Ukraine is toast.
Another thing that hasn’t been mentioned is the intelligence support that the US has been giving Ukraine. Actually pinning this down is of course difficult since by its nature its not publicized but I think that its pretty clear that the US has been telling Ukraine where might good place to send those drones an Himars.
Trump will presumably cut off that sharing, and Europe won’t be able to fill in the gap. Of known military satellites this site says the US has 247 vs about 45 for all of Europe). Worse if he can find enough high level intellegence people who are loyal enough not to spill the beans, he could reverse it and start providing intelligence to Russia.
Well, the US has a much larger area that it would be directing their satellites against, whereas Europe has a much more narrow scope, generally. I’m not saying that they’d be equal, but they may be able to mostly fill the gap.
Russia has no reason to stop at Donbass if Trump pulls support. They’ll conquer it. They may leave a Quisling in charge of the western part of the country.
Putin’s intentions are genocidal. All Trump has to do is tell Putin he won’t object to him using nuclear weapons, and Putin can just kill most of the Ukrainian population that way. Even his ruined army can hunt down the survivors.
Putin need not take the risk of using nuclear weapons - which, even with his muppet in the White House, could result in a global panic and nuclear war at worst, and total isolation and irradiation of his new province at best - and he will not do so. If Ukraine’s material support dries up their ability to defend themselves from conventional attack will decline to the point that Russian victory is inevitable within months.
One wrinkle in the story is the question of whether Trump will back out of NATO. There has been a persistent narrative that Russian aggression is merely a reaction to NATO expansion, and more concretely, due to fears of US military presence:
Why does Russia oppose NATO enlargement? For the simple reason that Russia does not accept the U.S. military on its 2,300 km border with Ukraine in the Black Sea region. Russia does not appreciate the U.S. placement of Aegis missiles in Poland and Romania after the U.S. unilaterally abandoned the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty.
So, should the US withdraw from NATO (provided Trump is actually able to do so, which I understand there’s controversy about), then according to that narrative, the chief reason for the Kremlin’s ‘special military operation’ will be resolved, and Russia should withdraw. Meaning we might see this actually put to the test.
I don’t expect it’ll do much good for Ukraine, though.
Russian propaganda does tend to be pretty persistent, yes.
Of course, it’s also utter horseshit. Putin invaded Ukraine because he is aggressively expansionist and because he views former Soviet states - especially ones like Ukraine, with cultural ties to Russia - as his rightful subjects.
At the risk of fighting the hypothetical, it’s a moot point since Congress and Biden already passed and signed legislation that prevents any U.S. president now or in the future from withdrawing the United States from NATO without explicit Senate approval (2/3 majority needed, I believe), and the Senate would never agree to such a withdrawal.
But as Babale pointed out, this tale (“NATO makes me feel unsafe, so I must invade”) is one of Russia’s favorite playing-victim tactics, and we can be sure that if America ever did leave NATO, Russia would simply be further emboldened with glee to conquer even more land.
That’s what I alluded to with my comment about controversy regarding Trump’s ability to pull out of NATO. As far as I understand it, it’s not all that clear-cut:
Legal experts warn that Trump could try to sidestep Congress’s NATO guardrail, citing presidential authority over foreign policy — an approach he used before to bypass congressional restrictions on treaty withdrawal.
Now, I think that overall, the US backing out of NATO is probably… not great, but I would be interested whether it makes any dent regarding the ‘poking the bear’-narrative for Russia’s Ukrainian adventure.
By the way, this link goes to a Jeffrey Sachs blog.
Guess who else is a big Sachs fan:
There’s a reason this narrative won’t go away, and it has very little to do with the truth of the narrative. The Pro Russian Propaganda Machine is pushing it, hard.
While I’m not holding my breath with Trump as president, there are Republicans in Congress who voted for Ukraine aid.
There was a 79-18 Senate vote in April, which on one hand provided aid not just to Ukraine, but Israel, Gaza, Taiwan, and others. But on the other hand, the Senate combined and voted on four bills that came out of the majority-GOP Mike Johnson-led House.
Congressional voting coming out that way is, of course, not guaranteed with Trump rather than Biden in the White House. But Ukraine aid isn’t the Inflation Reduction Act, which passed on entirely partisan lines. The GOP majority in the Senate, and likely the House, is slim and susceptible to only a few “defections”. And while Trump will be able to veto whatever comes out of Congress with no reasonable prospect of override, bundling something disfavored in a bill with a bunch of favored stuff (“You can’t veto/vote down X without vetoing/voting down Y & Z!”) is definitely a thing in politics.
Yes, but will they do that now?
Whether we like it or not, Trump has won a decisive victory here. Possibly the biggest US election victory any of us have ever seen. A whole lot of the congress were already bowing to his demands, how many will decide to oppose him, after seeing what he’s pulled off here?
Opposing Trump will be political suicide for any of these people, for the foreseeable future. Until Trump does something bad enough that even Trump voters can see how bad it is, he’ll have free rein.
The useful idiots who parrot this do not, in at least 90% of cases I’ve seen, know that Ukraine wasn’t in NATO and that there wasn’t any plan for them to be.
You would have to be remarkably young for that to be true.
Why wouldn’t Ukraine launch a massive drone/missile/air attack deep inside Russia in the final days of the Biden administration? What do they have to lose? Should they?
- If Trump cuts off all arms transfers to the Ukraine (or NATO) Ukraine has no weapons left.
- Russia has nukes. Ukraine doesn’t.
What the fuck are you talking about?
Ukraine can only succeed with EU support. There is no question Trump will cut them off. Hoarding weapons does them no good. They are better off striking Russia’s war machine deep inside Russia, and perhaps damage their offensive capability. They cannot survive a war of attrition.
Again, Russia has nukes. Ukraine doesn’t.
Nukes will only make the ashes of Kiev bounce a little higher.