Yves here. Below, Andrew Korybko looks at whether Russia will take the logical next steps in its war of continuing to move further West. Notice that one of the logical next areas from a military perspective, Sumy, at least per 2010 election results, was not Russia friendly. However, one can argue Ukraine put it on the menu by launching its bone-headed Kursk stunt from there. A second reason is an advance into Sumy would put Russia within close striking range of Kiev. While that might not be enough to get Zelensky to call for new elections, an alternative way for him to get out of Dodge would be our afore-mentioned “government in exile” gambit, which his UK and EU besties would enthusiastically support. That would still set the stage for new elections (I assume the Rada could call them; experts please opine) and leave Zelensky and his allies kvetching but not able to do all that much.
A second issue in “What does Russia do next” is its apparent distaste for now to take major cities. Russia seems to prefer to bypass them and/or cut off supply routes and wait for the retreat or collapse of Ukraine forces before it attempts clearing and occupation. I have not looked at maps to see what that means for Kharkiv city, which is Ukraine’s second largest city and has a pre-war population of about 1.5 million. Due to its high proportion of ethnic Russians and that oblast bordering Russia, securing it would seem to be a priority.
And speaking of buffers…. when the West started using long-range missiles, Foreign Minister Lavrov pointed out that the effect would be to increase the amount of territory Russia would need to take in order to secure what it deemed to be Russia, as in now including the four disputed oblasts in pre-2022 Ukraine. This question becomes recursive, and Lavrov never resolved that matter. For instance, if the longest missile the West might use has a 300 km range, that implies needing a safety zone 300 km wide at the western borders of Russia and the new Russia of the four oblasts. But is that a DMZ? What becomes of the people, communities and productive enterprise in that safety zone? Even if they were “demilitarized,” they would still be vulnerable to attack if what was left of Ukraine, Banderite insurgents, or belligerent EU members wanted to carry on the fight.
And the Russian idea for the proper width of any such zone is probably over 500 km. If memory serves me right, the longest range Western missile is the German Taurus, at over 500 km. But the German Bundestag twice refused to approve Ukraine requests for their use (Prime Minister Scholz backed the second nein). However, Germany now has an uber-hawk Prime Minster in Freidrich Merz who may succeed in getting this Parliament to authorize Taurus deliveries to Ukraine.
Finally, it is odd to see the degree to which Korybko parrots patently bogus Western talking point with no caveats, like the notion that Europe could “pump Ukraine full of arms.” Europe has drained its weapons caches and has very little in the way of indigenous production capacity. It would either have to procure weapons from the black market, which did not work out well when it tried buying howitzer shells, or the US, which does not have all that much capacity either and has competing priorities. It also seems peculiar that Korybko treats the peace process as being in Russian interests, when Russian officials from Putin on down are still harping on Western duplicity and hostile intentions (see the Lavrov interview with Judge Napolitano, Larry Johnson, and one other interlocutor, or Putin’s remarks right before his Trump call to the Pleanary Session of the RSPP Congress:
Sanctions are neither temporary nor targeted measures; they constitute a mechanism of systemic, strategic pressure against our nation. Regardless of global developments or shifts in the international order, our competitors will perpetually seek to constrain Russia and diminish its economic and technological capacities.
Moreover, whereas the so-called Western elites previously attempted to cloak this confrontation in propriety, they now evidently seem to no longer feel the need to be concerned about appearances, nor do they intend to be. They not only routinely threaten Russia with new sanctions but churn out these packages incessantly. One gains the impression that even the architects themselves have lost track of the restrictions imposed and their targets.
Here, the Ministry of Finance has tallied them. I state with confidence: 28,595 sanctions against individuals and legal entities. This exceeds – by a significant margin – all sanctions ever imposed on all other nations combined.
Even if there is some gesture from their side – say, they propose to lift or ease something – we can expect that another way will be found to exert pressure, to throw a spanner in the works, as was the case with the well-known Jackson–Vanik amendment. The Soviet Union, against which it was originally introduced, no longer existed, and relations between Russia and the United States of America were at their absolute best, as good as they could possibly be. Yet the amendment continued to remain in force. And when it was seemingly repealed, it was in fact simply replaced with another restrictive instrument against Russia. Recall this: repealed, then supplanted.
I reiterate: sanctions and restrictions are the reality of the existing new stage of development that the entire world, the entire global economy, has entered. The global competitive struggle has intensified, assuming increasingly sophisticated and uncompromising forms.
Thus, literally before our eyes, a new spiral of economic rivalry is unfolding, and under these conditions, it is almost embarrassing to recall the norms and rules of the World Trade Organisation, once zealously promoted by the West. Once… When? When these rules advantaged them… As soon as they became disadvantageous, everything began to change. And all these negotiations stalled. And, in fact, no one needs them anymore.
This is evident, and I have emphasised it repeatedly: a return to pre-existing conditions is impossible.
So Russia will continue to prosecute the conflict. The only questions are how and how far.
By Andrew Korybko, a Moscow-based American political analyst who specializes in the global systemic transition to multipolarity in the New Cold War. He has a PhD from MGIMO, which is under the umbrella of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Originally published at his website
This might be the only way to ensure Ukraine’s demilitarization if diplomacy fails.
The nascent Russian–US “New Détente” didn’t lead to a ceasefire during the latest Putin–Trump call, thus meaning that the hot phase of the Ukrainian Conflictcontinues, albeit with a proposed cessation of attacks on energy infrastructure provided that Kiev agrees. At present, Russia is on the brink of completely pushing Ukrainian forces out of Russia’s Kursk Region and into Ukraine’s Sumy Region, while the southwestern Donbass front has seen Russian troops approach the gates of Dniepropetrovsk Region.
