The problem is, if you say that even with Putin dead, Russia will continue- is that you are saying Ukraine loses.
Can Ukraine conquer Russia? No, Impossible,
Thus under the war will continue even if Putin is gone theory, Ukraine will lose, some day. Sure Ukraine could, with massive help from other nations push Russia back to the Russian border- but according to the dismal “cant win” hypothesis here , that doesnt matter-- Russia will just rearm and come back over and over and over.
But I disagree. Putin has gone insane. If he is gone, Russia will want to end the war- it is too expensive and it is killing too many Russians. Okay, maybe Russia will insist on keeping Crimea or something in the deal- but Russia will want an out.
We know this because people who have grown up in Russian culture or recently come from Russia are confirming it, and again, because Russians prefer a ‘strong’ leader over a fair one. There is some amount of disquiet over how the ‘operation’ has not gone as promised but no broad opposition or public demand to remove Putin or withdraw from Ukraine. And even if there were, the public has little influence over who is ‘elected’ to office in Russia, a reality that should be evident from recent events.
Putin is not well-informed (as a consequence of purging the ranks of anyone who might present him with adverse guidance or information) but he is far from insane. He’s a masterful troll who has managed to confound Western leaders and successfully order command multiple assassinations committed on foreign soil with virtual impunity. He is not and never has been much of a strategic thinker, nor interested in being part of a broader European community, either economically or militarily, and he correctly surmised that NATO would not come to the direct aid of Ukraine. Had the Russian invasion been more effective and cut off or eliminated the government in Kyiv (to be replaced by a puppet regime) there likely would have been some grumbling and posturing but nothing in the way of action. That Ukraine was able to hold out long enough, thanks largely due to a bumbling lack of readiness and maintenance on the part of the Russian military gave NATO countries reason to think that Ukraine was actually a good backstop to prevent Russian ambitions toward the Baltics or Poland, and there has certainly been a calculus of giving Ukraine just enough aid to keep Russia tied up without completely defeating it.
Not only will a hypothetical future Putin be unlikely to retreat from Ukraine, it won’t even make much sense to do so. Right now Putin can blame a conspiracy by NATO for imposing economic sanctions as justification for the war. If Russia retreats and ends the conflict, there is no longer a rationale, on top of which Ukraine (with the backing of European allies) will demand respirations that Russia can’t afford, and a better than even chance that it Ukraine will actually be offered NATO membership, all of which is actually a worse outcome than not having done anything. And no, there is no ‘negotiated settlement’ where Russia gets to keep the Crimea as it will just be seen as a way for Russia to bolster a future conflict. ‘Russia’, either collectively or (especially) its political leadership, doesn’t want an ‘out’, can’t afford a failure, and certainly can’t walk away from Ukraine with less than it went in with without appearing weak and vulnerable to challenge.
So, what to me it appears you are saying is that Ukraine loses. It cant win. No matter what , no matter who is in charge, Russia will just keep attacking. So, Ukraine might as well surrender now, as well as Finland, Poland, etc.
I’m not sure if that’s what @Stranger_On_A_Train intends to argue, but I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion. I think with enough help from the US, Europe, South Korea, and Japan, Ukraine can hold out long enough so that Russia collapses before they complete their conquest. The question is whether or not those countries will provide enough help until we get to that point.
No, that is absolutely not what I’m saying, and please stop making such attributions to me. What I am saying is that regardless of who succeeds Putin, they aren’t going to end the invasion without getting substantial concessions that Ukraine will likely not be willing to offer, nor would they be well advised to do so. Russia will end this conflict when they no longer have the means to continue their occupation, whether this is economic exhaustion, disruption of their logistics to support their front lines, or a fundamental lack of production and supply of ammunition to keep going. Popular opinion, a change in regime, and even economic sanctions are going to have little influence upon this.
FWIW, I vote w Stranger on this one. Russia is a nihilist power. Has been for centuries, and given the rest of what’s going on inside their society there’s no reason to expect that to get better.
The “end state” for Ukraine is akin to the end state in Chechnya, Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan, etc. A “frozen conflict” where destruction and despair stalk the land forever in a free-fire zone for criminals and criminal quasi-government groups. Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine will be a failed state; not functionally part of Ukraine, and not really under ordinary Russia governance either. What little economic activity takes place there will be subsistence level.
