We warned from the outset that Russia might well win the war in Ukraine and lose the peace. In fact, the odds are rising that there will be no peace, particularly of the sort that Vladimir Putin has said he wants, which is a durable resolution of conflict, and not yet another comparatively short-term cessation of hostilities in which Russia’s opponents take a breather and then re-start hostilities, even if in a less intense way than full-on fighting.
We’ll unpack why this looks to be the case in short order. But if that prognosis proves to correct, the question then becomes what solution, particularly in terms of territorial disposition, is least bad for Russia in security terms. We concur with Moscow-based analyst Mark Sleboda (who has reluctantly come around to this view, as he claims more and more Russians have), that as painful as an occupation of Russia-hating Western Ukraine would be, leaving it as a Banderite territory on Russia’s borders, to be funded and armed by NATO, would be worse. Note that Sleboda did not consider our preferred outcome, turning these strongly irredentist areas into de-electrified zones. That would greatly thin out population levels, reducing the cost of occupation.
We’ll turn finally to an issue of what it might mean for Russia to “impose terms” which is a formula some commentators (including yours truly) have used without considering what that might mean in practice.
Why the Trump “Negotiations” With Ukraine Will Go Nowhere
The short version, as we have said before, is that there is no overlap in bargaining positions. That means no deal. Indeed, based on what Putin and key officials have consistenly been saying, it’s very unlikely that “talks” will amount to more than preliminary feelers, even with a Trump-Putin face-to-face.1
Even with rumors via (per Alexander Mercouris, as of then only) Dima at Military Summary’s show, that Trump might try to engage Putin on a broad set of security interests, there’s not enough there there to budge Putin with respect to an unresolved threat on Russia’s border. Trump cannot provide what Putin has been seeking at least since 2007: a new European security architecture. In my humble opinion, this is the only sort of offer that might induce Putin to make concessions with respect to his current position on Ukraine, since it could solve the underlying conflict, and not the immediate bone of contention.
Putin’s position, as stated on June 14 and reiterated by Putin and various officials, Russia requires a firm commitment that Ukraine will never join NATO nor engage in NATO-boosting shenanigans like participating in NATO war games and will pull all forces out of the four oblasts that Russia regards as Russian territory. That means ceding territory not held by Russia.
Russia also insists that Ukraine de-militarize; Putin has suggested returning to the haggling over weapons levels that had begun in the spring 2022 Istanbul talks, and “denazifying,” which means among other things outlawing Banderite parties and symbols.
Asking Ukraine to give up areas Russia has not already taken is cheeky, but even more so is Russia’s demand for regime change in Ukraine.2
As we have said before, Trump cannot deliver anything of the kind. He cannot deliver NATO, which is a consensus-based body. He can’t even deliver a credible promise to keep Ukraine out of NATO via a US refusal to vote for its entry, since a later Administration would reverse that. EU leaders ex Orban and Fico were also implacably opposed to cooperating with Trump, and are even more so now that he’s taking an undue interest in Denmark’s Greenland. So they won’t cooperate out of general cussedness.
Similarly, as we have described, Trump cannot even deliver Ukraine. Even when the US was lavishing support on Ukraine, it often defied its paymaster, via flagrant corruption (such as failing to build defense lines around Kursk), terrorist acts, and continuing to pour men and weapons into trying to hold positions that the US urged Ukraine to relinquish. Now with Trump clearly inclined to cut Ukraine loose, what leverage does he have?
Let us also remember that conflicts regularly end without negotiations or meaningful agreements. As Lawrence Freedman pointed out in the New Statesman:
Those that demand Ukraine and its Western supporters work out what concessions will be offered to Russia to cut a deal to end the war, often claim that this will have to be done at some point because ‘wars always end with a negotiation.’ Despite its regular repetition, and however the Russo-Ukraine War concludes, this claim is simply not true. Not all wars end with negotiations. Some end with surrenders, as was the case with both Germany and Japan in 1945, or regime change, as with Italy in 1943, or cease-fires, which might require some negotiation but leave the underlying dispute unresolved, as with Korea in 1953. Even when there are negotiations intended to end a war they often fail…
Once a war has begun, compromises become much harder to identify let alone agree and confirm in treaty form. This will require intense bargaining over specific language in the full knowledge that any ambiguity will later be exploited.
Trust between the belligerents will be in even shorter supply than before….
Which is why remarkably few wars end with negotiations on the dispute which prompted the war.
The last sentence above is important for the Russia-Ukraine war. Again, Putin has been insisting since 2007 of a “new European security framework.” That would mean at a minimum no NATO forever for Ukraine and better yet, a deal limiting other threats, like no nuclear capable missiles within X minutes of flight time to the Russian border. Putin almost got what he wanted when Ukraine had agreed to no NATO membership in the draft of deal terms in the March-April 2022 Istanbul negotiations. But Boris Johnson kicked that table over on behalf of the US and NATO, making it explicit that the conflict was a proxy war and Ukraine was not free to make decisions, despite occasional pious noises otherwise. That further, greatly complicates any resolution. It isn’t just that Russia is faced with a much bigger foe, despite its military ineptitude. It is also faced with a coalition (as Alex Vershinin pointed out) that often squabbles openly about what to do (see regarding weapons commitments, for instance).
Freedman’s article is very much worth reading in full. After the in-depth discussion of the Falklands War, the final section explores the elements that are needed to come to a durable settlement of a conflict via negotiations. They are notably absent here.
Is Russia’s Least Bad Option to Go to the Polish Border?
Your humble blogger had been for some time of the view that if Russia’s paramount aim is security, it cannot leave a rump Ukraine in the West. That part of the country has been the home of the Banderites and many (most?) of its residents harbored strong anti-Russia sentiments.3 If that part of the country is not under Russian control, the resentful Europeans, with the help of perfidious Albion, will make it de facto part of NATO and will do everything they can to stoke hatred of Russia. And if Vance loses in 2028, you can expect the US to join in supplying weapons.
