Ukraine can’t win the war. But it can potentially hold off while Russia gets hurt by sanction after sanction after sanction, because the Russian billionaires normally happy to let Putin do whatever he wants as long as it makes them money will not sit idly by indefinitely and watch millions upon millions be lost to them for this vanity project.
What that timeframe is, I have no idea. But it’s the only path to victory I can think of.
Imho the Ukraine military has a limited time they can defend the country. Losses will add up and their supplies will run low. The cities will get surrounded and people begin to starve.
International pressure and sanctions are Ukraine’s only hope. Russia’s economy will suffer greatly. They won’t be able to replace their missiles and other equipment.
Can Ukraine’s military hold out long enough? Give sanctions enough time to work?
Possession is nine-tenths of the Law. Removing a pro Russian puppet government would be very difficult.
I can’t seem to find this quote I remember from Vietnam, but it seems to apply to Ukraine:
“We don’t have to win. All we have to do is not lose.”
My sister was wondering if they get to declare captured Russians as dependents,.
Was it Kissinger? “In the process, we lost sight of one of the cardinal maxims of guerrilla war: the guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win.”
Maybe. ISTR it coming from a Vietnamese leader, but I could be transposing Kissinger’s comment.
Ukrainian numbers can be summarily dismissed. Put it bluntly, they are propaganda, made to raise morale. I suspect their internal numbers are a lot more conservative.
Russian ones are interesting. Deaths are difficult to hide, so some of the claims that the real toll must be ten times higher can be ignored.
The really interesting bit is the WIA. Russians count casualties differently from western militaries, they divide wounded into recoverable and irrecoverable, the former are those who are expected to return to action after convalescence, the latter who are expected to no longer be able to serve.
I wonder what does the WIA number refer to? Maybe it’s only irrecoverable. That would lead to fudging ability, only counts KIA as those who are directly killed on the battlefield, those who die after making it fo a hospital can be placed in the WIA column and you can “forget” to include recoverable in your WIA list
They don’t have one, basically, is the answer to your question. That said, the North Vietnamese really didn’t have a realistic path to victory either, yet they still won in the end. Essentially, Ukraine has to hope that internal pressures increase in Russia such that their population, or at least top leadership and oligarchs revolt against Putin, or at a minimum force him into backing down. Assuming the latter, the best they can probably hope for right now is some sort of negotiated peace where they have to give up claim to Crimea and the breakaway regions…and depending on how strong Russia’s position is when this is being settled, possible at least partial demilitarization of their military and a guarantee that they will never join NATO. Their realistic options, unfortunately, go down from there.
But, as I said, being realistic doesn’t mean that is what has to happen or what will happen. It’s possible that fault lines in Russia will come to a head, that the Russian people will be unhappy enough that continuing this war will further fracture Russia such that Putin et al are seriously worried about their continued grip on the country, and that they will back down…or, that someone will shoot Putin and there will be some sort of coup. I don’t think those are high probability events, but they could happen, and if so it could make a huge difference for Ukraine.
I don’t think that many would consider this a realistic end game.
The best they can hope for is to inflict heavy losses on the Russians, and after the takeover is complete, revert to an effective insurgency campaign, supported by the citizens. Hit and run attacks. Sabotage. Even Babas in head scarves cursing at the Russian troops.
Want to get local food for troops instead of getting it in via supply lines that keep getting blown up? Better check all the food carefully, because some of the Ukraine ciitzens preparing it are going to chuck in some poison at some point.
Unless the Russians are prepared to start civilian executions and concentration camps, they may be able to militarily take Ukraine, but they cannot hold the country.
Meanwhile, international sanctions build and get worse. When was the last time Switzerland -SWITZERLAND! Joined in freezing accounts?
I’m sure Russian citizens can survive. But they have gotten used to Western goodies. These will be gone.
