume all minor ethnic groups have been disproportionately conscripted too, but because their governments are all in with Project Ukraine, they have not complained.
There are plenty of people in Western Ukraine who hate the Poles nearly as much as they hate Russians. If given a choice of being part of an independent neutral rump Ukraine or becoming part of Poland many people may well chose the former. Russia could probably live with this so long as they could guarantee this state never joined NATO.
You are missing the key point: an independent Ukraine could never be sure not to join NATO. The West would be working hard to get its government suborned to be keen to have this happen. And its economic ties would currently be to Europe, so its economy would have to be integrated into Russia for this to have a faint possibility of happening. How do you do that to an “independent” country? Recall that pre-Maidan Ukraine asa a whole was much closer to Russia economically than the West
If Ukraine descends into chaos it could be very dangerous for the Russians, but it could also present an opportunity. There are large Polish and Hungarian in the west and I’m guessing that the Banderites, being Banderites, have regularly abused them. The Russians could encourage the irredentists in Hungary and Poland to assume the “administration” of these areas under the guise of friendship and peacekeeping. The Poles particularly would probably be dumb enough to think they could neuter the Nazis in the interests of territorial expansion. Kuleba’s recent affable foreign policy has been paving the way for this opportunity.
It seems that, with the West’s constant barrage of Russia-hate and belief that continued confrontation will wear Putin down, the chances of a peace are extremely slim. Putin wants the denazification of Ukraine, and now he has to deal with a nazified EU (Thank you USA!). Both are difficult to impossible, given the West’s future support of Baltic, Polish, Romanian, and Czech hostility, let alone French, German, and British toilet-ification that will complicate US maneuvers.
https://www.rt.com/business/603712-draghi-eu-energy-prices-warning/
I think that russophobia and hate in general doesn’t put food on the table in this particular situation, when the west/Ukr, have no means to kill the Russians. A totally different situation than what Israeli settlers experience, with all that IOF and US military, economic, and legal protection.
Basically, there are three types of generic “victory conditions” which Russia could go for. They are (1) control of territory (2) binding treaties and (3) facts on the ground. You have already pointed out problems with the first two: the third, if you can get it, makes the first two somewhat academic anyway, and I think the Russians will go (and would be wise to go) for victory conditions based on effects not metrics.
The problem with territory-based conditions is that you are just moving the line of potential conflict forward, and who is to say where you should stop? If this town why not that one? If this river why not the next? By Helmer’s logic you could progressively occupy or demilitarise all of Europe, as NATO develops longer and longer range missiles, not forgetting the sea of course. And the further West you go, the closer to having a border with NATO countries. It’s striking that after 1945, the Soviet Union directly controlled large chunks of Europe, yet this made it feel less, rather than more secure.
The problem with treaties is that, unless they reflect a genuine desire on all sides to agree something, they are only paper. Treaties that are imposed seldom last, and leave a legacy of resentment and the desire to overturn them. In any event, neither side is going to sign a treaty unless it contains a withdrawal clause.
The only answer I think is to create facts on the ground that are sufficiently unambiguous that treaties etc. will obediently follow after. That means the destruction of the warmaking capacity of Ukraine, and the recognition by NATO that the game is up. We re relatively close to both now. The best solution would be a realistic government in Kiev that understood that its best interests and only hope of survival lay in being inoffensive and keeping the West at arms length. And at that point NATO will be out of options anyway. If Kiev is prepared to secure its own territory against potential threats to Russia (which would be wise) then the issues of territorial control and binding treaties follow naturally.
I guess that with option 3 the West might have to forget about Ukrainian debt. Then the CW will feel compelled to seize the 300 billion $ setting a bad precedent there by the way. I believe that given Russia probably believes those assets are not recoverable they might have some role in a potential agreement: to be used exclusively for Ukraine’s reconstruction fund (controlled by Russia of course). This might allow Western leaders some saving face. Victory! We have forced Russia to pay Ukraine’s reconstruction, because they are the only culprits of this war. Just saying. I have not the slightest idea about financials or international treaties.
I have to disagree a bit. As explained in the post, Russia at a minimum must take Kherson and Zaporzhizia cities as (per Russia) legally part of Russia but now occupied by Ukraine. To secure them, Russia then needs to take pretty much all of the Dnieper river basin. I don’t think the West will merely epically sulk, as you suggested a while back, it is has a cheap and easy way to harass Russia, which being upstream of those major cities would make easy. I also suspect Russia will similarly find it necessary to take Odessa. So I don’t agree that the territory considerations are unimportant.