Now Russia has other considerations, like the economic and political cost of garrisoning part of Ukraine, or a son-of-end-of-WWII alternative of administering it for long enough to round up or drive out the Banderites, and re-indoctrinate the remaining population sufficiently so it might be given close to full self-determination down the road.
Keep in mind that Russia would have to manage not just domestic opinion but also that of its economic allies. They won’t like the spectacle of Russia gobbling up all of Ukraine. But if the US and Ukraine keep being hostile to Russia’s security needs, they might wind up making Russia’s case better than Putin ever could.
John Helmer for some time has been writing that the General Staff has been champing at the bit to prosecute the war more aggressively. Early in the electric war, Helmer reported that the General Staff was examining the idea of establishing a large de-electrified/demilitarized zone. An advantage is Russia could impose that unilaterally where it saw fit.
Some readers may think I am making too much of Mark Sleboda’s views, but of all the English-speaking commentators I have encountered, he has been far and away the most accurate in forecasting the pace of the war. That means far longer than just about anyone else thought possible. For instance, most milpundits have been talking about the Ukraine military collapsing any day now, yessiree.4 By contrast, Sleboda says it will take till the end of 2025 for Russia to clear the Donbass. Recall it still has to take two key cities, Slaviansk and Kramatorsk, on the last major defense line. Also consider that for Russia merely to secure the four oblasts that it now deems to be part of Russia, it will have to take two major cities that straddle the Dnieper: Zaporzhizhia (2024 population estimate 796,000) and Kherson (2024 population estimate 320,000). The only city in this size range that Russia has won is Mariupol, which had a population at the time of 420,000. That is not to say it won’t happen, but it is another piece of the minimum end-state for Russia that has not happened and does not look to be quick and easy.
How can Ukraine keep going when even the Pentagon said (a couple of months ago) that it could run out of men in as soon as 6 months, and other source then said 10 to 12 tops? Sleboda reported around ten that the MoD had estimated that for every year that Ukraine dropped the conscription age (now 25) it could raise another 100,000 men. Even if you think that’s high in light of flight across borders, Ukraine can probably raise one last army of at least 200,000. The Russian press has reported that Zelensky has relented to US pressure, but there has been no announcement so far of any conscription changes.
16 year old Ukrainians 'mass fleeing' in special buses to EU advertised on Facebook
Interviewee admits she's packed her son off to Germany already…
US is trying to force Zelensky to lower conscription age to teenagers pic.twitter.com/wK0EtUO3Ed— RT (@RT_com) January 11, 2025
In case there are doubts that the Trump Administration would insist on lower the conscription age, a new Financial Times article puts paid to that idea. From Trump to urge Zelenskyy to lower Ukraine’s conscription age to 18:
[Incoming National Security Adviser Mike] Waltz said [on ABC] that its first steps would be to open dialogue with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin — to whom the US has not spoken directly since the war began — and to ask Kyiv to mobilise more men in order to stabilise Ukraine’s front lines ahead of negotiations….
He added: “This isn’t just about munitions, ammunition or writing more cheques. It’s about seeing the front lines stabilise so that we can enter into some type of deal.”
This looks like Trump is moving away from the idea of abandoning the conflict. Perhaps he hopes that an only moderately higher level of intensity from Ukraine will check Russia’s progress. But to anyone following the war, that’s a delusion. At best, perhaps the Trump Team is trying to make demands of Ukraine that Zelensky will reject, and that will justify a wind-down of support. But per above, the Russian press seems to think that Zelensky has, or is about to, capitulate to US demands.
Sleboda also pointed out in this talk that all of the weapons that the West had sent has not appeared on the battlefield, so Russian experts believe there are still some in reserve.5 Te Biden Administration and the Pentagon have graciously pointed out that there’s $3.8 billion in US weapons authorizations for Ukraine that have yet to be sent. So even if Ukraine is getting close to scraping the bottom of the barrel, it is not there yet.
Consider the section starting at 22:50:
Sleboda: When this war first started, I was entirely against the Russian occupation of West Ukraine, because they really do hate Russians there, by and large.
Thomas: Which is why they don’t want to take all of it.
Sleboda: It’s going to be weaponized against them. The entire population there will be just raised as a Western warrior caste for to restart the conflict, you know. in a few years, as soon as possible by the West, right, they’ll be trained.
I think at this point, the terrible costs of a occupation and the resulting guerrilla war in West Ukraine are actually less than the costs of a rump West Ukrainian Banderite statelet that will continue to be weaponized against Russia. And I think that may be part of the plan, the US plan, you know, at some level, not their initial plan, but Plan D or Plan E is oh, “You know, so the Russians are just going to keep going. We’re not going to give them some sort of deal that officiates this or admits that we lost here. We’ll make them fight for every inch. And let’s see them choke on it.”
Again, not to overdo on a key point, but John Helmer indicated that the Russian General Staff has been frustrated that Putin opposed a much speedier destruction of the Ukraine electrical grid as a way to end the war. Russia seems to have the means to prostrate Ukraine quickly if it wanted to. So why not?
Among the reasons:
Avoiding creating a massive humanitarian crisis, on the order of 10x Gaza, albeit without flattening buildings. Russia would become an international pariah. It would be seen as incumbent on Russia to provide relief, which it would be unable to do on this scale.
That scale of loss of services would also give the US and NATO the excuse of sending in large numbers of armed forces, to supply provisions and medical care and preserve public order. That is the last thing Russia wants.
By contrast, despite understandable Ukrainian loud complaints, the steady, systematic degrading of the Ukraine grid has become so regularized that it is almost background noise in the war coverage.
