I predict that the combat phase of the Russo-Ukrainian war will end this year.
Why? Several reasons increase the likelihood:
Russia has lost the vast majority of their pre-war stockpile of Soviet armored vehicles. We can confirm this through a combination of satellite imagery of Soviet mothball storage sites and confirmed drone kills via video footage. Tanks and APCs haven’t yet been completely rendered obsolete by drones. They do still have a role to play in transporting troops to battle areas and supporting infantry operations. The number of tanks and APCs involved in Russian offensive operations has declined dramatically the last several months. Russia has struggled to adapt to the lack of hardware partly by replacing APCs with motorcycles or golf carts during inclement weather and also by attempting low level infantry infiltration tactics. Neither is as effective as having armored vehicles.
Progress in the battle at the front appears to have largely halted. The rate of Russian advance has been very slow and over the past four years Russia has only managed to capture an additional ~1% of Ukrainian territory at what amounts to an extremely high cost. This is classic attrition warfare. Over the past six months that rate of advance has slowed to even below WW1 levels, and last month Ukraine actually took more territory back than they lost. The past two months Ukraine has also managed to score more confirmed drone kills on soldiers than Russian recruitment levels are able to achieve, even by offering huge enlistment bonuses.
Economically, Russia has been engaged in heroic levels of cooking their financial books throughout much of the conflict. The official inflation figures appear to be much at odds with posts seen posted on social media from everyday Russians complaining about how they can no longer afford food like they did prior to the invasion. The Kremlin has responded to this by making social media posts illegal that complain about rising costs or shortages of goods on shelves. Figures about oil and petroleum products production and sales (the principle source of tax revenue) are now considered secret and no longer available to the public or international financial markets. Russia’s financial reserves are rapidly depleting. They’re currently selling gold from their national reserves in order to fund their significant budget deficits. In developed Western countries we tend not to see federal budget deficits as being much of a big deal because banks are happy to buy our debt - no country on earth is looking to buy debt in rubles off a heavily sanctioned economy like Russia’s. There are other economic indicators, such as massive increases in debt * defaults, * massive labor shortages, the * economy is contracting. Ukraine has dealt some very shrewd blows recently by conducting a large number of long range strikes on Russian oil refining, storage, pumping, and port facilities. The damage done will impact their petroleum industry for years to come even if the war ended tomorrow.
Politically, Russia has sustained a series of political setbacks affecting a number of ‘client’ states since the war began including: Syria, Mali, Venezuela, and Hungary. Russia has seen its influence internationally decline significantly. One way in which this can be measured is by the dramatic * decrease in arms sales that’s occurred. During this same time, NATO has expanded to add Finland and Sweden to their ranks. Perhaps the most significant recent political development was when the EU approved a more than * 90 billion Euro loan to Ukraine which will essentially give Ukraine the freedom to prosecute the war for about another two years (that Russia does not appear to have - see economy)
Sergei Lavrov has been deployed to conduct “peace negotiations” that have essentially gone nowhere for years for the simple reason that Putin has had no interest in making peace. Recent developments, however, are appearing to suggest a shift in Putin’s narrative. Yesterday he announced the war may be “soon coming to an end”. Granted, that’s ambiguous as can be, but that’s the first time he’s made any kind of statement suggesting Russia would stop at anything short of the complete conquest of Ukraine (which if you recall was how it all got started). He appears to be engaged in preparing his domestic audience for some kind of peace deal. Boasting about Russia standing up to the West, is a subtle way of shifting the goalposts. It paints the picture that Russia has all the while been engaged in a defensive conflict and that they are the victims, despite the fact that he was the one that ordered a surprise invasion over four years ago. He appears to be shifting to a narrative where Russia merely surviving this war is being sold to the Russian public as a victory. If so, this bodes well for Ukraine.
Any predictions on when you think the war will end and what might precipitate it?
I think it depends on large part on oil prices. The longer the Iran-US-Israel conflict continues, the longer runway Russia has to keep contesting Ukraine. That conflict will end only when Iran wants it to end, and Iran is in cahoots with Russia, so we can expect it to go quite a while.
The war will continue as long as Russia wants to keep fighting and Ukraine still has the ability to defend itself. If it’s a war of attrition, Russia has 144 million people compared to Ukraine’s 39 million which doesn’t bode well for Ukraine. However, as long as Ukraine continues to get weapons and funding from friendly countries it can hold out and perhaps even make progress recovering territory it has lost to Russia, but in the long run, assuming Putin continues to lead Russia, and Russia doesn’t collapse for one reason or another, unfortunately, Ukraine is doomed to lose. My family originated in Ukraine, but I never got a chance to visit. I now wish I had.
As valid as every one of the OP @Cardigan’s point were, they in effect assume a rational Russian calculation of national self interest.