Oh indeed, I wasn’t suggesting that territory had no importance, rather that it couldn’t be a sufficient objective in itself. No matter how much territory Russia takes, it has to do other things as well, which notably includes the psychological defeat of both Ukraine and the West. Once both realise the game is up, then we can genuinely say that stability has arrived. As an example, consider that in 1940, after the French surrender, the Germans were able to garrison a country of 40 million people with 100,000 troops. Even “garrison” is not accurate, because there were no German troops in roughly the southern half of the countr until 1942. Wehrmacht units were subsequently sent back from Russia for rest and refitting there. The essential reason for this was the tremendous psychic shock of the surrender when resistance was still possible, followed by utter despair and the overnight transformation of the country into an occupied territory. In addition, the Germans had all the heavy weapons, having disarmed the French Army. The Resistance, even supplied and financed by the British, could never do more than annoy the Germans, and gather intelligence. It was the anticipation of D-day that transformed the mood of the country. The ultimate Russian objective –remember Clausewitz, war is an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will– should be to install a feeling of hopelessness and defeat both in Ukraine and in the West.
Well you have it right there Aurelian.
The problem with that theory is that:
1) Putin does not think the US/Nato is agreement capable
2) It seems obvious that according to the Duran dudes “neocons have no reverse gear”
3) The Western media and the elites are living in a fantasy bubble (or is that only for public consumption?)
So, the rational acceptance of defeat is not something the neocons have ever done. It’s more likely that looming defeat will create further insane escalation. I think Ray McGovern is worrying correctly about this.
Can you ever imagine a situation where Kamala or Trump or Biden ever admits defeat in public and argues for the signing of a treaty with a “victorious” Russia?
It makes you laugh out loud just thinking about it doesn’t it?
Oh, I don’t think rationality will enter into it at all. It will be about living in a dream-world for as long as possible before having a nervous breakdown. It won’t be pretty.
Russia will absolutely need to take Odessa and the southern coast, but they will have to rely on deindustrialization of NATO combined with the flood of Ukrainian refugees to cause regime change in the west if they want peace.
I agree, Russia will never be able to maintain security for its Black Sea fleet and bases without controlling Odessa and a land bridge to it from the east. It is also key to maintaining their ties to Transnistria. Once the Armed forces of Ukraine are sufficiently depleted, I would expect Russia to assume a more defensive posture in most of the conquered territory and make a big push towards Odessa.
Totally agree with this. One can see that realities have really turned the decision makers in Georgia, making them less Russopobic and more concerned to the national interest.
I guess Ukrainians need some greater doses of “reality” to learn that the only real guarantor to Ukraine security is Russia, and in the sense that not only Russia will attack Ukraine if threatened (this is demonstrately true) but most likely would officially jump to defend Ukraine with boots on the ground, in a marked difference to Sen Lindsey Graham’s position, for instance…
One could point to the problem in 1939, over this very territory: did Stalin’s acquisition of Western Ukraine actually help Soviet security or weaken it? Putin thought it a mistake by Stalin and I suspect that assrssment is grounded on security considerations, not just how troublesome Western Ukrainians are.
Regarding treaties, at the point where the article discusses the problems of signing bilateral treaties with all NATO countries, 19th century style congresses came to mind. You gather all parties – including those powers not directly involved in the war – get the issues on the table and reach a compromise. Then the compromise is negotiated and every fine detail is put on print, signed, everyone swears eternal peace and so on.
Only problem is of course, it never lasted. So though it might solve the technical issue of who signs for NATO, it doesn’t get to the larger issue of trust.
For Russia to be able to negotiate, they need someone that they can negotiate with. Clearly that is not the US (“not agreement capable”) and not the Zermak crowd. Can they stand up some sort of resistance force within Ukraine that could grab the reins if the current Kiev regime collapses? There are reports of partisans carrying out sabotage now, as well as popular retaliation against recruiters and other government functionaries, but whether that can coalesce into an anti-Western organized movement is doubtful. Having a not reflexively pro-Western (bribed) government in Kiev would make negotiations possible for leaving some kind of rump Ukraine in place after the Russians annex the southeast (really, from Sumy down through Odessa, somehow). Putin may be dealing with the fact that Russia doesn’t have enough troops to occupy the whole of Ukraine or maybe even half.