Keeping the good will of its economic allies. Most are deeply troubled by the idea of Russia taking terrain from a neighbor, even if they understand intellectually that this is now the only option left in terms of Russian security after the US and NATO scuppered the Istanbul negotiations. As the war has progressed, more and more Global South members have come around to Russia’s point of view, as reflected in the shift in votes on UN resolutions denouncing Russia’s action. A slow, incremental imposition of new realities, particularly if the West refuses to relent on the core demand of “no Ukraine in NATO, ever” will help keep them on board.
The Problem of Russia “Imposing Terms”
I must confess to occasionally resorting to the formula of Russia will wind up prosecuting the war until it has defeated the current regime in Ukraine and that it will then “impose terms”. But if you view Russia as following Clausewitz, this falls short of one of his definition of success, which is “getting the enemy to do our will”. This is a fuller formulation, from Antulio J. Echevarria II in Defense Analysis:
Clausewitz derived his proposition that “victory consists not only in the occupation of the battlefield, but in the destruction of the enemy’s physical and psychic forces” from the conditions of victory as he defined them for both the strategic and tactical levels of war. On the strategic level, Clausewitz wrote that victory in war required: 1) the complete or partial destruction of the enemy’s armed forces; 2) the occupation of his country; and 3) the breaking of his will to fight.
Even if Russia can do that with respect to Ukraine, its opponent is the US and NATO. Even if the US withdraws support from this adventure, most EU states are determined to carry on in some manner.
NATO’s will to fight seems very much intact, even if it is having trouble with budget implications. And as a recent long article in the Atlantic, by the Prince of Darkness of US neocons, Robert Kagan, shows, he’s still raring for continuing to mix things up with Russia, and no doubt has plenty of company.
To reduce this to practical terms, what happens if Ukraine’s military “collapses” as many milpundits foresee? Perhaps it will reach the level of a Syria-level of soldiers simply refusing to fight, which there amounted to a disintegration of the command structure. Or perhaps Russia really will have to conquer Kiev and seize the key command centers.5
A wee issue here will be the probability of the lack of a credible surrender instrument. Perhaps readers may think it’s silly to consider such a nicety. Isn’t possession nine-tenths of the law?
Even in private contracts, deficiencies or anomalies in the form of agreements can reflect problems with the deal itself. An overly-specified contract may point to a lack of trust between the parties and high expectations that they’ll wind up adjudicating it. Having a party sign that is lightweight (as in not clearly having enough resources) may indicate an intent to defraud.
In keeping if you look at the French surrender in 1940 and the end of World War II, considerable attention was paid to who and where these documents were signed. The German text, for instance, was drafted assuming political leaders would ink it; it was later revised to have the heads of the major armed services execute it, which is what happened. Even in the case of the German agreement, Russian additions to terms that Eisenhower agreed were important and delayed the signing.
In Syria, as far as I can tell, there was never an agreement with the Syrian government. Assad fled, importantly no one in his armed services was asked to execute a surrender document as a proxy for the Assad government. The Russians are very concerned with form, both for themselves and for appearances with their allies, so I doubt they’d accept roll this way.
The US and NATO will be keen to deny Russia a valid-looking surrender deal. They would create a government in exile. If the diminished Zelensky does not manage to arrange his exit, they have an arguably better fallback in the form of Ukraine’s former military chief, Valerii Zaluzhny, conveniently already stationed in London as an ambassador. He has the further advantage of being a diehard Banderite, having had not one but two statutes of Bandera in Zaluzhny’s Kiev office.
Even if the establishment of a government in exile winds up being a bit messy, it’s hard to see how Russia could get a credible representative from the Ukraine side to execute it. Zelensky would be unlikely to survive to do so (Banderites have already threatened repeatedly to kill him were he to try); the only way that might happen is if Russia would guarantee his safety, which means going permanently to Russia. That would be depicted as Zelensky signing under duress (which is narrowly accurate if not for the typical reasons). The same survival risk would apply to the current head of Ukraine’s armed forces, General Syrsky. So it seems not unlikely that someone who was not part of either the top military or political leadership would serve as the Ukraine representative, again contributing to the West’s ability to denounce any surrender or “imposition of terms”.
Again, the point here is not to fixate on a document that from the Russian side would signal an intent to halt their prosecution of the war and move to an occupation/administration phase, but to highlight that its likely deficiencies as an agreement would symbolize that the conflict has not reached a lasting resolution. Odds favor even if the war grind on into 2026 that the European will to carry on not yet having been broken. In a recent video, John Mearshimer provided a list of ways the West could continue a lower-level conflict with Russia, starting with Kaliningrad. Moreover, there will still be Ukraine backers in the US, feeding hopes that the US will resume support in the future even if Trump succeeded in closing the US money and weapons spigot.
Now admittedly, Trump is working on regime change, or at least regime redirection, across Europe, as Conor describes in detail today. But these efforts, like so many US interventions, have good odds of backfiring. So betting on them working out as intended is premature.
As Freedman summed up his New Statesman piece,
It is important to remember that contrary to the idea that wars must end with a negotiated solution in practice they rarely do.
____
1 It may be an artifact of translation, but Putin seems often (if not 100% consistently) made a distinction between being willing to hear what the various proxy war participants have to say, as opposed to start negotiations with them. Perhaps in a geopolitical analogue to the US mantra that we provide “access” to healthcare, which is not the same as providing healthcare, Putin saying he is willing to negotiate does not mean he has committed to negotiating. Just insert another word and the formulation becomes more obvious. Saying you are willing to get married does not mean you’ve committed to tying the knot.