Putin will soon be faced with the fateful choice of either keeping Russia’s ground campaign limited to those four former Ukrainian regions that voted to join Russia in September 2022’s referenda or expanding it to include Sumy, Dniepropetrovsk, and/or (once again) Kharkov Regions. The second scenario is attractive is because it could enable Russia to go around frontline defenses in Donbass and/or Zaporozhye and thus advance its goal of fully capturing the entirety of the regions that it claims.
The precedent for doing so rests in last May’s push into Kharkov, which aimed to achieve in Donbass what the abovementioned Dniepropetrovsk push could achieve in Zaporozhye, but it quickly stalemated and didn’t achieve the intended goal. The battlefield conditions have changed quite a lot since then so perhaps even a push into Sumy Region, which is much further away from the disputed territories, could have a chance of setting into motion a domino effect if it’s only just comparatively more successful.
Ditto for if Russia simultaneously advances into all three – Sumy, Kharkov, and Dniepropetrovsk Regions – but doing so, or even just significantly advancing into one of them, risks making Trump mistakenly think that Putin was just buying time with their talks and isn’t sincere about peace. That perception might then prompt an overreaction that could see him strictly enforcing secondary sanctions on Russian energy in order to deal a heavy financial blow to the Kremlin and/or pulling out all the stops in arming Ukraine.
Nevertheless, “hardliners” might still try to persuade Putin to risk that on the presumption that Trump is bluffing about “escalating to de-escalate” if their talks fail, but that’ll be difficult to pull off since Putin is the consummate pragmatist and thus averse to taking major risks. That said, they might get him to act more boldly then usual by arguing that further on-the-ground gains might be what’s ultimately required to force Ukraine to peace on Russia’s terms, after which it can then withdraw from those other regions.
Apart from the aforesaid motive, this sequence of events is also predicated on Putin expecting that the Europeans would defy Trump by continuing to pump Ukraine full of arms even if the US cuts it off yet again, which would turn any ceasefire into an opportunity for Kiev to rearm to Russia’s disadvantage. It could therefore accordingly follow that Russia’s only realistic recourse might be to expand its ground campaign into Sumy, Dniepropetrovsk, and/or Kharkov Regions to continue demilitarizing Ukraine.
On that note, this would advance the proposed goal of creating a demilitarized “Trans-Dnieper” region east of the river and north of the territories that Russia claims as its own, which was elaborated on here. Everything leading up to this scenario takes for granted that Trump won’t meaningfully “escalate to de-escalate”, or that this wouldn’t impede Russia’s expanded ground campaigns, and that the Europeans won’t conventionally intervene either. None of this can be taken for granted, though, so it’s a huge risk.
For that reason, Putin might continue playing it safe for now by keeping Russia’s ground campaign limited to the four former Ukrainian regions that Moscow claims as its own, though perhaps authorizing small-scale advances into adjacent regions on a case-by-case basis. These could be approved to chase retraining Ukrainian soldiers to their next major fortifications in Sumy, Dniepropetrovsk, and/or Kharkov Regions in order press Russia’s advantage but without seriously besieging those areas for the time being.
The purpose could be to signal Russia’s ground escalation dominance so that Trump does his utmost to coerce Ukraine into concessions in order to avoid the broader escalation that he might otherwise feel pressured to go through with to “save face” if Russia achieves a breakthrough and steamrolls westward. This sort of “goodwill gesture” would be different from the prior ones in the sense that Russia would continue advancing while negotiating instead of pulling back like before for the sake of clinching a deal.
All the same, Russia would also exercise self-restraint by not fully pressing its advantage since that could prompt an overreaction from the US that might dangerously complicate the peace process. So long as Russia’s intentions are communicated to the US in advance, any escalation should remain manageable. This approach would still entail some risks, but typically cautious Putin might feel comfortable enough with their reduced odds to conclude that the potentially game-changing benefits are worth it.
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Interesting that Odessa was not mentioned in this article. It seems to me that Odessa is a key Russian objective, considering its UK-armed naval drone base is keeping the Russian Black Sea fleet bottled up and largely out of action. Odessa is the quintessential Russian city, founded by Catherine the Great. And Russia probably needs this territory as a land bridge to trans-Dniestria. I think the Russians will likely complete their takeover of the four annexed oblasts, and use the Zhaporozian region as a base to move west to Odessa. WHy should the Russians accept a cease-fire when they are clearly on the advance?
Please look at a map. Russia is not going to take Odessa. It might get it if the entire country falls apart, which is probably not a preferred scenario.
Russia lacks the ability to take it from the sea. So that would mean by land.
To get a rough approximation of best logistical routes, look at this rail map. There are no simple rail routes near the Black Sea coast. Readers can correct me, but that suggests the big road situation is similar.
The “best” route is from the Sumy area, down in the south-southwest direction across the middle of the country. I have heard commentators without making the rail reference say the same thing.
This is very sucky logistically. The commentators also indicated it would be difficult.
I don’t doubt it would be difficult logistically to take Odessa – tho’ there is a rail line from Crimea via Mykolaiv to Odessa, which connects to another rail route from Zaporozhia. I just don’t see the Russians permitting Odessa to remain in Ukrainian hands if they have ceded effective control to the UK. It’s too much of a strategic threat.
The 100 year agreement between the UK and Ukraine is rumored to have ceded ports and power plants to the UK – in a secret clause, therefore unverifiable – I just don’t see Russia conceding this nor do I see a way for the UK to enforce it without US support (which Starmer has already conceded).