Russia can fight to the last Ukrainian then run out of living people themselves to occupy the deserted rubble. And as long as Putin is stealing his 10%, that looks like a win … to Putin.
Drives me nuts. Both Russia and the US are in wars that they started. And they want ‘Peace Negotiations’
If my neighbor started shooting at me out of the blue and I rightfully defended myself. They then want a peace negotiation. This is not a peace negotiation. Not at all.
We are all quite screwed by these nihlist mad men.
I still don’t understand why Russia hasn’t resorted to use of nukes yet. Ukraine isn’t in NATO, so there’s no need to worry about the NATO nuke umbrella, and the consequences of a conventional-war defeat for Putin could be dire.
Anyhow, I predict a gradual solidifying of existing battle lines, Putin calling it a day, warning Ukraine that any renewed offensive will be considered a new war, and an exhausted Ukraine unhappily accepts and decides to call it an end while still arming up to prepare for defending against a future invasion.
What does this gain them and what would the consequences of nuke use be?
There is zero chance that Ukraine does a full scale invasion of Russia and threatens Putin’s physical security. Unless Russia does something that forces Ukraine’s supporters to get more directly involved.
Anyway, as to the OP I think Russia has to decide if they can actually take Donetsk and Luhansk completely. Kherson and Zaporizhzhia are out of the question, but if they can get to the borders of the former two and dig in that would be a big boost to their eventual full annexation of that territory.
I imagine they won’t reach the borders or decide it’s futile until at least 2027, but who knows.
How would nukes help? Many non-US adversaries of Russia have nukes (UK and France, most prominently). Nukes don’t really help conquer a country – and Russia wants to conquer Ukraine. I suppose he could threaten to nuke unless they surrender… but what happens if Ukraine calls their bluff (as they almost certainly would)? Suppose they nuke Kiev. You think that would prompt Ukraine to surrender, or just harden their will to fight? And it would greatly increase the chance of bringing in active military assistance from Poland and other Ukrainian neighbors with a history of being under Russia’s thumb.
It causes more problems for Russia than it solves. And shuffles a huge wildcard into the deck. Even psychopaths want predictable outcomes. Nuclear warfare is the antithesis of predictable.
It kills Ukrainians, and the Russian intentions have been genocidal from the start. Putin wants there to no longer be any such thing as a “Ukrainian”. The Russians have been systematically looting & destroying museums, seeking out & killing teachers, burning textbooks, the mass graves, and otherwise trying to erase Ukraine as a distinct culture from existence. This is a war of genocide, not territory or profit.
As for why he hasn’t yet used nukes, two possible reasons its that Putin worries about the international consequences, and another is that he fears that there’s a good chance the nuke won’t actually work given how bad their military maintenance is. Dropping a nuke on Kiev and the result being an easily identified nuclear weapon that failed to go off would cause all sorts of issues, including greatly weakening Russia’s nuclear deterrent.
If Putin used tactical nukes, I think that might drag certain western European powers into the war, some of whom also have nukes, and perhaps even the US, depending on the whims of the current president, and that would create a huge mess for Putin on Russia’s border that he doesn’t want to deal with. Putin could threaten to use nukes, but as mentioned already, Ukraine would simply call his bluff.
The only sane response from any nation to any other nation making a nuclear first strike is to use all resources at their disposal, including their own nukes if applicable, to completely eliminate that nation’s ability to wage war.
OK, not all nations are sane. But enough of them are, including enough that have nukes, that Putin using nukes would be the end of him.
The Guardian has an article on reasons why Russia might seek an end to the war. Most of the reasons are covered in @Cardigan 's OP, but there is another one that keeps cropping up: Ukraine has become a missile and drone superpower. They’ve been outsourcing their tech to the Middle East.
Russia has a huge shortage of labor (due to conscripts and emigrees) that it is marking bad inflation worse. And there are more reports of Russians speaking out against the war.
It could be that Russia feels the tide is turning and sues for peace this year.
There were reports last week that some EU countries are getting tired of the US’s progress on peace talks and are considering initiating their own. The rumors got shot down quickly; presumably that is a ways off.
FWIW, here is the old thread on Russia using nuclear weapons in Ukraine:
The only way nukes could be an option in this scenario is wiping large cities. Russia would like to own Ukraine, but they’d prefer it to have a functional economy they can also take over.
Battlefield nukes never really were much use except for stopping an overwhelming mass of forces charging through chokepoints (i.e. Red Army through the Fulda gap). Even then it would’ve only been a delay, as maneuver forces can equip and transit contaminated areas.
Should be mentioned that Ukraine has cultural memory of having survived a major Russian-caused nuclear disaster. Nobody wants to go through that again, but they’ve done it once.