“Forever” is a very long time. But IMO the scenario I lay out has at least 30 years to run, and probably 50. Which will be functionally forever for the attention spans of the West and the remaining lifespans of nearly everyone seeing these words.
It might sound bleak, but their chances of outright defeating Russia were always slim. The most realistic path to victory for Ukraine was that Russia gives up and goes home. I remember an interview with a senior Ukrainian commander sometime in 2023 which said something along the lines of “we thought that once we inflict 150.000 casualties they will come to their senses and put an end to this war”. By then the 150.000 mark was long gone.
In February 2022 Russia was outclassing Ukraine by all conceivable metrics. Twice the GDP per capita, three times the populations, more and better weapon systems in any category you can think of, including some that Ukraine had no equivalent of (like cruise missiles and spy satellites), a much more extensive military industry (not to mention that whatever industry Ukraine still had was targeted from day 1). They probably infiltrated the Ukrainian army to some degree (I think that’s how they got across the Dnipro in the first place at the beginning of the invasion), they had the advantage of surprise and free passage through Belarus. If back then someone would have asked me “where the front line would be in 2 years” I would have said “no way they’ll hold for two years, but if they do, most optimistic scenario is that they’re hunkered down behind the Dnipro river”. The fact that the front lines are, for most part, far away from the Dnipro is a really impressive achievement.
The only chance Ukraine ever had was Western support. Which they knew well. And Russia knew it too; as you might remember, the West was quite slow in providing the heavy stuff, falling for the endless Russian “red lines” - “if you send artillery, we’ll start WW3” , “if you send tanks we’ll nuke London”, “HIMARS - nuke Paris”, “jet fighters - nuke the moon”. But, as long as we accept the idea of an independent and free Ukraine with its own armed forces, the only way they’ll get any weaponry is from the West. Where else? Definitely not from Russia or China. So at some point Ukraine would have ended up with western arms, even if the war would have ended in February 2022 (unless fully occupied by Russia, of course).
Maybe it helps if you think of Russia as a true empire. In their minds, what they got their hands on is theirs forever, period. If you look at the map of Russia from 14th century to today, you’ll see a continuous expansion with some temporary setbacks. Most countries around Russia exist today because of those setbacks - Finland, the Baltics, Poland, Romania, and virtually all former SSRs) all got their independence when Russia was weak, and Russia always tried to get back at them when it became strong again (which explains why Sweden and Finland abandoned so quickly their neutrality after February 2022 - they understood that Russia was on an expansion spree once more).
This is nothing unusual as far as empires go - but virtually all other European empires are over this phase. It took two world wars and a few decades of post-colonial wars, but if you go to France, Belgium UK, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and ask people on the street “hey, remember those colonies you used to have and exploit all over the world? Don’t you want them back? Shouldn’t they still be yours?” my bet is that 90% of the answers will be along the lines of “colonialism sucks, we don’t want those lands back and you’re nuts for thinking that we do”. I guess the answer will be very different if you ask the same question in Russia; they see the former soviet lands as theirs. This might be Putin’s war, but Russia is definitely behind him. I think is telling that Putin was most at risk from people who wanted more war, not less.
Putin’s death could end the war, but mostly because that might trigger an internal struggle for power at the top, which might paralyze the army and war industry, not because whoever follows after him would willingly put an end to it.
We must embrace the suck. This is going to be a long war, and as long as the Ukrainians are willing to fight, we should provide them what they need. If we don’t, the war will be indeed much shorter, but Ukraine will be no more.
Totally agree with Dan_ch statements above. In particular, the 2nd half. I would add the state of Alaska to the list of territories that imperial Russia previously owned and now wants back. Putin recently signed a declaration saying that the 1867 sale of Alaska was illegal and should be reversed. The way this was published makes me think this was merely for internal consumption and they aren’t serious but both Putin and other members of their inner circle have openly talked about attacking Transnistria, the Baltic States, and Finland if they are successful in Ukraine.
Yep. All of this, plus acquire atomic weapons. Ukraine has enough technical knowledge to build a gun-type uranium bomb, and even just a few of those would be a deterrent to further Russian incursions.