2 Turnabout is fair play; Ukraine insisted on regime change in Russia via putting a provision in the Ukraine constitution that bars negotiations with Russia as long as Putin is President. Putin has pointed out that that has to go if talks with Ukraine are to come to fruition. Mind you, given the givens, it’s entirely logical, as Putin has, to question whether Zelensky can sign binding agreements. Russia’s reading of the Ukraine constitution is that Zelensky is no longer the legitimate head of the state, but the head of the Rada could execute treaties. Putin has pointed out that Ukraine could firm up Zelensky’s position by holding elections…assuming, of course that he were to win legitimately, a prospect that seems vanishingly unlikely given his low popularity ratings. And let us not forget niceties like Zelensky having banned opposition parties and shut down opposition media.
Note that Putin did not exhibit such sensitivities with respect to the Minsk Accords. The person that signed on behalf of Ukraine was not an official, but an ex-President who’d been designated as a representative (from what I can tell, without having had a post created or legislative approval).
3 An example: a Scottish contact was negotiating for IT contracting in Ukraine. He had a good command of Russian. Even though the meeting (near Kiev) was expected to be in Russian, he was told to keep his mouth shut: “You are blonde and blue-eyed, that’s enough. If they hear you have a Russian accent, the deal will be off.”
4 I have to admit I was too trusting of this point of view, particularly when it came from people with expertise like Colonel Macgregor. The fact that Russia will win does not mean it will pick up the pace all that much even as Ukraine gets weaker.
5 Or the level of appropriation for sale to arms merchants could have risen markedly.
6 Presumably Ukraine would destroy them, but that’s still an admission of defeat.
Could Russia calculate that a Morgenthau Plan type landlocked, rump Ukraine is preferable to outright occupation, shifting the costs of managing/rebuilding it to the feckless, resource poor and increasingly deindustrialized Europeans and a disillusioned/distracted US? If it were small and poor enough, what threat would it pose that the Balts or the Poles don’t already represent?
I agree. The risk of a properly rearmed Ukraine is very slight. The people are gone and the upcoming demographics is terrible. Europe and the US simply do not have more spare equipment to give Ukraine and the legacy Soviet stock is now all gone. There’s still the likelihood Gladio operations coming out of Western Ukraine but those kinds of operations will come no matter what.
Leaving a dysfunctional Western Ukraine for Europe and the US to squabble responsibility over will minimize costs for Russia and maximize a future break between Europeans and Americans, whereas occupying Western Ukraine creates a common enemy and common threat for them to unite against.
Good points, however I think the Ukranians in the West who appear to be as fanatical as the Israelis will never give up fighting unlike the Poles and Baltic states. The conflict will be as permanent as in the Koreas but once the borders are settled and an armistice agreed on. Things will gradually settle down maybe.
One strategic issue that might come into consideration is that one military lesson of the war seems to be that close geographical proximity of an enemy may not matter so much these days. We now know that its impossible to build up an army for invasion on a border without anyone knowing about it. Nobody thinks, for example, that NATO is going to launch a surprise tank invasion from Estonia or Latvia into Moscow.
In many ways, occupying Ukraine could make Russia’s strategic position worse. It means it pushes its border right up to the core heartlands of Europe, and right next to existing major Nato military bases. This means it not just has to deal with banderite insurgents, it needs a defensible line along a very difficult to defend borderland.
So I’d suggest that having a weakened rump Ukraine joining Nato might not actually be all that strategically important. Once Russia completely controls the entry to the Azov Sea (and hence the great inland freshwater transport networks), and controls the sea entry to the Dnieper, Ukraine is no longer a strategic threat to Russia. There are no first strike assets Nato can put in Ukraine that represents a greater threat to Russia than they can’t put into Finland or Latvia. Nato’s most valuable military assets have to be kept well back from the border – no missile base or airfield can hope to survive the first day of combat if its within 500 km of Russia.
Perhaps informally abandoning a requirement for Ukraine to be neutral could be the basis for a ceasefire agreement that would leave Russia with the breakaway provinces (and whatever else is deemed militarily necessary) and stop the fighting. For all the reasons outlined above, a full agreement is impossible for now, but a Korean style ceasefire with ‘understandings’ would at least stop the bloodshed and, from the Russian point of view, high economic cost of the war. Whatever has been stated as war aims by Putin, in reality, this achieves Russias realistic strategic objectives.
Estonia or Latvia were never good place to start an invasion from, because they lack strategic depth. Road to Moscow goes trough KIev.
Entry to the Azov Sea is Kerch Strait.
Completely agree on every point. With a ceasefire Russia could develop the areas it has conquered with the mind to promote prosperity. Russia could periodically “mow the lawn” and disable the electric grid of rump Ukraine from time to time. Ultimately rump Ukraine would choose to identify as European and try to make money from things other than war. Right now war, is the way the Ukrainians make money so it’s advantageous for the ruling class and the local PMC. So much depends on the willingness of Washington to continue its aim of world conquest. That’s more important than anything Russia chooses to do.
“There are no first strike assets Nato can put in Ukraine that represents a greater threat to Russia than they can’t put into Finland or Latvia”
I have no idea why that gets overlooked when people ask “what if NATO puts first-strike weapons in Ukraine?” More likely, It is a matter of time until the UK or US develops hypersonics that can be launched from a submarine’s 21-inch torpedo tube, so an even more likely scenario is the US, UK and (maybe) Germany rotating submarines in the Baltic with such weapons. Obviously, Russia will likewise park a Kilo or similar stealthy submarine with hypersonics 200 miles from Washington DC.
I think that’s right. Many countries with borders face continuing low-level threats that they deal with as best they can, but which are not threatening in the great scheme of things. Angry but powerless Ukrainians and angry but largely ineffective Europeans don’t between them constitute more than a nuisance. And whatever government takes over in Kiev will be acutely aware of its own weakness and of the strength and long-term bad mood of Moscow. It’s not impossible that Kiev will decide that its interests are best served by cracking down on the Banderites and hanging on to what they can keep, similar to the way the new Irish government cracked down on the IRA in 1922-23. Alternatively, there’s Ukraine as pre-war Gaza 2,0, without the weather and the sea, at least for the next couple of generations. .
