Obviously the EU will support Ukraine, but I doubt it will be enough. What’s going to happen? I doubt Ukraine will fall, but I bet that Donbas will be forever Russian.
The U.S. pulls its military support basically immediately (being defined at the speed of bureaucracy). European military support won’t be enough. Ukraine is forced to cede the territory it’s lost, within a year if not less. Russia turns up the heat on its propaganda and Zelenskyy’s power destabilizes. What’s left of Ukraine joins neither NATO nor the EU for the foreseeable future.
Will Russia hold Kyiv? Odesa? How much of Ukraine will be left? Does it become a puppet state of Russia?
My guess is that if Russia wants to outlast all support for Ukraine it can ultimately keep fighting until there’s an unconditional surrender. Knowing this, Ukraine (and Russia) might be willing to agree to the Russia-friendly cease fire that Putin has wanted when things looked a lot worse for him. Hard to imagine at this point that Ukraine will have the support needed to prevent Russia from taking over the country over the long haul but who knows.
Completely. Next year, Putin has the US as an ally in its bid to reconstitute the Soviet Empire. Moldova will go soon, too.
Ukraine? What’s Ukraine? You must mean Kiev Autonomous Oblast.
There are two possible scenarios That depend a lot on how the rest of the world reacts to the drop in US support.
Scenario 1 is that the world follows America’s lead and also stops supporting Ukraine. in that case Ukraine is pretty fucked. They might be forced to agree to the sort of plan that people like Musk have floated. They’ll have to cede the conquered land to Russia, create a demilitarized zone on the border, and become neutral by treaty. Russia will have to lick its wounds for a while, because this war has been taking a LOT out of their supplies and the Soviet stocks are not a thing that modern day Russia can realistically replenish. But in under a decade, they’ll be restocked and ready to take the rest of Ukraine.
Scenario 2 is that the rest of the world steps up efforts rather than abandoning Ukraine. Europe, especially Germany and France, have been worried about the US becoming an unreliable ally for a while now, even floating ideas like the creation of a European army. If they step up support, and if countries like South Korea decide to start sending weapons, Ukraine will certainly have a much harder go, but they just might survive long enough for Russia to be crippled by economic issues.
South Korea has floated the idea of sending weapons aid in response to North Korea sending troops, so it’s not impossible.
However, both of these scenarios rely on the US continuing to sanction Russia. It occurs to me that if Trump lifts the Russia sanctions, their economy should recover sufficiently to continue the war indefinitely.
Can Trump do that unilaterally? If so, Ukraine is well and truly fucked.
It’s looking like they won control of both the House and the Senate, so there’s essentially no limit on what Trump can do. Biden was stymied by a House that simply wouldn’t pass any legislation, Trump will not have that problem. I expect by the end of January they’ll have a bill on the floor cutting all aid to Ukraine, and lifting sanctions on Russia.
Not to point the finger at all Europeans, but nothing they have done in this war thus far suggests that they’d continue supporting Ukraine with meaningful gusto if the U.S. were to back out. Except for maybe the Poles and Baltic states, but they have limited power.
Say what?
Germany and the UK are both ahead of the US in contributions as a percentage of GDP, and France is only a little behind.
Sure, but the amount they are contributing is nowhere near what Ukraine will need to decisively turn the tide. (In fairness, even America wasn’t giving that much either.)
If Trump pulls America out as expected, there is no reason to believe that French, German, British aid will let Zelensky and Co. gain a victory. It will probably just still be a few Taurus missiles here and few hundred thousand shells there. It will slow down Ukraine’s defeat but not avert it.
No one has given Ukraine what they need to decisively turn the tide, which is why this has been a gruelling war of attrition with the front lines moving at a pace comparable to WWI.
But estimates show that only 1 in 3 Russian artillery shells are now freshly made shells. Most Russian production appears to actually be “refurbishment” of Soviet era ammunition. The remainder of their consumption is imported from North Korea and Iran.
Meanwhile, the Russian economy is in shambles. Interest rates are massively inflated to support the wartime economy, to an unsustainable level.
Russian artillery advantage is down to 3:1, from 8:1. And much of the Ukranian stuff is actually more advanced.
As long as the sanctions remain, Ukraine has a decent chance of holding on long enough for the Russian economy to falter.
However, if the US stops supporting Ukraine, that may give Europe free reign to authorize or even encourage Ukraine to launch long range strikes into Russian territory.
The problem is that Europe is more vulnerable to retaliation from Russia than America is.
If America, even an ocean away and with the world’s largest functional nuclear arsenal was still chicken and afraid of Putin ‘escalating’ things, how will Belgium, Holland, France, Germany, Italy, etc. get the gumption to do so?
Not necessarily. A lot of weapons made in the US, with components from the US, or even that were developed by companies that used US data are subject to ITAR, so the US still had a lot of control.
deleted
Trump will do what Putin wants, so he will probably pull support and encourage Ukraine to give up all the territory it has lost. What is left of Ukraine will hopefully join NATO.
Europe will start spending more on defense since they realize the American people are too dysfunctional and cannot be trusted to elect good leaders.
See? Finally something that’s actually on record about Trump. This sucks for (the) Ukraine. Trump’s never said he’s going to persecute LGBT or cancel Social Security. He’s said a lot of stupid, pandering shit that the electorate has bought and voted for, but despite all of the dumb fear-mongering, this is the thing that bothers me. We need to defeat Russia, and support (the) Ukraine.
I’m even going against my fundamental ideals of not using violence to tax the American people to send it overseas to help other people. As long as the government is taking our money, we need to support (the) Ukraine.
Unless Europe decides to contribute its fair share to support European freedom and autonomy, (the) Ukraine is going to be the largest victim of the Trump presidency.
Shit, I hate Trump, but there’s no credible threat to us. The poor Ukrainians, though.
neither was Hitler
Both “credible” and “us” are working really hard in that sentence.