Odessa is protected from the east by a series of long, deep estuaries and rivers which makes an approach from that direction extremely difficult. The railway goes north-east from Odessa and crosses a very narrow land spit around half a mile wide to the north of Odessa – it would be very difficult to follow that route.
In the Odessa offensive in 1944 the Soviets approached from the east but had to do a big anti-clockwise swing north of Odessa to approach the city from the north-west, the only logical approach that would not involve substantial amphibious forces. It took something like half a million men to take a very depleted German force. The German/Romanian army took a similar number of soldiers to take it in 1941 and it took them 3 months.
Apart from its symbolic value, Odessa and the cities between it and the Dnieper estuary have very important military shipyards. There is also the issue of Transnistria, which presumably would have to be part of any settlement.
But clearly, to take it would take an enormous force and a lot of time, even against a very depleted Ukrainian defence.
To be honest, the situation around Odessa is more similar not to the events of the Second World War, but to the Civil War in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. At that time, the Red army did not need many forces to capture Odessa. The French and Greek interventionists fled the city in panic.
During the period from April 3 to April 7, 1919, about 25,000 Entente troops were evacuated by ships from the port of Odessa. At the same time, one of the white brigades, which was refused loading onto French ships in Odessa, was forced to abandon all heavy weapons, armored cars and artillery and was fighting its way out of Odessa towards Romania. The Polish legionnaires retreated from Odessa in the same way.
Man history doesn’t repeat but it certainly does rhyme! This whole Ukraine failed enterprise does look a lot like a re-up of the Hitler project. I mean, Ursula’s hair has a distinct helmet aura…..
Whichever scenario it might be, I have trouble seeing the conflict ending without Russians “taking” Odessa. I’d figure that their preferred route is taking Odessa vicariously, with a friendlt (even if “friendly neutral” government that would allow them access to Nikolayev and Odessa, wherher via Kiev or via local governments in a loose federation. Per the reasons of military geography, I will accept that they won’t be attacking Odessa directly, without securing a secure path inland. But, at the same time, I fully expect Russians to keep the war going for 3, 4, or 5 years if that’s what it takes.
So, that’s the choice Purin is offering: the West gives up Ukraine now, peacefully, without incurring further cost, with the implication that Russia will now militarize (probably) Odessa and Nikolayev, or Russia will take it in 2-3 years, after smashing up what-s lect of Ukraine (and more important, inflicting serious costs on Europeans, including whatever interventionist forces Europeans send, if they do, along the way.)
All of that is correct and it further highlights the enormity of the failure of the first days of the SMO.
Had there been just another 50,000 men with the gear to go, and had the rules of engagement been a bit more permissive, Russia could have taken Nikolaev, moved quickly to join with Transnistria, and then Odessa would have fallen pretty much automatically. Then that takes the bridge out of HIMARS range, and makes the whole achievement sustainable.
As it is, the small window of opportunity was missed, and now we have what we have.
Doubtful. I was adding up the numbers hard early on and even the initial estimates of Ryssian forces (about 200,000) did nor make sense–they’d have had to send practically everyone available to make that total. Later estimates, of less than 150,000 (as few as 100,000, I think) are still on the high side, given what resources Russia had at that time. 50,000 more troops, I think, would have been at least impractical and probably impossible.
Putin had 8 years to prepare (really more like 18 given that this all really started in 2004, not 2013-14).
No excuses
Oh, come on. In 2004 Putin was supposed to have a time machine and know he’d be in power for 21+ years?? Russia was still in a flat-assed desperately broke state and Putin was perfecting his methods of shaking down oligarchs for back taxes to help fund government operations after a banking system failure in 1998. The economy was significantly dollarized then, so any serious Russia action would have made it easy for the West to wreck the banks again by refusing to roll dollar funding. Russia only started to become something of an autarky after 2014, and that’s not something that can be executed quickly. The Russian finance officials were utterly stunned that they were able to right the economic ship after only 2-3 months of the shock and awe sanctions.
Your blinkered reading is astonishing. Putin is running a coalition war. He depends on the cooperation and support of his economic allies, particularly China and India and to a lesser degree Turkiye, all of whom are defying the US to keep helping Russia bust the sanctions. China and India are seriously not happy with the fact of the war, they don’t like one country invading another, as much as they intellectually understand why the US left Russia with no better option. So Russia cannot act in an aggressive manner and keep their support. This applies to most of the rest of the so-called Global South. Putin has had to play high minded and reluctant to keep them all on board.
This concise two paragraph explanation of the how and why of the current situation, in geo-economic terms, is more astute than anything I’ve seen from any other commentator. How clear-eyed. Thank you.
I would second your comment. Excellent analysis above.
Thirded – I appreciated that one, too. As much as some of us would like to see Russia stand alone against the world, that was never realistic nor necessary.
Perhaps we’ve all forgotten how hysterical the anti-China rhetoric coming from the Biden administration and the EU was back in 2022-2024? Remember Biden’s angry outbursts about “nobody wants to trade places with Xi Jinping?”
Or multiple episodes of couch-fainting over rumors of “Chinese weapons” and high-tech chips going to reinforce the war effort in Moscow?
I sure haven’t.
That all seems to have quieted down, even before Biden shuffled off to memory care.
Isolating Russia was never a realistic strategy by the West, but that didn’t stop them from trying. Whether it was smart diplomacy from Putin or just China and India recognizing that hanging together with Russia beats hanging separately, the coalition war theory is correct. As such Putin does face some boundaries on how far to go.
Russia’s remarkable economic performance and the utter failure of the EU and the Biden admin’s sanctions stand as a testimony to the success of Russian strategy.
As well as Russian banks still standing. I do rather strongly suspect that the Biden admin thought they could blow up the banks like they did to Syria and Libya but obviously that was another huge failure.