What this shows, I think, is that any “final solution” to the political problem is a mirage, except insofar as it will be imposed by the balance of power between Russia and the West, and what each is able to do on the ground. As in many regions of the world, there is no “answer,” but only a series of interim brute-force solutions.
That’s assuming the whole ‘Finland and Baltics in NATO’ question is completely closed going forward; I wouldn’t be so sure of that. Recall the Russian’s diplomatic note that they sent the Western powers in Dec of 2021 before the war began, which included removal of multinational NATO forces from eastern Europe and the Baltics. The whole goal of a new European security architecture is aimed squarely at that, but given the absolute rabidness of the Baltics and company, and the seemingly impossible to remove Neocons and friends embedded deep within Western governments, I expect much more trouble around Kaliningrad to come as a way of increasing the pressure on Russia.
‘No reverse gear’ as Mercouris says.
“Understandings” are doing a lot of work here. I don’t think that’s possible as long as there is a NATO and the presence of US troops in Europe. I think the only “peace” is predicated on dissolution of NATO. That is improbable so the Russians, left to their own, will have to find a line tbst offers them best security regardless of what NATO says.
In this sense, the borders might be similar to your suggestion (also in line with Dmitri Trenin’s ideas). But there will be no real agreement on what undergirds it.
Yes, i thing it is interesting to pay attention to what Sleboda has to say, one of the few known voices with knowledge on the terrain. Ukraine will indeed turn a Russian problem to deal, Banderites included, but l also see supporting them by the “West”, whatever the West turns to be after the defeat, as problematic. Very problematic and unwise. The times when Western meddling could go “unnoticed” to say it in this way have long gone.
If we assume a continuing Ukraine War, the prerequisite is not only rebuilding US and EU weapon stocks to previous levels (US of course also generously and preferentially supplying the Zionists), but going well beyond that with LOTS more modern equipment and more trained military. All this comes from a gutted industrial base with higher energy costs and a demographic where 77% of the military age cohort is unfit to grab??? Add the desired 5% GDP spend for the military from shrinking economies, which will require austerity for social and infrastructure spending. For the US, the desire for increased fortifications and provocations of China are also the big ticket focus.
I don’t see how the west can keep Ukraine fighting for years works in the mid-term. Yapping Baltic and Polish poodles notwithstanding. At some point it will end like Vietnam (no meaningful peace treaty there) with the Banderites moving to Florida and Canada.
It would not be this Ukraine but some sort of rump Ukraine. And it would not be war at this level of intensity. The action would be harassment, terrorism, plus putting in missiles that could hit pre-war Russia.
Exactly, NATO still seems strong, and intent on Fighting Russia, but its leaders are all being swept out by domestic politics, and the economics of (re)building and (re)arming a capable military from a deindustrialized base are implausible. If we view NATO as an organization for extracting tribute from European vassals in the form of US Arms sales, then Trump’s disdain and the debacle in Ukraine both represent existential threats that it may not survive. NATO cannot keep fighting, but probably the Brits at least, will keep arming and training terrorists to infiltrate into Russia. The blowback scenarios practically write themselves.
This entire conflict is based on an edifice of bad faith and propaganda foisted on Europe by Biden and his crew along with the indeed disappearing faithful among the Euro leadership. With the demented Biden admin out of the picture here’s suggesting that that which cannot continue will not. Or at least it will continue only if the Trumpies actively want it to continue.
And I at least think they do not.
From this morning’s Doctorow link
Exactly?
Maybe he can do a Ronnie and invade Grenada again. Even Reagan wasn’t so deluded as to go to war with Russia. To be sure there was still an active antiwar and antinuke movement then putting on the pressure.
The beginnings of this war go all the way back to the Dulles brothers at the end of WW-2. That, at the least is the start of the American phase of the struggle.
Some contend that it really began with the Allied “Interventions” in Murmansk and the Far East back at the end of WW-1.
A truly long term view would push the struggle phase back to the incursions into Eastern Europe by the Mongol Hordes in the 1200s. Inscrutable Easterners versus Tricky Westerners has been a staple theme in European history for centuries.
There is a scene at the beginning of Eisensteins Russian film “Alexander Nevsky” where the hero views a coffle of “white” slaves being herded off to captivity in the East. One of the Khan’s emissaries tries to recruit Nevsky to work for the Mongol State. Later, Nevsky rallies the Rus to defeat the Teutonic Knights. This being filmed just before WW-2 started, the inference is clear. Trouble is coming to Dnieper River City.
You could certainly make the case that the 20th century was all about the Russian revolution but what about now? There’s utterly no reason for this war in Ukraine other than small time grifters like Biden or Boris to pretend they are “running the world.” End the madness and give peace a chance. It’s not impossible that Trump will go there. There’s no percentage for him in keeping up Biden’s vanity war.
It occurs to me that perhaps the Russians do not have to push all the way to the Polish border. They could halt at the border of Lviv Oblast and leave it as the population is inherently hateful of anything Russian so not worth occupying. That Oblast could even rename itself as Banderistan but here is the thing. It would have bugger all industry and only a very small population so could never generate a big army. It might do stuff like drone attacks but the Russians would do reprisal attacks. If it gets too bad the Russians could just de-electrify the place and let most of the people flee to the EU. That is, if the EU has not made hard borders to stop any more Ukrainians fleeing there. But in any case the demographics for this region are going to be horrific and the European nations are going to exhaust themselves preparing for a make-believe Russian invasion that will never come. It’s gunna be a mess.