At some point the surviving Ukrainians need to ask themselves what benefit they will receive for the 400,000 dead soldiers they have gotten back from the front lines so far—becoming members of the wonderful garden, where the streets are paved with gold? Their expats should be able to tell them how fake that story is. Getting to put US missile bases on the border of their nextdoor neighbor? Banning the Russian language? How much do ordinary Ukrainians benefit from any of those supposed rewards?
Counting on negotiations with anyone else in the West yielding any sort of lasting solution just seems misguided. For instance, if Russia could get Trump to go for some kind of acceptable peace deal in January, it would just be undone by the next administration (if not by deep state factions even before then). It seems like they realize that and have given up on any agreement involving the US for the foreseeable future.
Longer term, something will have to be done about the Baltics and Finland, plus keeping Georgia from going bad again and containing whatever mischief Armenia is getting into. Russia really has their plate full for a couple of generations warding off hostile actions from the West. Let’s hope Putin’s successor is as rational and careful as he has been. If some of Helmer’s contacts are impatient, let them propose a stronger course of action that would not either lose Russia its BRICS allies or start World War III.
Contrarian POV – point of view, Russians see themselves as liberators of territory known as Ukraine and see NATO + friends as occupiers of an ancient Russian lands. Moreover, the projection of weakness by Vlad is a game to bait NATO troops to roll into Western Ukraine where they would be officially beaten up and provide Russia with a spectacular and ultimate victory over the NATO.
Recommend to adopt a new lingo like Liberation of Ukraine and this will allow to see the rationality behind the Russians moves and statements.
No.
Russia invaded to pressure Ukraine to sign an agreement to not join NATO, including additional restrictions that would allow Russia to enforce that agreement (the parts of the peace treaty that the US, through Nuland, now claims were the reason for them to order Ukraine to reject the treaty), No liberation, no Ukraine is being occupied.
The weakness is either not simulated or wishful thinking on part of the agitators in the West.
The latter is generally of the part “If we were Russia we’d do this, since Russia isn’t doing that it means Russia is weak”. A good example is the idea that since Russia isn’t advancing and occupying more Ukrainian land means it is weak, while in truth occupation is not the primary motive at the moment for Russia which has openly stated that their goal at this point is; First remove the army then occupy.
A real weakness is the constraints placed on what Russia could/can do due to the original goals of the invasion and that those haven’t been met, could/cannot be met due to outside interference (Read US ordering the end of peace negotiations), while it doesn’t look like those have been updated to the point that new policy can be crafted around the new goals.
NATO isn’t that stupid (At least I hope the Europeans aren’t that stupid) as to officially declare war on Russia by openly deploying troops in Ukraine to support Ukraine. They’ll keep doing what they’ve been doing and that is send in ‘volunteers’, mercenaries, trainers, and so on.
I think Ukrainian reconstruction might go quicker and better than one might assume, as Russia has the world’s biggest infrastructure power in its corner (China). Chinese construction might not be Japan-level quality, but it is certainly ‘good enough’, and more importantly there is a vast amount of industrial capacity that can be tapped into from their side to make it happen.
From the Western side in contrast I’m not sure that even if Ukraine somehow manages to prevail militarily, the West would be able to reconstruct Ukraine. Neoliberal-style ‘reconstruction’? Doubtful
I think the Russian and Ukie power grids use odd ball transformer sizes. The Ukraine was the major source of the equipment in the past. That capability is gone now. Somebody will have to tool up to make power equipment. Maybe this will be a good biz for a returning oligarch.
Apparently Ukraine has a big problem with 765/345 kV, 345/138 kV and 230/115kV transformers or rather an absence of functioning ones. They take around 36 months to build and weigh 500 tonnes. The Ukrainian Grid is Soviet configuration. US has no real capacity to even equip its own Grid and imports from Germany and China.
It is highly unlikely Ukraine will have an electric grid. I doubt your comment is valid about Chinese v Japanese quality – since Japan managed to install a GE nuclear reactor at Fukushima with key components upside down according to former GE engineers who revealed what was covered up. This romantic notion of “German precision” or “Japanese quality” is risible to those who have see how the sausage is made
The US, Europe and NATO are on a fast decline. Especially Europe. And they just sunk Ukraine. Seems to me all Russia has to do is keep doing what it’s doing. Eventually they’ll make Kiev, etc. unlivable. They won’t have to take any of the larger cities by force. Ukrainian residents will either move west or maybe come to their senses and rejoin Russia. Then they’ll (Russians) discuss rebuilding. Not until then.
