This is about as wrong as it is possible to be on this topic. The first significant Russian advance was re-taking Rostov in 1941. Then the counter-attack around Moscow in that same year and early 1942.
I could go on for pages, but enough of this hijack.
Remind me; who was President in 2022, and how much aid did Ukraine get that year?
If Trump is President in 2025 how much aid will Ukraine get? Ukraine NEEDS that aid.
The USSR was on the offensive for about half the war, and initially was launching offensives against a Germany army that was still extremely big, strong, and far from doomed. Kursk, almost precisely halfway through the Eastern War, was the last real German offensive. Russia launched an enormous offensive in August 1943, even while Kursk was still being fought, and was never on the defensive after that.
When the Ukrainians have zero artillery and zero small arms ammo, even the mostly useless Russian army can drive forward across the undefended country. Farmers with a rifle and few rounds each are not actually an effective local defense force, various US 2A fever dreams notwithstanding.
Russia gained more territory than Ukraine took back in 2023.
I meant that Russia had little offensive success until Germany was nearly doomed.
Yes, it will be harder for Ukraine if Trump wins. That doesn’t mean it will suddenly become easy for the rotten and incompetent Putin regime, and it notably doesn’t mean that Ukraine will stop receiving aid. It may stop receiving aid from the US, but Europe and other allies may step up to fill the gap, and if not, I find it highly unlikely that they will stop delivering aid as well.
We’re not the only ones sending ammo.
I’m surprised there’s still so much doom and gloom out there. I can’t imagine why anyone would have confidence in this Russian military to succeed in any large endeavor after the last two years.
Russia took territory earlier in '23, and Ukraine regained more than half of that in their summer offensive. It wasn’t as successful as they hoped, but Ukraine has still had much more recent success that Russia (especially against naval forces in Crimea).
I’ll amend this after further research - Russia had little success in WWII until Germany was nearly doomed, but it’s sort of prophetic because Germany likely contributed to their own doom by trying to invade the Soviet Union. And the turn was sooner than I realized - Germany’s maximum extent in the east was in 1942, not '44 like I thought.
I think the reason for the doom and gloom is realizing that Russia has all the intelligence (lack thereof) of a Zerg rush.
I used to be a Ukraine optimist and now I’ve come over to the gloom side as well. Russia has clearly demonstrated that they’re determined to commit economic suicide. All the sanctions and measures taken to deter Russia were clearly based off of Western projection; i.e., Westerners thinking, “If I were Putin, I’d call it quits,” but that’s not how it is - Putin clearly thinks differently than we do. And if Russia/Putin is fully determined to go all-in on national economy suicide, unfortunately, they do have the means to make this war drag on very long and potentially even overrun Ukraine in the long run if Western aid stops.
So now that Russia has demonstrated itself to be a 140-million-strong swarm of vodka-drinking, life-discarding Dorylus Gribodoi army ants, Ukraine can only win this war of attrition if it has the resources of the West behind its back. And the West, which has a combined GDP 40x larger than Russia’s, could certainly do it with ease - but unfortunately, once right-wingers learned that a Ukraine defeat = liberal tears and owning the libs, they became hard-set dug-in against helping Ukraine.
I’m still hopeful that Ukraine can hold on and outlast Russia. There are signs that the vital land bridge supplying Crimea can be cut by Ukraine.
I linked a old 2015 article. It speculated that Russia had to take and hold Mariupol. Russia has done that since the article was published.
But the strategic importance hasn’t changed. Ukraine has to take back control of that area.
The actual Kerch Strait Bridge is always vulnerable to attack. Russia could be left with very limited ways to supply Crimea or its troops in the Mariupol area.
Ukraine has opportunities to disrupt an important part of Russa’s occupation.
I doubt Russia would ever totally withdraw from Donbas. They continue to try and expand control of that area.
The final outcome will satisfy neither side. I still expect Ukraine to win back significant territory. It will be at a high cost.
A weakened Russian military should stabilize the region for awhile.
It is frustrating that the Russians can’t be fully defeated. That’s entirely by Western design. Ukraine has always been restricted by the types of weapons provided. They need longer range missiles to attack Mariupol. The lack of a effective Ukrainian air force is a big problem.
Finally there is the lack of pressure on the Russian people to end this war. Attacks deep inside Russia are considered too dangerous. I agree that it could trigger a extremely dangerous escalation. Without civilian pressure, Putin and the Russian government can wage war for a very long time.
The problem is that Russia wants all of Ukraine, and Russia violates every peace treaty it signs. So any outcome that does not see Ukraine join NATO will definitely set the state for another Russo-Ukraine war (at a minimum).
However, Ukraine can’t join NATO while the “border dispute” with Russia is ongoing.
That’s why I only really see 3 outcomes here:
Options 1&2 are intolerably bitter pills for both Ukraine and Russia. This is an existential matter for Putin and Russia; if any part of Ukraine joins NATO then this is the death knell of the imperialist cause that Putin (and really Russia) base their legitimacy on. Ukraine as a country could survive loss of these territories, but with so much blood spilled, I’m not sure they could ever find the will to give them up peacefully.
Option 3 may be on the table at any point. Americans and especially Democrats in an election year are always up for being bamboozled into some opaque and convoluted “peace and security framework” that kicks the can down the road a few more years. Joe Biden shores up his election-year chances by mediating a bullshit plan that everyone knows Russia will abrogate. Ukraine joins the EU but not NATO. All parties immediately begin a race to prepare for the second Russo-Ukrainian war, preparations which will involve a Ukranian long-range bomber and nuclear weapons program.