Having no geopolitical expertise, but being an avid reader of history, it seems to me that the piece missing in this and every other analysis is the creation of stable conflict. The British Empire were masters of this. You don’t need a lot of occupation troops if a target country is in permanent conflict with their neighbor. Perhaps something along the lines of giving a nice kusok of Galacia to Poland, leaving a rump Ukraine adjacent. Ideally split Lvov down the middle. No wall necessary, or if necessary it will be built by the victims themselves. No love is lost between the parties, and there is enough historical resentment to keep them occupied, so to speak, for generations.
I don’t see that as acceptable to Russia. And the UN would not recognize any effort to gift part of Ukraine to another country, since the occupied land is not recognized as part of Russia. And if you think the EU is being mean to Hungary now, you have no idea what they might try if Poland would go along with an illegal annexation. They’d cut off all EU funding as fast as they could. They might even seize Polish financial assets.
Yves, thank you very much for your comment. Absolutely accurate. Except, that historically when an irresistible force meets an immovable object, not every rule is applied.
The only viable long term solution for Russia is the breakup of NATO and driving the Americans out of Europe and West Asia. Or an American deep state that is genuinely no longer interested in unipolar hegemony (in which case NATO and American military presence in Europe is also unnecessary).
The whole raison d’etre of the Deep State is world conquest something they will never give up. A generation or two of fanatical neocons being promoted and hired by Deep State agencies and NGO’s will stand in the way of any attempt to change focus unless Trump can find a way to gradually change that. We don’t know what will happen with Trump or whether some of his people can managed to prevail in the upcoming battles inside Washington.
break up the E.U. also. it really is hitler and Mussolini’s wet dream. best thing for russia to do, is to drive right up to the border with hungary and slovakia.
thus giving them a way out of the E.U. death trap, and also will help serbia.
Thanks for rounding out your thoughts on this topic. I think the matter of Russian allies is a key factor in any decisions Putin might be evaluating. If that is true, taking it slow and steady and not committing humanitarian disasters has 2 key benefits. It increases the needed comittment from the West while economic conditions could deteriorate. It gives the West more chances to do something stupid and make it so that China and the ROW agree to give Russia a freer hand. Zelensky and any similar leaders in whatever is left of Ukraine will only ever try to ridiculously escalate the situation. The US probably has more deep state tricks up its sleeve. The more chances Russia gives a desperate Ukraine to make a mistake the more likely them making a mistake becomes.
I don’t think much of the big picture has changed recently. The RF is at war with the US, not Ukraine. Another possible end game is a hot war. Visibly re-writing the history of WW2 only makes this more likely in my view.
I agree but there is too much noise about Trump negotiation schemes, as if they could change anything save thaw relations a bit with Russia. Hence the need to keep reminding readers, even if the effort seems repetitive to those who are following the conflict closely.
I will point to Connor’s article posted just before this as a probable but not certain outcome as to how Russia will “win the peace.” Europe’s increasingly popular so called “far right” is more accurately described as European neoliberals who differ on a few specific policies vs tradional neoliberals who currently hold power, AND favor normalizing relations and doing business with Russia because its good for non-MIC and non-US business interests. That’s good for Russia and world peace.
“Far right” are those that want to send tanks eastwards, “far left” are those that want to send tanks westwards.
NATO is calling out 2030 as a target year for a reason I assume.
What does that mean?
They might have gathered enough strength by then which by recent NATO-calculations they consider sufficient to project threat on RU soft spots. Be that Kaliningrad, Belarus, Baltic Sea or Crimea. That those calculations are insane doesn’t matter (anybody remember the element of NATO incompetence in the sci-fi blockbuster “Edge of Tomorrow”?).
The current repeated statistics for proof of NATO’s supremacy – which I have quoted here and which are being handed around in German antiwar circles every week as an agument against increased spending – are another indicator. 2200 fighter bombers, 6300 tanks, 3000 missiles, 3 mn. soldiers (don’t ask me)…
Yves´ – excellent piece I must say – does not get into Taiwan. However Taiwan as a hot spot is scheduled for about the same time as EU is scheduled to be ready for “war”.
So another possible answer to the Ukraine question might be in conjunction with the Pacific issue. By then it’s also clear who Trump’s successor will be.
I guess the question will become tougher when RU has definitely secured the area which has been fought over since 2014.
How will the Ukraine political class react after that?
There are Banderites still. But they are only as powerful as the majority lets them. Antipathy towards Russians is one matter. Genocidal hatred another. And the huge majority of everyday people doesn’t share either.
If they do draft teens I predict a Vietnam moment at some point. Often the disturbance comes from places least expected.
Are the US/EU prepared for a Ukrainian population unwilling to sacrifice more of its sons after e.g. 50.000 have already been killed?
And are the Russians?
So lets go to sleep for another year and talk about this then.
Taiwan is another place where people want to have a cake and eat it, too.
Surveys make it pretty clear that most Taiwanese don’t want to be ruled from Beijing, but…
Whether they don’t want to be “Chinese” is ambiguous, depending on deliberately unclear wording.
They certainly don’t want to die to not to be ruled by China–same surveys also show, at least as of some years ago as I remember, that most of the people who say they don’t want to be ruled from Beijing don’t want to put their lives at risk to fight China–they just want to leave, really, if there’s a real risk of a fight.
So, what they do is to pay the US thinking that that’s enough (ie buy useless, from Taiwan’s security perspective, tanks and such–forgetting that they are still spending US money), instead of taking their own defense seriously. Personally, I think that’s downright insulting from American perspective, at least for the “real Americans,” so to speak, who prioritize US over US empiring. In the end, the Taiwanese, like the Europeans, will have to figure out how to deal with their neighborhood with their own resources, not navel gaze at our expense.
> Now with Trump clearly inclined to cut Ukraine loose, what leverage does he have?