Russia had the benefit of the 2014-2022 period when the writing was on the wall thanks to Obama and Trump 1.0 that if they did not disconnect from SWIFT and develop sanctions-proof financial institutions, then they would be at risk of being attacked financially.
Your summary, Yves, makes me wonder something – what in retrospect is the role of the global financial crisis in moving Russia towards sanctions resilience? I have a clear picture what happened in the west but Russia, I have no picture for this.
I will go and look things up but I wonder if today’s Russia is, at least partly, one of the unintended / unexpected consequences of the GFC?
From past experience, if the Russian operation in Ukraine is essentially a coalition war – via supplies of materiel, logistics, political and financial support, partners may well feel the need for a speedy but permanent solution and, in this case, may be less patient than the Russians on practical and ideological grounds.
Ideologically, this is a war of liberation which has its roots in the 2014 coup and one of the key aims is to de-nazify and disarm Ukrainian nationalists. It is also a war provoked by the West and the refusal to implement either of the Minsk Agreements coupled with the tawdry Western rationale for their negotiation will have an effect on thinking in the Global South, just as it is beginning to amongst the Western populace.
We have reached a point where, true or no, Zelensky says that, amongst other things, Trump’s aim is for US control of power generation in Zaporizhzhia and, presumably generation and transmission throughout what is left of the Ukraine. The USA has other economic aims as well with which the Russians may agree, or they may not.
We see the build up of a European Force, the only purpose of which is to express military opposition to Russia on the basis that Russia plans to take over a significant part, if not all, of Europe. This can easily slide into a self-fulfilling prophecy if Russia decides that it has no wish to face future wars on the Western front (or from the Stans attracted by the charms of the EU and animus towards Iran). Rather thn capture Europe, Russia may choose to make deep pre-emptive strikes on military targets in the West, mowing the grass in a more precise, positive and less barbaric approach than, say, the Israelis.
From this stance, the most appropriate solution to Russia’s long term strategic problem in the West is to achieve an unconditional surrender and fashion a Ukrainian government it can work with and assist the Ukraine to recover from the effects of this needless Western war, against Russia – which seems to me to be far from over.
This is not a coalition war anywhere to the degree the war in Ukraine war has been, where there has been all sorts of open talk and bickering about who provides what. Russia does not depending on other countries meaningfully for arms or arms supplies. Even the claims about chips were wildly exaggerated (militaries, perhaps out of design conservatism, pretty much do not use cutting edge chips).
But there is a huge coalition element in that Russia, even though far more of an autarky than any other country, still needs imports. For instance, it was having trouble with products ranging from car and airplane parts to buttons. Pretty much everyone in the world depends on China and India for pharmaceuticals. Russia does need to export oil and gas since it has chosen to fund its budget significantly via those sales (it could obviously change that, but not only would that be disruptive, but voters would regard that magnitude of change with great alarm). Russia had to get all sorts of buyers like China and India to take a lot more in return for a discounted price.
I would just take that as a cost of doing business as I would overpaying for a corporate acquisition to develop monopoly power, or the US and UK overpaying ginormously for over-engineered military kit which always seems to end up being incapable of providing a useful service in combat within any reasonable time frame.
Sorry, the analogy is not on. Overpaying to get a monopoly position is totally rational. You can then drive prices to the moon.
Building an over-priced, destined to under-perform military is a prescription for late-stage USSR outcomes. And there’s no reason to make this outlay. There is no existential or even meaningful threat. This is a combo of leaders buying their own PR about the evil Rooskied and doubling down on their bad Ukraine decisions.
The two examples I offered are really the same. I said monopoly power, not monopoly position. If a monopoly position can be guaranteed, maybe. But monopoly positions do not tend to last for long, eg, the business I was in long ago, UK supermarkets, which established strong local and regional monopolies by a process of taking over weaker competitiors, were soon challenged by stores like Aldi, Lidl and the ubiquitous corner shop; music, textbooks, movies, etc, were challenged by bootlegs, tape decks, papercopiers, DVD recorders and digitalisation; olive oil and decent wines by counterfeits (both of which I feel very strongly about); and so on. Monopolists, quasi-monopolists and aspirational monopolists tend to become lazy, eg, Apple and Tesla. Monopoly position is more about short term gain in the financial markets rather than long term gain in the consumer markets – apart from the public utility sector (in which I include retail banking), which in the UK has become, to the cost of our people and the environment we live in, purely a function of state protection of socially and legally accepted forms of criminality indulged in by corporates and the very rich, usually protected behind the fig leaf of private equity vehicles and extremely expensive lawyers and their shills.
Sorry, this is badly flawed. Businesses by nature are not long lived. A monopolist is likely to be longer lived that a company which is constantly having to fight for market position. And neither Tesla nor Apple were ever monopolist. Tesla has always had direct competitors in EVs and also faced competition in hybrids. Teslsa’s market share in 2023 was 19%, FFS. Apple has always had smaller market share in phones and computers than Android and Microsoft competitors. Your mis-designation of both as monopolists suggests you don’t understand what the term means.
Note that this is entirely a function of the rules of engagement.
Under these self-imposed by the Kremlin rules of engagement, and even under much more permissive ones, even the US would not be able to take Odessa from the sea.
Change the rules of engagement so that the Russian army can use all the tools it has, and then it s a very different situation.
But yes, the general idea of your post is correct, because Kiev has to be taken anyway.
I think something is missing from that network: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novorossiya_Railway
Done in up to two years…
I don’t think the logistics is the limiting factor, but the body count plus on how much more the Ukrainian men and women are willing to die (fighting in an uphill battle) compared to Russians.
if the Kremlin wants Odessa, it has to secure Dnipro (upriver).