While join NATO is the obvious response, I would imagine it would be equally effective to sign separate but similar joint defense treaties with the US, France, Germany, Britain, etc, individually. They didn’t join NATO, they signed defense treaties with many of the same countries.
So the option 4 I see would be: Ukraine gives up certain territories in exchange for a peace agreement. We expect Russia to eventually violate this, but not immediately since they need time to recover. Then Ukraine quietly negotiates individual defensive pacts with various countries and promptly announces them. I mean, NATO is not the only mutual defense treaty there has ever been or there could be, after all. At this point, there’s very little difference between whether Ukraine is in NATO or not; they would be defended by many of the same countries, and therefore Russia is equally unlikely to attack them.
Overall I agree with your post and the tweak offered by @Mnemnosyne just above.
As to this bit I’d also tweak:
That’s all 100% true. Under Putin. He, like all leaders, is only temporary on a long enough timescale.
A peace treaty now that held past Putin’s expiration date affords an opportunity to be shored up further later.
Separately from the above, the timeline for Russia to recover its armed forces to take a separate post-treaty go at Ukraine is probably 10-20 years. WHich pretty well assures that’ll be post-Putin.
I’m no Pollyanna who thinks some nice guy will be the next Russian leader. It’ll be a snarling anti-Western asshole for sure. But that guy (it will be a guy) will owe different favors to different constituencies and may well find leaving this quagmire aside serves his goals just fine.
If Russia remains Tsarist-ish for the next 300 years, then yes, there will be more border wars regardless of treaties or defensive organizations. The whole Western goal is, or ought to be, preventing them from wrecking the whole planet until they come to their senses or our own side collapses.
The politics of this seem very problematic. NATO is already in a fragile state, and for the key members to enter into a separate alliance might stretch it to a breaking point.
This might actually not a bad thing, as NATO is intended as a counter-Russian defensive alliance, and we have NATO members such as Turkey, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia who are behaving at best as neutral parties, and in reality appear to be aiding Russia at times.
I am not geopolitically savvy enough to foresee the implications of this, but it seems like the future of European defense may be a new anti-Russia alliance anchored by the US, Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltics (and of course any other country that demonstrates ability and interest in being full, active participants, none of this half-ass foot-dragging BS we see from bad actors like Hungary and Slovakia).
But I suspect that the reason we put all our eggs in the NATO basket is that Russia has done such a highly effective job of fomenting corruption, isolationism, and mistrust, that clinging to NATO is the best hope of maintaining the current international security order. Dissolving NATO and re-rolling a new European alliance might go well, it sounds appealing to me, but the risks are immense.
This is why Russia has always demanding Ukraine disarm and commit to “neutrality,” which are euphemisms for “allow themselves to be invaded again in a few years.”
If Ukraine is to surrender the Donbass, the chip they must get in return is they can join NATO or other military alliances. NOTHING else could possibly be acceptable to them, because anything else is an invitation for Russia to invade again in 2025. Of course, Russia has ALREADY signed treaties to that effect, which they broke, so immediate NATO membership is really a necessity.
Yeah. That will be an extremely bitter pill to swallow for Ukraine, but I’m not even sure Russia can live with it. The other outcome I forgot to mention is that Russia just keeps grinding away at Ukraine’s border in bits and pieces. Not with the purpose of gaining territory, but to keep the “border dispute” sufficiently active enough to make NATO membership a non-possibility for Ukraine.
Personally I think that’s the likeliest foreseeable outcome here, just a never-ending Avdiivka/Bakhmut scenario, both sides grinding away at each other, unable to make progress and absolutely unwilling to quit. I just can’t see Russia ever allowing the situation to get quiet enough for Ukraine to be a viable candidate for NATO.
Another wildcard scenario: Biden wins the US election handily and sees fit to break the logjam of effective weapons to Ukraine. 2025 sees Ukraine receiving a flood of mortar rounds, drones, ATACMS, F-16s, we break out all the mothballed Bradleys that are scheduled for destruction. Ukraine wins. That’s the ideal scenario, it’s what I want to see most, but it seems like such a longshot with the US political situation as screwed as it is.
Russia will have fewer men available in 20 years than they do now. Even after taking some 70,000-100,000 KIA in this war, and three times that wounded, Russia is in the early stages of demographic collapse. Their birth rate has fallen to below 1.5. Their life expectancy is dropping even if you discount KIAs. Russia does get immigrants, mostly from former USSR republics, but their net immigration just isn’t anywhere near enough to forestall collapse; I think they net something like 150,000 people a year.
They will have fewer military age males in 2044 than they do now even if the war were to end this afternoon, and may not have a sufficient number of working age people for the state to remain a coherent, functioning government. There’s a reason they’re desperate to expand now.
That might be a reason they’ve kidnapped all those Ukrainian children and are trying to reeducate them into good little Russians.
Really, this war will be won or lost in the US election this year. If Trump wins, Ukraine is doomed. If any other Republican wins, Ukraine is probably doomed, but not certainly doomed. If Biden wins, he’ll stay the course as has been set, and Ukraine will fight on until the cost to Russia finally gets too high.
I agree 99%.
The US staying supportive in both words and materiel in a totally necessary, but well short of sufficient, condition for Ukraine to prevail.
Populists, nationalists, explicitly pro-Russianists, or pacifists taking power or setting the narratives in other key countries could still screw Ukraine even if the USA stayed supportive.
I do agree fully w your predictions ref the 2024 US elections.