Is it gonna be a pain in the ass? You bet ya! The Russians did everything to avoid it. But they’ll do it. Especially knowing that the West will soon be in no position to do much of anything.
And if the West wants to continue with terrorism….Good Luck!
What if Russia and Ukraine agreed to terms of keeping the original (pre-SMO) borders but where Donetsk and Luhansk had a kind of special autonomy with UN (not NATO) forces situated there but no Ukrainian or Russian forces allowed? This should, of course, be up for referendum by D and L. Of course, this was the original Minsk Accord but this time with the UN plus demilitarization thrown in.
Also, there needs to be positive peace with active reconciliation plans. I feel like Russia would be willing to help rebuild Ukrainian infrastructure in return for legislative protections/rights for the Russian population. An invitation to BRICS could ensure a return to a flourishing economy. Europe and the US were always going to abandon Ukraine, so at this point it seems like the best path forward for Ukraine. The choice is between prosperous future or not.
Isn’t that basically Minsk, then Istanbul? That ship probably has sailed lobg ago.
The Russians will expect more for their military sacrifice and victory. Putin commands Russian politics, but not to the extent that he can sell “UN forces” as a victory. Dobass is already feeling better as a part of mother Russia and this would be a step back for them.
Yves, thank you very much for a superb discussions of the issues. This is one of the very few English-language sites with realistic views about Russia, and you’ve proven highly accurate in your assessments.
One of the agenda items Russia has in addition to rebuilding a war-torn country will be the administration of justice. They keep excellent records and never forget to right past wrongs. In the tradition of the the Nuremberg trials and the Tokyo War Crimes trials, there will be the Donetsk trials. We will know that Russia is confident of their control of the situation when these take place. Quite a few Ukrainians have a lot to answer for.
Russia needs unimpeded supply lines to Hungary and Serbia and Transdnistria if she is to protect them.
If Russia is not to take all of the Ukraine, is there a role for the UN (non-NATO) or even BRICS (query NATO Turkey) to provide a multilateral enforcement of a ceasefire (as in Cyprus)?
Russia takes the left bank of the Dnieper and a multilateral force (China, India, Turkey etc) occupies Kiev and the rest of the Dnieper watershed. Lvov and the Galicians are left unoccupied. The multilateral force would be a tripwire against NATO.
Also, it doesn’t detract from your great review of the possibilities but I would hope that the future of Zaporizhzhia is going to be spelled Zaporozhye (again!). The “izhzhi” (NB not zhizhi as it appears above, which sounds like Zsazsa Gabor!) spelling is pure Ukrainian dialect. It is like calling Cardiff Caerdiff or Bristol Brizzul or Northern Ireland Norn Iron…. (New York Noo Yawk, too, for that matter).
Similarly Kharkov rather than Kharkiv.
The article doesn’t deign to acknowledge Kyiv at least! These places are going to be spelled the Russian way soon enough. :-)
Little electricity means there’ll be a lot of cold feet in Ukraine this winter, and for civilians, not much means to support you and yours if you gotta work to pay the bills, so emigration might become even more attractive than it already is.
This is good, for if Russia decides to lower the boom come spring, voluntary emigration over the next several months from the future battlefields will reduce the number of refugees that must be evacuated and potential civilian casualties caught in the mix.
As Russia moves west and further into anti-Russian, neonazi-lands, I suspect that preservation of things to ease rebuilding will become less and less of a concern.
The belligerence (and ignorance within) of the USA may lead them into another Color Revolution of Georgia to further complicate Russia’s end game. Add on top of that the Romania take-over of Moldova, making it also a part of NATO. Will NATO and a belligerent USA then seek to attack Transnistria with it’s Russian peace keeping forces? Will the new Russian Nuclear doctrine include attacking Georgia and Moldova/Romania as part of NATO? And if they go that far, then attacking Aegis Ashore batteries in Poland and Romania may not be far off.
Russia faces some very difficult decision to make even beyond the complications set forth by Yves. Taking the parts of Ukraine that Russia is forced to take without the use of nuclear weapons is quite possible. But what of Georgia and Moldova? This all becomes much more complicated and a belligerent USA is surely willing to make it all the more complicated as it sees fit.
Majority of population of Georgia and Moldova wants nothing to do with NATO. Pro NATO politicians are loosing elections in both countries. Moreover, Moldova is not available to be taken over by Romania. No appetite for joining the war against Russia among Romanians, Moldovans nor Georgians. No upside.