He could always open up corruption probes on the money and weapons sent to Ukraine and then, to his shock, find out about massive corruption in Ukraine and all the hidden mansions in Florida or wherever. After that asking for an official Interpol warrant on Zelensky, Ermak, Zaluzhny (I don’t know how international warrants work in detail) and whoever else is not pliable to his point of view. I’ve been hearing that Trump is a bully recently with all the Canada/Gulf of Mexico/Greenland stuff so why can’t he bully Ukraine then? Actually, that’s how Biden admin got rid of Kolomoiskiy, IIRC. A few threats to look closely on his US/EU assets and he was out of the way.
> 1 It may be an artifact of translation, but Putin seems often (if not 100% consistently) made a distinction between being willing to hear what the various proxy war participants have to say, as opposed to start negotiations with them. Perhaps in a geopolitical analogue to the US mantra that we provide “access” to healthcare, which is not the same as providing healthcare, Putin saying he is willing to negotiate does not mean he has committed to negotiating. Just insert another word and the formulation becomes more obvious. Saying you are willing to get married does not mean you’ve committed to tying the knot.
I’m pretty sure that Putin saying “we want to open negotiations with Ukraine/US/EU vassals” will provoke panic domestically and massive campaign of glee in Western MSM. After all, it would sound like Russia is losing the war. Because victors do not seek to open negotiations, losers do. So “we’re willing to listen and we were always willing to listen” is as much as he can say, plus its consistent with the previous statements.
The Banderites can bring their weapons, join their older relatives in Canada and assist in the Accession to the USA.
Everyone will be happy!
For comparison another embarrassing achievement by George Beebe for Responsible Statecraft:
Trump may get Russia and Ukraine to the table. Then what?
American statesmanship has been largely dormant since the Cold War. The new White House must be serious about reviving it.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/aei/
It sounds like Beebe was listening to his pals from the agency in one ear and State Department in the other.
However 2 items might hint at what – unsurprisingly – for now the US in broad sense and officially admittable wants:
-“The United States does not need and should not seek Chinese help in mediation. But inviting China’s special envoy on Ukraine to visit the United States and discuss a settlement — something Beijing sought but Biden refused to offer — would put pressure on Putin to join peace talks.”
-“But with diplomatic skill and a dollop of luck, Trump could achieve what until recently seemed all but impossible: an independent Ukraine securely embedded in the EU; a Europe better able to deter and counterbalance Russia with its own resources; and a Russia and China that are less united in their hostility toward Washington. That vision is well worth pursuing, even if the odds of failure are significant.”
The greedy Poles want their Lviv back and to force the local population to teach about the genocides of the Poles and Jews that their forefathers carried out, in their schools. The Hungarians would also like to take the Carpathian area to protect the ethnic Hungarian minority. Why should not such a deal be proposed, in return for a demilitarizing of those lands and a formal treaty of mutual peace? It would stretch the EU and NATO to the breaking point.
Then Russia keeps everything east of the Dniepr, the Kiev oblast and the south west of Ukraine (which includes all of the coast and Odessa, and links Russia to Transnistria). No rump state, and all of the gas and oil transport lines protected. Together with a homesteading law, the riches of the Ukraine could be enjoyed by Russia and a wave of new friendly immigrants. Best outcome for Russia.
And Ukraine goes back to being a country that does not exist, as was the case prior to 1991.
None of these countries will take these areas by force, and the UN will not recognize Russia as in control and able to dispose of them. The EU would severely discipline anyone who tried (all these countries depend on EU funds, even more so now that budgets are squeezed), and per above, that could include asset freezes until they backed off.
This is a great examination of the war–something I hope the cheerleaders for Russia will read. In my view, it is not so much what Russia chooses to do or not to do that is the determiner of events but, rather, the result of the struggle within Washington particularly what the intel community, which is the center of the Deep State, chooses to do. It might be that there will be a shift towards true “America First” ideas within the Washington milieu. I don’t see the Europeans strongly maintaining Ukraine.
I think, for what it’s worth, Russia will grind on and see what deals can be had from Washington–Putin will cooperate with Trump as best he can to strengthen the hand of Trump in the Washington internal wars which have to occur. We need a major sea-change within Washington with a government which, at least, has some concern for its citizens as apart from the West. Let Europe and the other vassal states rule themselves more. Multilareralism is the only way towards peace on earth and good will towards humanity.
I think Russia has a difficult, if at all possible end game if it’s the only side that wants to wrap things up. But, in this sense, Russia is kinda irrelevant, I think.
The real question is what US government seeks as its international role in the future, specifically the role it envisages for NATO. NATO is basically US basing troops in Europe and the Europeans singing praises of US-imposed world order. The bases are a useful forward staging ground for US empire and the Europeans provide the “international community” that supports the empiring. These presuppose that US wants to keep at the empiring business.
But the empiring business is expensive and risky. Trump is tapping into a very popular US sentiment when he says that US allies are not “paying a fair share.” It’s not just a matter of money, I think: US is not in mercenary business, where we look to make profit out of keeping troops to “protect” the Poles, Lithuania, Taiwanese, or South Koreans while they do extremely risky stuff without taking due precautions. Americans are not going to die for Latvians to keep antagonizing Russia pointlessly without raising an army of a million or two to keep the Russians at bay all by themselves (of course, they can’t–that’s the point.) The real “price” that Americans want from the allies is that they take their security situation sereiously, increase their defense spending where applicable, and start acting responsibly as if their lives depend on it (they do, in fact–they just think that Americans will save them no matter what they do to endanger themselves, while we are really saying that we don’t want to pay that price.)
Europeans, accustomed to American leadership that always presumed an empire, can’t seem to get their heads around this. They might offer cash–but cash is useless unless they actually use it for improving their own defense, which they may not even be able to for a long time. More important, they are actually escalating their moralism talk, as if US just wants more justification for empiring (well, some people here do…but I think Trump is sensing that a solid American majority is against this sort of thinking now.) If anything, the European moralizing is actually making a lot of Americans even more disgusted.
