Excellent question. My WAGs are as follows, in order of most to least likely.
Ukraine keeps having conventional victories on the battlefield, and eventually liberate all of the currently occupied areas in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk, and Donetsk oblasts (plus or minus Crimea - the overall outcome will be very similar). Russia keeps launching attacks from their own territory until they “run out of meat for the meat grinder.” At some point a coup is launched against Putin with the new government settling for peace.
The Ukrainian counterattacks eventually bog down and we end up with a WWI style trench warfare. NATO starts to question the ongoing supply of weapons, and Ukraine is forced to settle for keeping whatever areas they have liberated while Russia gets to keep the rest.
Nuclear armageddon.
Russia manages to conquer all of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk, and Donetsk oblasts. Putin declares a victory.
Russia conquers the above noted areas plus more, but not all of Ukraine, then declares victory.
Well, the Belgorod is supposed to be carrying up to six Poseidon torpedos, a nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed underwater drone thought to be capable of traveling thousands of miles underway before detonating off the coast and causing a radioactive tsunami.
Russia has suffered significant losses in two of the four regions since Friday, when Putin signed treaties to incorporate them into Russia by force, with Russian officials saying their forces were “regrouping”.
“Perhaps it will confuse them if we run away more!”
I’m totally with you on this. I’m glad the Ukrainians are winning, and given what they did to the Ukrainian populace it’s clear that some of the Russian troops are right bastards who deserve bad things to happen to them. But most of the Russian troops didn’t volunteer to be part of a crime against humanity, and are just trying to get through the day without getting killed. That is the bad thing about war. Even the “good guys” winning comes at a cost to mankind. Fuck Putin for making it so that having that Russian soldier being in that position is a “good thing”.
I just saw a video over on TikTok made by a Russian rapper who refused to be sent to kill. He explains, with a quivering voice, that he will not kill and he has no right to pull a trigger in an unjust war. He ends by saying he can choose between prison, becoming canon fodder or deciding for himself the way he dies.
I followed with a quick Google search, he jumped off a building. He was 27 years old. Poor lad.
Apparently the first trials of those refusing to sign their mobilisation papers are also starting.
I do hope such forms of resistance will eventually make a difference. Others will see their resistance and reports such as that Telegram conversation will seep through more and more. Suicides, trials and protests. It can’t be sustainable for the regime. But very sad for poor, frightened boys who have been let down by those they believed in. They’re paying with their lives and the debt was not theirs.
It’s always been more of a grouping than an identity, similar to Italy and its city-states. There’s no real reason that Austria and the Netherlands wouldn’t have been just as comfortable inside Germany as the all the other regions of it are. And, likewise, no reason that the country couldn’t have been comfortably split out into a bunch of smaller nations.
The parallels between Putin and Hitler are striking
Revanchism - Check.
Oppresion and scapegoating of a minority - Check.
Obsession with recovering “lost” territory - Check.
however I think that dwelling on them is counterproductive, it’s better to interpret Putin’s actions on their own than thinking of him as a second Hitler, history will be the judge of that in 10 or 20 years.
Making comparisons to Nazi war strategies is, potentially, apt. Making comparisons to Nazi domestic policies involving the Holocaust is deeply offensive. I’m Jewish. If you’re not then you don’t have the privilege to tell me how I should feel about this.