Days before his meeting with Orban, Putin had announced his abandonment of the demilitarization, denazification objectives of the Special Military Operation in exchange for “the complete withdrawal of all Ukrainian troops from the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and from the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions.”
I’ve shared my thoughts about the… elasticity, of the “denazification” imperative.
Although, it seems like Mr. Helmer’s analysis hinges on the use of the word “should.” (for the terminally impatient, press CMD-F on your keyboard simultaneously, search term “nazi,” and click through until you reach the sixth and final mention; alternatively, you may navigate your mouse to the edit menu, select “find,” and proceed as above).
Of course, we all know the fun thing about hinges is, sometimes they swing open, other times closed, occasionally you get those types that swing both ways, but, if your daddy learnt you good, no matter what, you always always gotta watch your fingers!
Large uninhabited DMZ makes no sense, by the logic of horror vacui – if Vietnamese, Palestinians, and Modoc can figure out how to hide and fight from underground, I reckon those plucky Uke’s can also. How could the Russian security apparatus hope to police an area that size 24/7/365? Regular-type nature may or may not abhor a vacuum, but human nature sure does, specially when there’s Russians to harass.
I agree with your assessment, not that you (or anyone) asked, and in keeping with your metaphorical springboard, the best course of action for the Russian gov’t at the moment is to avoid (Ukraine Conflict)/0 – unfortunately it seems like that’s where their simplifications have led. It’s worth considering that after 2 years of fighting, Mr. Putin’s peace proposal amounts to… “let’s pick up where we left off in Istanbul.” What does that imply about the “facts on the ground?”
Perhaps it’s helpful to keep in mind how much of our modern life depends on irrational and imaginary things.
Helmer is flat out wrong and you could have ascertained that with 30 seconds on a search engine. This was from four days ago, well after the date of the nutty Helmer claim:
https://english.news.cn/20240907/663319f9e77d4aaaac26de25e37cb092/c.html
Putin’s failure ONCE to ritually reiterate his objectives was not tantamount to an abandonment. As Mercouris has said, Putin has been pitching his peace offers at a level he knows Ukraine will not accept. Here he asked for ALL four oblasts when Russia occupies only one, Lugnask. That was already extremely cheeky, asking Ukraine to hand over to Russia territory that Russia is not even yet contesting militarily, as in big parts of Zaporzhizhia and Kherson oblast.
So he doesn’t have to waste his breath by saying more. The territorial ask + no NATO = no negotiating overlap.
Mercouris in his show yesterday, and Mercouris fetishizes talking about possible negotiations, mentioned this offer by Putin and called it “Istanbul plus” as in preserving all of the earlier asks plus the new territorial demand. So he reject Helmer’s reading.
Putin has come to see all this peact talk stuff as unserious given Ukraine’s both inability to make commitments on its own yet the West defending Ukraine’s extreme and inflexible positions. Putin is increasingly treating it as only a show for the benefit of allies like India and China. He’s verging on dialing it in.
Thank you kindly for taking the time.
If it made military sense for the Russian gov’t, in autumn of ’22, to retreat from Kherson city in order to more effectively prosecute the waruhhhh spetsoperatsiya, does it make political sense in autumn of ’24 to retreat from certain rhetorical positions, in the interest of peace and fraternalia, in order to more effectively prosecute other political objectives, perhaps of a global nature, perhaps domestic?
And yes, Big John may have overshot, but the speech he referenced was from June – lot’s happened since then, and in fairness to Mr. Helmer, as you say Mr. Putin has gone to great pains to emphasize his government’s openness to constructive dialogue and subtle omissions like that do tend to be unsubtle, considering how careully he chooses his words.
The water issue is an issue but they kept Crimea afloat for 8 years and they have a lot more room to operate now. That has all the earmarks of a detail ignored for political expediency – that is, if Russian governance is anything like that of the US.
All that aside, I still have trouble understanding how, the Russian government could hope, to force the US and its NATO bff’s, to a negotiating table, over mutually assured security, by launching an SMO in Ukraine. If I have beef with Paul, I don’t take it out on Peter, especially when everyone knows Paul doesn’t give two excretions about Peter. This is not to say I don’t understand how we got to now, only that the expectation that “beating” Ukraine somehow gets the US to the negotiating table was, is, might be, a tad… naive?
Hinge, meet finger.