I imagine that preferred scenario is a Sept. 1918-type event where UKR forces just melt away due to lack of cash and ammo and warm bodies
Let us hope so. I suspect the Russians do not want to destroy Odessa in order to take it.
Certainly the Russians will clear out all the Ukrainians from all those four Oblasts but the question remains of what next. Perhaps an advance into Sumy Oblast to put pressure on the government in nearby Kiev. But maybe the Russians are thinking about Kharkiv. It is a Russian city and not far from the Russian border and an advance on it would panic the Zelensky regime. Zelensky would have to throw in any spare formations and equipment to defend it which means stripping the other fronts but he has done that before with Kursk. I do not think that his government could still survive if this city falls. The Russians won’t need to bombard it. They could surround it and only allow in stuff like food, medical supplies,etc. and there would be a lot of sympathizers in that city. Going after it would ensure that Zelelnsky would drain the last of the Ukraine’s reserves and you would know it would be serious if all those bully-boy recruiters were sent to the front lines as well. For Zelensky, it would be a zugzwang move.
The Russian armed forces will persist to take more land until they can’t. They will continue to ‘destroy’ the enemy in the field until there are none. They will seek opportunity to advance where ever it presents itself. Out flanking the AFU has proved to be easier than concentrated assault, it will continue; as the fighters on the line of combat begin the unorganized retreat. Russian culture is infused with strong elements of determination. They see that NATO-ized Ukraine has been defeated on the battlefield. They will let the Banderites in KIev flee to other parts of Europe. (They are ‘dead man’ walking.)
Odessa will be part of Russia again, in time. (The Brits there are a joke and will flee back to London.)
If Russia invades outside the four states that are its constitutional territory, the EU and NATO will cry foul that Russia is trying to occupy all of Europe. Rather than take that risk, Putin would rather continue to wear down and neutralize the Ukrainian military.
Are not the Europeans already saying Russia intends to invade all of Europe?
Yes, I’m not sure if it’s possible for Russia to make the Eurocrats more hysterical at this juncture.
They might want to avoid looking excessive or greedy to China and the Global South, or maybe even want to show good faith to the Americans, but the Euros have already seemingly whipped themselves into a frenzy at the prospect of Russia marching to Lisbon. I suspect that will only continue as it makes for a handy excuse to squeeze out that 1 trillion in funding to ReArm the EU.
Here in Austria I’m seeing a lot of ‘they (the USA) stabbed us in the back when Russia was nearly defeated’ narratives in my social circles. I don’t like the echoes from the past I hear in those words.
They are already doing it.
Perhaps it is time to stop thinking what the EU and NATO have to say and to start thinking about how to win the war and to destroy them once and for all, so that there can be peace.
This is the problem with “negotiations”.
By the very fact of agreeing on having them even the remote possibility of a strategic offensive goes away.
Because, obviously, you can’t be marching on Kiev again while having negotiations on freezing the conflict and while NATO is preparing to enter directly. Unless you are ready to start nuking European countries, which if Putin hasn’t already done by now, he will never do even when German tanks are rolling into the Red Square.
Thus right now Putin and everyone around him should be treated as traitors.
But the Russian public is once again mostly asleep, with some exceptions.
Very unfortunate.
Fighting can certainly continue while negotiations are ongoing. Why not? It’s how things went in WW’s 1 & 2. The Russians are right to keep going until the Ukrainians capitulate. And capitulate they will. What choice do they have? Their chief sponsor has already abandoned them and the remaining sponsors are toothless.
Fighting will continue the same stalemated way as it is now.
We are not talking about that, we are talking about a strategic Russian offensive in which Putin will unshackle the army, what has to be hit to win the war but the military has been forbidden by the politicians from hitting will be hit, and Russia will be moving on Kiev again.
Do you see that as possible within the current negotiation posture?
I don’t.
And if you do that, you have to also have the SMF on full alert to deal immediately with any attempts by NATO to stop it.
Do you imagine Putin as the kind that will seriously and effectively defend the country to the end given his long and sordid history of treasonous deals, pathetic weakness, catastrophic incompetence and suspect loyalties? We are not talking about someone in his 20s who can potentially change in the future here, he is a known quantity
The Russians are rapidly rolling up the UA forces following the audacious pipeline attack. I find it difficult to frame that as a stalemate. And I doubt that momentum of that action will grind to a halt when it reaches the Ukrainian border.
You say stalemate, I say steady, crushing victory by attrition.
Let’s call the whole thing off!
Negotiations can continue while fighting continues. It happened in WWI. The Brest-Litovsk peace was signed after Germany took a big chunk of originally Russian territory. No Bolshevik really wanted to sign that humiliating peace. Trotsky was the patsy.
So don’t ever tell Russians that fight cannot continue until the pen hits the paper. Was the same with Korean Armistice. There is even a S. Korean movie about that, with some crazy fights in the last 3 days before Armistice, with everyone knowing that is pointless. Almost everybody dies in the movie, SK & NK…
Trotsky didn’t sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. He resigned as Commissar of Foreign Affairs prior to the signing, replaced by Georgy Chicherin. The Russian signatory was Grigory Sokolnikov.
Russia does not need to “nuke” European countries when it has hypersonic weapons capable of precision strikes which are able to destroy military forces at base or during exercise. Russia does not need European land for defense (with the possible exception of the troublesome Baltics). Its chosen method of operation is to kill armies and, if they were to become more commercially minded, to do so and then charge the Europeans for the cost and delivery of the missiles used.
As for Putin, it takes a strong leader to be patient enough to provide the opportunities to allow your adversaries to make mistakes which you can then exploit.