I’d actually be more interested in the equipment losses, to be honest. Russia can ill afford a lot of equipment losses in some categories anyway, so I wonder what they have been so far. As you and others have said, I wouldn’t trust the Ukrainian numbers, and while I’m sure Russia has been or is fudging the numbers somewhat, they are going to be closer to reality than the Ukrainian numbers. This isn’t to say Ukraine is exaggerating, just that I doubt in the chaos of what’s happening, especially with the disparate groups fighting and probably reporting contact and deaths, that they could possibly have anything like an accurate count, while the Russians probably at least have an idea of their own losses so far.
I think even the losses they are admitting to shows a picture different than the one they seem to be trying to portray at home or to a global audience.
No kidding.
Russia: “Say, we’re currently getting our asses handed to us, so here’s a deal - you guys disarm, OK?”
I think the idea that Russia is getting its ass handed to it is… not a realistic assessment. They are suffering setbacks, for sure, but right now according to the NY Times:
It’s happening very slowly, but the capture of Kyiv by Russian forces seems inevitable to my (untrained) eyes.
This is probably the biggest thing on your list. The link-up between Crimea, the breakaway regions, and Russia itself seems to be nearly complete. This is going to free up a bunch of Russian assets as well as create that corridor Russia wants to link Crimea with its own…and this includes the breakaway regions of Ukraine…territory.
I agree, the idea that Ukraine is winning this and kicking the Russian’s asses is way overplayed. This isn’t to take anything away from the folks fighting for Ukriane, just folks need to keep it real.
Certainly if this was a battle of equals, you’d be correct. However, this is more a David and Goliath situation, and Ukraine is doing much, much better than anyone (including the Russians) expected.
Perhaps no ass-handing at the moment. But if this continues for much longer, the closer we get to Putin holding his ass in his hands.
Defending a corridor is easy if you’re talking something like a hallway, with the enemies coming down it at you one-by-one. That’s not the situation, after Russia gets this corridor set up.
I don’t know that the Ukraine government will relish the idea of sieging a city (let alone their own city), but the value of the corridor is its use for roads and rails that extend outside of the cities and the Russians will need to build some fairly tall walls to prevent those from getting destroyed every other week. In the meanwhile, they’ll have to guard that whole length and not leave any weak points.
I don’t know that they’ll be all that free.
It’s not about defending it, it’s about once they are able to link up that will free up a lot of the troops and other assets they are currently using to do this task. No, it’s not like a tower defense game where the enemies will come down a single corridor at you and you can defend that, shooting at each one at a time. In fact, this corridor goes west to east from Crimea to Russia through the breakaway territories and through several still held Ukrainian cities. But, I’ve been watching the spread of the red, so to speak, and it’s clear that Russia is making slow but steady progress on linking up.
ETA: This is really more on the strategic level, as this was pretty obviously one of Russia and Putin’s war goals, to be able to have a land bridge between Crimea and Russian territory.
I agree, and all credit to the Ukrainians; they are fighting their guts out, it seems. But “better than expected” does not necessarily = “good” or “winning” or handing anyone’s ass to anyone. I think we here in the West want the Ukrainians to win so badly sometimes it affects our judgment of what is really happening over there, which is - based on what I am reading (mostly in the NY Times) - slow, painful but steady advancement by Russian troops toward major cities and strategic targets, with escalating violence and civilian casualties.
On a more positive side, Ukraine continues to receive a steady supply of armaments from the West. These are not always widely reported and some may indeed be covert, so there may be more of these than we know. But sources say the US delivered hundreds of Stinger anti-aircraft missiles over the last few days, with over 200 on Monday alone. Germany, which until recently has refrained from shipping lethal weapons to Ukraine, announced they would deliver 1000 anti-tank weapons and 500 more Stinger missiles. The Baltic countries and many other western nations are also sending weapons.
Yeah, once that whole Cold War thing was over, we thought that was that.
interesting way to think of it: Ukraine is demilitarizing the russians for us … there is no way in hell the .ru can rebuild what they lost/lose - within the next few years …
of course it really seems that .ru is sending their scrap-metal-piles into this war … but if the local farmer keep picking up tanks and such at this pace it still will help some