Funny story, one time when I was a kid I was waiting for someone to close the car door because I was a kid and couldn’t reach or manipulate the door and I had my hand kind of where the door closed and someone closed the door and I learned that day what it feels like to be trapped. The next day, I learned how to close the door myself (there was no lasting damage other than lesson learned, kind of, I still get my fingers pinched embarrasingly often).
When’s all that new military spending kick in from Cruncle Sam?
I do not begin to understand your comment. I hate to come down hard on you, but it is SERIOuSLY off base, You make a lot of inaccurate assumptions and then build a bad edifice upon them.
Analogizing military operations to negotiation is all wet. Russia has a doctrine of not being attached to territory and retreating as needed to preserve forces and supplies. This is a country that was willing to evacuate Moscow and burn it to thwart Napoleon.
By contrast, in negotiating, trying to retrade a position you offered will usually completely destroy any deal because it establishes you are totally untrustworthy. The only way a negotiator might get away with it is grovel bigly (admit the violation of norms) AND offer a very big compensating concession.
Second, Russia has NO interest in negotiating. Zero. Zip. Nada. Russia is winning. There is nothing the West can do to stop Russia from taking all of Ukraine if it so chooses ex nukes.
The Russia population, generally speaking, is not happy with Putin prosecuting the war more aggressively and became more hardened in that view after the Kursk invasion. More and more are also calling for Russia to take all of Ukraine.
Putin has been saying he is willing to negotiate is to look like the more reasonable party in front of his economic allies. They don’t like being impacted by the sanctions on Russia since they are trading with Russia. But Russia knows (and China and India and others are weirdly self-deceiving) that there is no scenario under which the sanctions will be meaningfully rolled back. The West will NEVER admit their defeat by doing so.
Russia may nevertheless decide it has to engage in some negotiation theater if China and India keep pressing to placate them. But I laid out all of the procedural issues above, like who will negotiate for Ukraine (has to be head of the Rada) and Zelensky has to repeal the law re not negotiating with Russia as long as Putin is president.
And Putin has repeatedly said they will not agree to a ceasefire while negotiating. They will keep prosecuting the war, as they did during the Istanbul talks.
Putin also warned very early on that the longer the war went on, the harder it would be to negotiate with Russia. He has also repeatedly said that any deal has to reflect current realities.
US military spending is irrelevant to this question. Alex Vershinin pointed out in November 2022 that it would take the West 10 years to catch up with Russian weapons production. That gap has only widened as Russia has ramped up output while Western arms makers have been unable to get out of their underwear.
For not knowing where to begin, you certainly did a thorough job of debunking and ending!
Everything you say is reported in the newspapers. Whether or not it is truthful, time will tell. Nevertheless, this is the foundation upon which we must discuss current events.
I would not cast changing a political position adopted for a domestic audience as trying to retrade a negotiating position at the table of international politics – nobody on the other side was buying that anyway, and it doesn’t seem that Mr. Putin ever had much credibility with, or respect from, the people with whom he hopes to negotiate anyway. Some flexibility on that front also leaves space for redemption and rehabilitation of the more unsavory elements of Ukrainian society, they are still brother Slavs after all.
Military spending isn’t entirely irrelevant, though production is certainly the key concern. China’s recent export controls on rare earths definitely throws a spanner in the works, though I wonder if the export controls are also applied to sales to their Russian friends. That would strike me as a quintessentially Chinese tactic to defuse a situation, but that’s probably because I’m a racist.
The chief assumptions I make are that Mr. Putin takes all the dimensions of his job very seriously, and that while his utmost commitment is in all likelihood durable and lasting peace and security for his country and people, he is also a man who’s legacy up until 2022 was that of Savior of Russia – ego may play a role. From that I would assume that a man who has survived at the top of the pile in Russian politics for 25 years would know a thing or two about how to cover his own posterior and when to cut bait. Yes, the longer the conflict drags, the harder it will be for Ukraine to extract concessions in negotiations, but the Russian government is not making it difficult to negotiate and are in fact the only ones making any attempt. They were ready to ink documents 6 weeks into the conflict, and again, that is the framework Mr. Putin hopes to continue discussing.
Let’s not lose sight of the fact that we agree that for the Russian government there isn’t much else to be done at the moment other than, do what they been doin.
Happy Mars day.