So the basis of US negotiations with Russia is how much US will stay committed to European security. Right now, US is seemingly committed to “defend” the Europeans no how crazy they get–because we are crazy, too, and their insanity justifies ours. But, suppose we don’t want to stay crazy? If we realize that all the European insanity is just adding to our expense and risk, European insanity is not something we want to encourage. In this sense then, US is not really negotiating with the Russians, then. We are negotiating with the Europeans, to set the standards of the latter’s behavior, to ensure that they start acting responsibly or no more NATO, and acting responsibly includes not needlessly antagonizing the Russians. In this sense, then, Russia is just a prop for US-European negotiations to redefine NATO, or, perhaps, even an intra-US negotiation over how much empiring we want to keep doing.
Perhaps the intra-US debate is the really important part: a lot of people, especially whose lives depend on it, want to keep empiring and to them, the sizable majority of the American people who want to quit empiring are the enemy and they are engaged in all sorts of dirty tricks to subvert this. This makes the negotiations difficult: those who oppose empiring need a Russia whose behavior is reasonable and does not strengthen the hands of the empire-builders at home. Now, if I were the Russians, do I want to take this risk? How strong is the anti-empire sentiment in US? How sincere is Trump in looking to do something about this? If the anti-empire coalition loses, then Russians will be in greater danger if they act “too nice,” after all. Ironically, then, the question becomes whether a key foreign leader put his trust in the American people to eventually do the right thing (i.e. not empiring too much.)
I think another way to look at this is that this sort of reverses how foreign policy negotiations were often carried out in the West lately, per Yves’ description: Western leaders spend all their time negotiating with themselves instead with the other side. This happens, at least in part, because all Western elites are presumed to favor empire building, just not agreed on the particulars. Here, the debate in the West is more fundamental and basic agreement cannot be presumed. So the opposing sides are negotiating with the foreigners (the “global” empire builders with the Europeans, the “isolationists” with the Russians) instead of with each other.
From all the non-mainstream media coverage eight or nine months ago, it sounded like Russia would have things wrapped up by now, or in not more than another month or so. But the Ukrainians have been stubbornly holding out or giving ground very grudgingly. I think I’ve been seeing the daily report “clashes continue in Druzhba” for a couple months now. Russia isn’t going to freeze the current front lines when Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Kramatorsk, Kupyansk, Pokrovsk, and a wide range of territory around those cities remains in Ukrainian hands. And it seems like at a minimum Russia needs to add Sumy, Kharkov, Mykolaiv, and Odessa oblasts to their territory just to have some kind of reasonable security buffer for future misbehavior by Ukraine. If they can do that and install a pro-Russian regime in Kiev (and let that regime complete eradicating the Banderites for them), that would probably be enough for a win, versus going all the way to the border of Poland. But just getting that much will probably take another year and cooperation from Trump (in the form of reining in the US intelligence agencies and their cut-outs and foisting any remaining military support on the EU). Maybe a big part of the coming year for Russia would consist of complementing battlefield activity with building up anti-government politicians and partisan forces in Ukraine.
Drones.
Putin wouldn’t last too long if Russian citizens continued to be killed and maimed daily if he decided to resist the military and stop at Lvov and leave a territory that was ‘ukraine’ full of fanatics that would launch drones every day and night into Russian territory.
There is a big difference between the drones being launched from remaining ‘ukraine’ than from NATO/EU country territories and or Azer/Armenia.
I can see no alternative other than a slowish western roll to Ukraine’s western borders and installation of puppet government. Far from ideal, but we live in a far from ideal world.
Russia also insists that Ukraine de-militarize; Putin has suggested returning to the haggling over weapons levels that had begun in the spring 2022 Istanbul talks, and “denazifying,” which means among other things outlawing Banderite parties and symbols.
Hate, anger, blame, greed….all of which is the root of this issue, can not be legislated. It’s a choice, residing in the hearts of men and women and taught to children. Here in the US, hate and fear is easily sold on ‘news’ channels nightly….people are attracted to these emotions in ways I simply do not understand.
Funny about Musk and the Afd thinking the Nazis were all about seizing industry. According to William Manchester’s book the Krupps started out thinking Hitler was working for them. And he did kowtow.
But they did too of course and when you are in an existential war you end up doing the government’s bidding. The key takeaway is that the Krupp business survived and Hitler did not.
Oops sorry…this was for Conor’s post.
As long as there is an idea of Europe, this only gets “settled” with any finality when Russia is accepted as part of Europe.
Not suggesting anyone hold their breath.
I’m inclined to agree with Mark Sleboda. Interesting that Helmer sees a clash between RU’s generals (who want to dial the war up to 11) and Putin (who wants to slow-go it). The longer this war drags on, the likelier it is that the generals will get their way.
The idea that Trump and Putin will cut a deal is wishful thinking, as is the notion that RU is eager to end the fighting. I cannot imagine what Trump can realistically offer Putin, and I don’t see that RU economy is struggling. RU can continue fighting at this pace for a very long time. Given all the blood that’s already been shed, I doubt that Putin will agree to leave a rump UKR–populated with sullen nationalists–at NATO’s disposal to be re-armed for a Second Punic War.
One way or another, RU will neutralize the entirety of UKR; either directly via boots on the ground, or indirectly via installation of a friendly regime (which will do the dirty work of policing western UKR). At RU’s current pace, this might take many years. Putin seems to be in no hurry.
It seems to me that Putin would favour the ‘Ramzan Kadyrov’ solution for western Ukraine. Russia has a lot of experience with this methodology and has executed it very successfully in Chechnya.