Whatever eventually happens to Odessa, the Brits have got to go, and sooner rather than later. Yes the drones threatens the BSF and hamper its operations. But beyond that I’ve seen speculation – which seems at least plausible – that the Brits and/or French might exploit the existing UK presence to sneak in a larger contingent, a few score at a time, perhaps in hopes of presenting them later as fait-accompli ‘peacekeepers’ to deter further Russian advances.
I doubt, or at least I hope that wouldn’t deter the Russians from – for starters – lobbing a bunch of missiles at them. But neither Starmer nor Macron seems to be a completely rational actor.
Remember that Putin is sticking to his demand that not just weapons and ammo, but also ISR support be stopped. The satellite ISR is all US, if I understand correctly – NATO has AWACS and surveillance drones, but not their own satellites. If that’s withdrawn, then those naval drones – and everything else – can no longer be targeted adequately. Under some circumstances, that might even put amphibious landings back in the Russian toolkit.
“neither Starmer nor Macron seems to be a completely rational actor.”
Agreed. Lightweights. But potentially dangerous lightweights – like your buddy who starts a bar fight, gets you into the thick of it, then hides under a table until it’s over.
I have come to the conclusion that their words are driven by mere political calculus. Both are quite unpopular in their respective countries but they are trying to capitalize some support (even if marginal) by playing with perceived Russophobia which has been cultivated now for so long and more so fiercely during the last 3 years. They may not ever become popular but might gain some unconditional support at least on this issue and this is probably something they badly need to reinforce their egos. They don’t care about the risks of what they propose because they feel shielded by the nuclear umbrellas they have. The hell with the troops sent to Ukraine if they dare to try. That is a risk that doesn’t bother them.
So they are “rational” in a world centered on Macron/Starmer.
One thing that I miss mentioned in this analysis is that as attrition goes on, if and when some level of attrition is reached, Ukraine’s military could just collapse as it has happened in other conflicts before. The collapse might not be achieved by total destruction of Ukrainian weaponry as the West goes on and on providing what they can manufacture, but by the collapse of ever diminishing Ukraine’s capable fighters numbers, their willingness to go on, and if a perceived futility of fighting arises. The collapse could be quite chaotic and some kind of civil war cannot be ruled out. So far, the Ukrainians look quite resilient but the numbers of soldiers surrendering has been reportedly increasing specially since autumn 2024. And i believe this is what Russians want at least in the case of some large cities as they don’t want the cumbersome task of rebuilding their complex infrastructures from ashes. If such collapse occurs, the Russians would, with relative ease, occupy what they deem necessary for their security.
Then there is the Dnieper thing. I believe that at least in some of it’s length, preferably close to the sea, the Russians will like full control at both sides of the river. With regards to Odessa, if Ukraine collapses, the Russians will probably show interest in the city.
My view is that it will be money. When the soldiers are no longer paid, the fighting will end. You can press-gang all you want but when the officers get word that the money isn’t getting into their family’s account, it’s all over.
That and when some among the powerful in Ukraine decide they can only loose with war going on indefinitely, among other factors. Perspectives are darkening in Ukraine with the day.
US will prop Ukraine up by taking ownership progressively of the assets. Mr Putin has said that the West will continue trying to extend and deplete Russian potential indefinitely. In this situation there probably is no hard and fast land area in their thinking, they will probably go to some places they can easily defend and wait on events while building potential.
This is just more unsustainable pressure on the US spending problem with a war in the Middle East looming and China being made more self reliant via tariffs, just like Russia was via sanctions. Only thing that will stop this is a US financial collapse that makes them give up the Empire to save their government. Fed today has said QT in Treasuries is being wound right back though MBS is continuing, so trouble is on its way but US finances have a long way to go yet.
I was hoping for unconditional surrender as well, but Mr Trump is putting up a bluff that the Russians don’t seem to want to call at this time. We will have to see how serious the US blockade of Russian oil shipments becomes.
“US blockade of Russian oil shipments”
Already failed; see:
https://archive.ph/rxeuw
I don’t think sanctions were ever effective. Without a navy to backup the financial and lawfare arm, they never had a chance.
With three Aircraft carriers tied down in the ME now, Uncle Sam can fuhgeddaboudit.
The US experience in Vietnam was facing something similar – the term fragging entered the lexicon for a reason. I assume the UAF will begin widespread fragging of their officers and it will all collapse as an organized military.
Logistics necessitates that the Russian army operate no further than 50-100 km (30-70 miles) from the rail lines. So Sumy itself is a poor operational target, operations around it would have to be supplied by road from Sudza and Korenevo. Konotop is the key target in this region, main rail lines from Moscow and Kursk run through there, providing ample rail capacity for a major operation. If they decide to launch a major operation in this area it would be in the north, aiming for Gluhiv and Novgorod-Serersky and then on to Konotop.
Most likely we’ll see a limited incursion along the Yunakivka-Khotin line that would secure a border buffer zone while securing supply roads to Sudza and Korenevo. Then the frontlines would freeze, much like what we’ve seen in Kharkiv region around Vovchansk.
>>>All the same, Russia would also exercise self-restraint by not fully pressing its advantage since that could prompt an overreaction from the US that might dangerously complicate the peace process.
The Catch-22 is that by being restrained, it only encourages UK/France to send in a tripwire force to occupy the Odessa airport.
In a normal timeline, I’d label an Anglo-French intervention in Odessa (ie, securing the Odessa port or airport) as an impossibility (see Suez Crisis)….but given the chickenhawkery coming from London and Paris….I’m not too sure.
Would Russia taking big chunks of Ukraine and holding and maintaining territory with various European and terror proxies constantly nipping at them count as “extending Russia”? It has the air of that, even if not technically according to any plans.