Oh yeah, that was a weird thing in that Helmer’s article. Another weird thing that only he claims AFAIK is how the Istanbul talks stopped not after Jonhson visited Ukraine but rather after the Russian military heads privately said to Putin that Istanbul was not acceptable. That has some credence because a piece of paper is a piece of paper but noone else has picked up on this idea of his.
Given that Ukraine under Elensky has sold off most of the farm and that is almost certainly all lost to the investors; perhaps Russia could do the same once it comes into possession and auction out much of Ukraine and use the funds for all the rehabilitation it will require.
Zelensky “sold” nothing because the asset remains in Ukraine……..he “mortgaged” it……..and lenders cannot collect on collateral
NATO intended a war with USSR by 1954 which is why the 14th Galician Waffen-SS was kept intact and relocated under legends to Canada and UK and Australia and USA. ‘Operation Unthinkable’ was Churchill’s 1945 lunacy of re-arming Wehrmacht and counter-attacking Soviet Army advance around Dresden – Truman made clear US had no troops to resist Soviet Army.
Declassified Files from NARA show which cities in USSR and GDR and Central Europe USA had selected as targets for atomic attack. It is unlikely GRU spies had failed to inform the Politburo in Moscow.
The War with NATO arrived in 2022 after NATO had spent 8 years building fortifications on the battleground Stalin KNEW would be that chosen by any Western invader and why he had buildings constructed with subterranean cellars and why much of the Soviet weapons facilities were in Ukrainian SSR behind the Polish and Hungarian and Czech battles-space.
The single reason Russia is at war in Ukraine today is German Unification. Since 1952 Stalin Notes to Germany USSR had wanted rid of GDR and establishment of a United NEUTRAL Germany but US could not relinquish what it had coveted since 1924 Dawes Plan.
Gorbachev folded over Germany instead of keeping sovereign bases in GDR and Poland. That is why what was forecast in the movie “white Tiger” (2012) has come to pass. Russia prepared because the Siloviki saw that the West could not be trusted to behave other than it has behaved in Africa.
There will be NO Settlement in Ukraine. It will be a long-term war zone. Just as Israel attacks Syria to provoke a Russian response, Poland will be used by London to provoke Russia and Belarus.
If 18 million Ukrainians leave this winter for heat and light in Germany so be it. Germany has just reinstitute border controls so Poland will bathe in the influx of Ukrainians and be destabilised. Russia has no interest in a stable Poland now Tusk is devoted with Sikorski to war and more war.
The US notion that “this did not work, let’s now start a new game” is not how Russia or China intend to play. As long as US has a presence in Western Europe there will be no peace – just as until US leaves Korea or Japan or Guam there will be no ‘peace’ in Asia.
And by Africa, you mean Yugoslavia.
Many good comments. Yves has laid out the problems well. I think PS may be on to something though when he points out that Ukraine is experiencing a civil war, and once it is concluded there will be some degree of cooperation and support for Russia from those who remain in the country. There will be resentment against the disastrous Zelinsky government (and maybe the US, EU and NATO). At least in the eastern portions they will not all be hostile, and the administration and reconstruction could well turn out to be a joint efffort. Chinese investment may help. The country may split apart of its own accord, and good riddance to the hostiles. Unfortunately, the anti-Russians will not give up there and will continue with terrrorist attacks until they can´t any more.
The real problem we, and the Russians, face is that Ukraine, Gaza, etc are not seperate problems to be solved, but symptome of the actual problem. The common denominator, as we all know, is US insistance on world domination. The puppet masters in DC have none of their own actual skin in the game (their money, yes of course). Until something is done to disuade the hydra headed monster from continuing to set the world on fire, there is no solution to the current problems.
Yes it seems that pursuing hegemony by all means except true diplomacy has settled as US’s FP in the foreseeable future no matter who wins next and the following circus game elections. Russia and now China see themselves as one of US’s objectives while others like Brazil or India are still walking on thin ice. Particularly Brazil where a change in government might result in a 360º… err… 180º turn (damn Baerbock!). Here in Europe I wonder what will go on after (per Aurelien) the next epic nervous breakdown.
totally late to this thread but it is unbelievably depressing to read the Yves conclusion is that the carnage in Ukraine continuing is the most likely and ‘best’ outcome for Russia.
Not that I disagree.
But is angers me that the anti russia (NATO) powers are callously willing to sacrifice all of these lives for nothing but essentially optics given that the ultimate outcome is not in question.