This is a terrible, terrible idea. More countries—and especially nations already in conflict—proliferating nuclear weapons dramatically increases the likelihood of the application of those weapons for ‘battlefield use’, which in wargaming simulations almost inevitably broadens into a wider strategic conflict and frequently results in global thermonuclear exchange. A conflict where a hypothetically nuclear armed Ukraine elected to use ‘tactical’ weapons to stop a Russian advance or break lines would ‘justify’ a nuclear response by Russia, which would likely be overwhelming and destroy entire cities. Such a scenario then becomes highly destabilized. Would Putin then threaten nuclear attack upon NATO if they provide any aid or support? Would one or more NATO members argue for a nuclear response to demonstrate their resolve? Would France (which has its own independent nuclear deterrent from the US/UK) break from NATO and go it alone? And what lessons would China or India—or even more worryingly Pakistan or Iran—take from such measures?
We do not want a world with nuclear proliferation, and we certainly don’t want one where the use of nuclear weapons becomes so normalized in warfare that it is no longer the literal ‘nuclear option’. And frankly, Ukraine doesn’t need nuclear weapons to forestall or even effectively defeat Russia; they just need the means to destroy logistics such that the Russian military can no longer effectively prosecute a war. That is really the only way that Russia goes into (forced) retreat and Ukraine has some measure of stability and security, not by some fanciful deterrence from a handful of ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons.
while I completely agree with the overall view of the situation you lay out, there are also examples where the final outcome was different: Afghanistan comes to mind … where the russians pretty much packed up and left … possibly b/c it was just a poor/ugly dessert with really poor/ugly people living in a poor/ugly culture for decades there, so the size of the prize was basically zilch.
my feeling - unfortunately - UKR will not be one of those examples, but will be beat into “obedience”, as the prize will be worth it for RU.
I am really pissed that basically one political party in the US is using this conflict to gain some 3% of extra votes from idiots AND sticking it to the man/owning the libs!… catering to idiots was never a winning formula.
but, yeah … unfortunately the most likely outcome as of now, is a divided UKR with the Dnepr as a border.
I agree. The key there is “obedience”. In Afghanistan, and any other place under the rule of an authoritarian regime, obedience is already there. It may very well be to a different “authority”, but that doesn’t matter. I still see this as the front line in the conflict between liberalism and authoritarianism, and I bet Putin sees it that way too. He probably couldn’t care less is some authoritarian country somewhere else happens to have a different head honcho, but you can bet he’s not going to tolerate a free country on his border.
For instance, Russians strongly value hierarchy, whereas Israelis are more egalitarian. This suggests that some of Aaron’s management practices, developed through his experiences in Israel and Canada, may have been misunderstood by—and demotivating to—his Russian team.
As Aaron considered the large gap on the Leading scale, he began to think about how he’d been encouraged as a child to disagree openly with authority figures in his family and community—a stark contrast to the Russian tradition of expecting young people to show deep respect and deference to their elders. “In Israel, the boss is just one of the guys,” he reflected. “But in Russia, when I try to push decision making down and insist that someone on my team is better positioned to make a decision than I am, it often suggests weak leadership.”
So yes, it would seem that Russians do not want an anarcho-syndicalist commune whose members take in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week; they want a boss who is The Boss.
I think everyone has known that this would be a war of attrition and barring a near miracle, Russia would eventually win out. The question will likely be where does Russia move next and how soon? I think this war has been much harder on Russia than we know too.
Assuming Ukraine gets completely overrun, then Moldova would be next. By that time Russia is likely to be in even worse shape (financial, demographics, military power, etc.) than they currently are. Ukraines major cities would be piles of rubble. Where would this leave Russia? Most likely as the next failed state, eventually in a similar position that North Korea is with regards to China, possibly even having to beg to become part of China just to survive.
Ukraine’s plan B has to be a relentless insurgency. They have had more than two years to position caches and supply lines for such a pivot. The last 70 years have shown that even a rather anemic insurgency can outlast a superpower and it’s questionable that Russia still retains that status.
The Soviets left in 1989, while the USSR was breaking apart into the Russian Federation and other states, which finished in 1991, In other words, the Russians withdrew due to a change in leadership.
There’s a difference between one man stepping down or dying, and the entire system of government collapsing in the face of massive public dissatisfaction and disillusionment.