Putin: “We’ll Take Odessa Next” If Ukraine Rejects Peace Plan
At a closed meeting with top Russian business leaders, President Vladimir Putin warned that Moscow is prepared to launch an offensive on Odessa if Ukraine refuses to recognize Russia’s control over five occupied regions, according to sources cited by Kommersant…
https://www.dagens.com/news/putin-well-take-odessa-next-if-ukraine-rejects-peace-plan
Kommersant reports rather the opposite:
https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/7586531
Please stop this black and white nonsense (a cognitive bias!) and your displays of a hard-liner version of Putin Derangement Syndrome. I read the translation. The article clearly says Putin said Odessa is on the menu if the West does not recognize the four oblasts. Yes, there is no statement that an offensive would be launched, so that is a fair criticism but it is strongly implied.
Russia will blow up and break military things, advance as far as they can find “target rich environs” to quote an operator’s view of war.
Land is less object than breaking U.S. things.
I think the operational limit will be scarcity of targets.
Barring US agreeing to recent Russian demands. I doubt any recognition that this is defensive war…..
Possible shoot-down of another F-16 in the Sumy region, per Simplicius’ X feed:
https://x.com/simpatico771/status/1902422704122114319
It’s pointless to talk about territory at this point. Yes of course Russia will enter the Sumy region, take a few villages and stay there to tie down some Ukraine forces like Karkov so they can’t launch another big cross-border operation. But Russia can’t take any big cities because it’s impossible to do with their current forces. The only thing that matters here is casualty. If we look at historical wars and assume 500k casualties on the Ukraine side now, then they can potentially take up to 1.2m casualties before the whole army falls apart and this is roughly 10% of the entire population still under Ukrainian control. When that happens, Russia can take whatever they want. The K/D ratio is very favourable to Russia right now so we’ve entered the ‘garbage time’ of this war. Just wait until causalities pile up on the Ukrainian side and then we can talk about big arrow offensives.
There’s little point in fighting a campaign to get some more distance from any particular weapon system. Some other particular weapon system will soon have different particulars. Unless there is a change of phase land/water, or a major geographical obstacle, such as a mountain range, there will be found little comfort in any given boundary.
Countless statesmen have blundered through the centuries, squandering life and labour, in vain pursuit of tactical security, or “natural” frontiers.
But war is politics. The only secure boundary is the one your rivals can accept. Buffer zones against particular weapons prove useless. Political buffer zones, on the other hand, can be useful, providing the buffering peoples remain content in that role. Again, that’s politics.
NATO already owns Scandinavia and the Baltic States. But the NATO countries have many different weapons, with which they can attack targets all over Russia, or indeed all over the world.
I think it’s stupid to prolong a war for the sake of ostensible weapon ranges.
Now, one may propose that Russia should keep attacking Ukraine, until there can no longer be found any Ukrainian willing to fight them. Clausewitz to the max. That’s a rational argument, but rationally speaking, any Ukraine that doesn’t want to attack Russia could be safely restored in its territorial integrity. The boundary is relatively unimportant. What matters is a political settlement.
If you despair of a political settlement, then you will submit yourself to perpetual struggle. You’re saying that guys like James Burnham were correct in the fundamentals. The best you could hope for would be something like the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four, since the powers in that story had at least tacitly agreed not to nuke each other. As further consolation, I suppose, the elites terrorized and tormented their own elite peers even more than they did the proles.
Is it not plain to anyone that, around the world, that elites are waging war, exhorting war, or flirting with war, because they are all discredited, stale, and scared?
Putin is the fairest leader Russia’s ever had. But late in his career, he has become the author of a long, indecisive war. He is getting sucked down by the sunk costs. A few more km, or even a bunch more km, will not redeem the blood debt.
I also worry that Putin is worried about legacy. I would tell him that legacy is vanity. He is going to leave a bit of a mess for those who succeed him. It can’t be helped. The world is like that. So just get a ceasefire already.
Yea, Minsk 3.
Do Minsk 3. Do Minsk 303. Don’t do the war–least of all, over dotted lines.
I’m telling my Ukrainian-Canadian friend the same sort of thing: quit fighting, draw the lines wherever, live as a jackal. The war is stupid.
Minsk XYZ does not end the war but prolongs it till Minsk XYZ+1. If war is stupid, then prolonging it indefinitely does not sound like the brightest idea. Doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results is not stupid, but insane. If you want to make a give-peace-a-chance talk, you should do it in the place that initate wars, Washington, D.C. (or contact your local representative, and see how that pans out).
Why not Minsk 3?
If Ukraine ever posed a serious threat to Russia, which I have always found an incredible notion, it certainly doesn’t now and won’t for a good long while. They will need many years if not decades to recover for another go. In the meantime, the post-2014 regime will lack the urgency of war to drive both substantial Western support and its rally-around-the-flag effect, and will be left to the mercy of its own internal divisions and the population’s many accumulated grievances. I doubt that it could survive a lasting peace, at least in anything like its current form and orientation. Even if Ukraine remains committed to its pro-Western project, the rest of the world is bound to change so much in coming decades that the conditions that allowed it to keep up a fight with Western support for so long will simply not occur again.
There is nothing worth killing for at stake now, if there ever was. The only problem is that you can’t have a unilateral ceasefire.
As Aurelian here has pointed out, most conflicts/wars don’t end with a formal agreement – they sort of peter out with a number of unspoken ‘understandings’ and local deals, and no doubt this is how the current war will end. I think this misunderstanding by the Ukrainians and west drove the Kursk invasion – a misguided belief that they needed some leverage in a negotiation.