A thorough analysis, and one which acknowledges the complexity of the challenges Russia faces. Given that there likely isn’t any ideal “solution” available perhaps some sort of control over the Dniepr watershed (either direct or via DMZ) and the imperative to leave landlocked whatever rump of Ukraine remains (assuming that Putin concludes occupation of the whole of Ukraine a bridge too far) will ultimately dictate Russia’s new borders once the this phase of the conflict ceases.
I’ve mentioned it before so I won’t linger on the “why”, but there is one way I could see Russia successfully taking most of Ukraine’s territory for the long-term: colonize it with migrants / refugees, a la 19th-century America.
I only bring it up again because I’m kind of wondering if anyone is interested in the “how” they might do it. I haven’t read anyone game-planning that possibility, either the logistical or institutional aspects of it. It’s blatantly against international law for example, but beside that not stopping other countries nowadays, there are possible fig-leaves (like settling refugees).
…or indeed a la 18th century Russia: “Novorossiya” was colonised to no small extent by immigrants from other countries, including a large share of Orthodox people from the Ottoman and Habsburg empires (Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Romanians…), but also a wide variety of others (Germans, Hungarians, Armenians, Jews…).
As for how it would be done today, there was the recent initiative to weaken the barriers to immigration for Western conservatives, but I wonder how many of them would actually want to live there now, as opposed to somewhere far away from war. I think a stable border is a necessary precondition for doing this on any large scale, whether with those political immigrants (and how many of them will we get, anyway?) or with anyone else (Central Asians? Armenians again?).
Yves’ piece here is as good as promised (by Mercouris, specifically). It merits a companion piece–again, from a Russian perspective–addressing the proposition that *any* and all outcomes that Russia might choose to work toward will be opposed and undermined by at least the US / UK deep states and such remnants of the EU comprador class as subsists as Europe unravels.
So although it has been credibly argued that the West persistently fails to understand or at least acknowledge Russia’s authentic interests, in a narrower sense the West *does* understand that if Russia works toward something, the West must work against it–notably if that something is called ‘peace,’ or ‘conflict resolution.’
So in any conflict-ending scenario, including those that Yves has touched on here, we can suppose that the West will be actively working to ensure that Russia doesn’t succeed, and can’t be seen to succeed.
One of strange things about watching this conflict is to find oneself persuaded that the Russian way of war is Clausewitzean (or that von Clausewitz came around to the Russian approach to war) but then to watch Russian hardliners who seem either not to understand it or not to like it. This seems to be the primary *domestic* obstacle to a Clausewitzean decision to the effect that–insofar as the West can deny Russia the political solution of a resolution to the conflict — Russia’s next best option is simply to keep grinding. War (or more precisely, a SMO) in the present is currently much more favorable to Russia than most scenarios of “peace” in the near future.
Of course there are many external obstacles to doing so, beginning with the persistent attempts of Russia’s ‘friends’ to get Russia into negotiations, and that virtually none of them (NK aside, not China & perhaps not even Iran) are prepared to go all in on confronting the West.
NATO brings into convergence the internal and external obstacles to a Russian grind for as long as it takes. Dimly or clearly, NATO sees that the Russian SMO represents the (perhaps the only) algorithm–of pace and scale–that permits Russia to defeat & perhaps even destroy NATO without suffering major damage to itself. NATO escalation can be seen as perhaps the only way for NATO to disrupt that NATO-conquering algorithm.
Which brings us to the conclusion that UKR is now a problem secondary or subordinate to the primary: the Western oligarchy. The UKR conflict cannot be satisfactorily solved by Russia unless and until the West (but especially the US) is tamed, backed off, or broken. And, as the 2019 Rand report detailing how to unbalance Russia has laid out, UKR is just one front. Even solving UKR, Russia will have to face Western proxy aggression in Armenia, Moldova, and clearly, again, Georgia, with the Finns weirdly joining the Balts in line for later destruction.
De-dollarization, de-industrialization, de-leveraging, de-energization–and disruption of the West’s access to primary resources markets–are all serving to speed the West’s de-militarization. Since without these, the West will likely be able to poison or block a Russian resolution of UKR, the Kremlin may opt to keep the conflict focussed on & teased out in UKR.
In literature it is sometimes said that the plot is what the artist provides to keep the audience busy while he works out his themes. UKR is the plot, dethroning a 500-year Western ascendancy is the theme. Insofar as the war can be kept going for at least another year without going nuclear, negative trends that individually and especially compounding in concert are ever more quickly sapping the West’s power to