Unless things go nuclear, I’ve little doubt that this is how the current conflict will end. Realistically, Russia has achieved its strategic objective of securing the Black Sea access to the Don/Volga navigations. All else is just sugar on top. Objectives like ‘denazification’ are a little like the ‘war on terror’ – just wordplay with little real meaning. And if there is one technological lesson learned from this war is that the range of modern military technology has made notions of defended borders and even strategic depth somewhat meaningless. What matters is the ability to make your opponent realise that the costs of going to war are greater than the benefits – Russia now has that ability in spades. Most of the European countries are slow learners on this (I suspect the French understand it, but probably not the others).
Much depends on what the final collapse of the Ukrainian military will look like. It may be just an exhaustion that drives them to a face saving deal (WWI). Or it may be a fissuring of the state with Russia then having to deal with various local strongmen from Odessa to Kiev and in between (Balkans). But eventually there will be a deal – its just more likely that the ‘deal’ won’t have a name – it will be a series of local ‘understandings’.
That appears likely, but this being the case, the sooner there is a deal (whether formally a unified deal or not), the better. Even if we don’t get all that we want (whatever that may really be; indeed, “denazification” made me think of War on Terror from day one), I don’t see how a truce would give Ukraine some opportunity to reverse the strategic situation, which is the implied problem with seeking one early. The only way it’s getting reversed is with Russia suffering another (after 1917 and 1991) internal collapse, of which there is no sign so far and which Ukraine and its sponsors are effectively powerless to bring about.
As for fissuring of the state, that would be a disaster that would make everything that happened in Ukraine up to this point look like peace. That kind of instability on our border can’t be good for us either; even a stable Western-leaning regime would probably be less trouble than a full on civil war on our doorstep. But the longer this drags on, the more likely this worst case scenario will be.
There has been a civil war in Ukraine since 2014, in case you were not paying attention. And frankly, reading about that fine gentleman that was executed in Odessa the other day, it seems that Ukraine is already run by warlords at the local level.
But what I actually stopped to say, is that “denazification” can actually be, and has been, defined in very simple terms. Have a law banning glorification of Nazis and their henchmen (like Bandera) and all societies that adhere to the ideas and/or glorification of the same. And then enforce that law. Like most of the Europe does. I think it was even in the Paris Peace Treaties in 1947. It’s not like this is the first fight against Nazzies.
“There has been a civil war in Ukraine since 2014, in case you were not paying attention. And frankly, reading about that fine gentleman that was executed in Odessa the other day, it seems that Ukraine is already run by warlords at the local level.”
What I mean is, in brief, that Ukraine isn’t Syria yet. It may be a difference of degree, but it would be a very tangible difference for anyone living in Kiev or Odessa if there was an outright civil war and complete collapse of central government all over the country, rather than a separatist uprising confined to one region. That was bad, make no mistake, but scaling it up would be even worse.
“But what I actually stopped to say, is that “denazification” can actually be, and has been, defined in very simple terms. Have a law banning glorification of Nazis and their henchmen (like Bandera) and all societies that adhere to the ideas and/or glorification of the same. And then enforce that law. Like most of the Europe does. I think it was even in the Paris Peace Treaties in 1947. It’s not like this is the first fight against Nazzies.”
Of course it can be. It remains to be seen if that is what we’ll do in the end, though. I think this understanding of denazification would be basically impossible to impose effectively without an occupation, which is what it took the last time. Perhaps that’s how it will end this time as well, but there are still lingering doubts about our willingness to take over the entire country, with a puppet government or otherwise.
Denazification is more politically useful as a vague and ambiguous concept, though – that way we can claim to have accomplished it without actually going to the trouble, if that’s what we decide.
For my fellow insomniacs: digging through the JFK Assassination archive latest dump:
I don’t think the key to unlock the mystery is going to be found, but lots of fascinating stuff, everything from tales of exfiltration attempts gone south, to details on how the Mexico City telephone system was wiretapped, stuff on Operation Mongoose, Nosenko, one document that detailed how a certain unnamed head of state wanted to have a good time such that our loyal spooks sought to get them hooked up with women who would not represent a threat to national Security – but things got tricky when it turned out the the Arab dignitary had fallen for a Jewess!
My favorite is this one, where a Vietnamese Consul General stationed in Singapore in May 1963 forecasts the end of the Diem regime.
https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2025/0318/176-10036-10099.pdf”
And my favorite quote: “Cuban funding of Latin American subversive activities is easy to ascertain and hard to document.”
Reading Patrick Lancaster’s substack report from inside Sudzha today, I think there is a lot of underestimating of continuing UAF capabilities to at least slow down any advances by the RF. I hear comments endlessly about the coming collapse of the UAF, it seems for well over 12 months. its still not happened.
I expect the RF to advance for as long as drones hit the motherland, but this could still take years. They are dealing with a terrorist State, it not easy.
Yeah, my barometer to how long the war’s going to take is Kiev’s McDonalds, like why are they still operating normally? When Western businesses start fleeing en masse, I’ll believe that the end game is near, but we’ve just passed the third anniversary of the war, and Russia has yet to secure the 4 oblasts …. All this talk about not striking each other’s energy infrastructure just seems weird to me because at this point in the game, there should not have been anything left in Ukraine for Russia to strike. Also remember all the talk about Russia’s artillery outnumbering Ukraine’s by 7 to 1? Putin should commission Obi Wan Kenobi to check out the rumors that Zelensky has access to a clone army.
If you think that Russian military actions are guided by the desire to secure 4 oblasts, then you have not been paying attenition to the whole war of attrition talk. Geography also says that they are more likely to get to western outskirts of KIev than western outskirts of Zaporozhie city.