There’s lots of talk about what scenarios for Ukrainian victory might be - from total restoration of 2022 or 1991 borders, both of which unrealistic - to simply surviving and continuously degrading the russian military and economy until a collapse. But what is Russia’s victory?
At a Tactical level, they are getting limited, slow success by sending in small 2-3 man inflitration teams into forward areas until eventually Ukraine, who value the lives of their soldiers, decides to fall back. But that doesn’t necessarily mean Russia has “won” that land and gets to keep it. Even if Ukraine can’t re-take territory by force - Russia also can’t pacify the largest country in Europe with small infiltratiton teams that can eventually be picked off with snipers, artillery, drones and harassing counterattacks. They seem to think that they’re entitled to keep every piece of ground they can shove a soldier onto, and assume the Ukrainians will retreat after everything is obliterated, accept the loss and eventually stop shooting at them. Ask the U.S. how well that worked in Vietnam.
But what if they don’t? What if Ukraine continues to trade small slices of land for Russian soldiers’ blood - they can do that for a long, long, long time before they start to run out of land at the rate things are moving. Millions more Russian soldiers will die before, or IF they ever reach any kind of control of the land east of the Dneiper river. Russia’ Army’s options are move fowrard and die quickly, or stand still and die a little more slowly. This doesn’t seem to be a great plan. The Trump card (pun intended) has already been played to erode U.S. support, but Ukraine continues to resist strongly on domestic and European support.
What exactly is a lasting victory for Russia? You’d have to think holding what they have and being let to absorb it into their empire as productive territory. But if this is to be a forever war - then maybe Ukraine’s best bet is continue to bleed Russia’s idiotic hubris, while avoiding operational collapse. That seems a much better plan than whatever Russia is doing at this point.
Russia’s Strategic approach SEEMS to be - unrelenteing terror until you submit to enslavement. That doesn’t make much sense from Ukraine’s perspective. They might as well keep fighting, because the alternative is national destruction anyways. Putin’s plan is probably simpler, namely to just survive having made the worst imperial military blunder since Darius decided to go teach Alexander a lesson. But for Russians who can see past Putin’s dwindling life expectancy - what’s your plan, folks? Conquering the whole country seems both impossible to do militarily, to say nothing of how to do it adminstratively after the fact. You’d have to send in an occupying army larger than what you have now. Even if lines froze today, Ukraine can continue to deny Russia’s fruitful use and resettlement of the stolen land. Maybe infinitely. Permanent insurrection, rebuilding territory with money you don’t have at the expense of other regions who have gutted their male populations to wage this war, forever sanctions as the junior vassal to China in the axis of authoritarian shitholes.
Well done Vlad. Putin the Fool may end up being the worst Russian in history. And that’s saying something.
Russia’s theory of victory is the same as it’s been in every war they’ve been in. To wear down the enemy’s numbers by throwing more bodies at the problem. And there are some signs this is working. It looks like Ukraine probably is fielding less soldiers this year than they did last year. Russia is fielding considerably more. There are a lot of Ukrainian desertions. I’m not sure how long Ukraine can keep this up. This is my biggest fear for Ukraine.
Yeah, I know and the way of Horde War is easily understood. Their entire theory of battle since forever was that they could steamroll from Poland to Portgual in a couple weeks, and it didn’t matter if the stuff you had was not as good as NATO’s, as long as you had enough of it. But - scaling back the horror - I think the point I’m trying to make is that even in Ukraine, this isn’t going that well.
They probably have a fairly logical Plan B, that involves reducing Ukraine’s economic viability in the long run, to soften it’s society up for a round 2 in the next 5-10 years. But - the original point remains; that what ‘works’ for them in destroyed rubble in eastern Ukraine isn’t the same as a good occupation strategy. And Ukraine has ZERO incentive to stop fighting, as long as it can throw ANYTHING at Russia and hope for a collapse at home. This is still a war of total conquest, but Russia probably no longer has the means to turn Ukraine into a second Belarus except by long term corrosive bullshit, where it becomes politically vulnerable to disinformation. Belarus, Hungary, Slovakia and the U.S. are probably the approach they SHOULD take, instead of pushing low-functioning 2-3 man teams into tiny pockets and telling them to stay there until they eventually get droned.
It’s very hard to tell at the moment if it’s Russia’s economy or Ukraine’s recruitment that will break first. They are both showing major signs of weakness. Anyone who says they know for sure is spouting hot air.
Yeah, it’s not that simple, there is rarely a single factor that causes a complete collapse in a war. It’s probably safe to say whatever the ‘3 day operation’ was, this is no longer it, and they are staying with a plan that makes sense to THEM at least. They have shown many times over that they find destroying the viability of a country through destruction of it’s infrastructure to be a good tactic, like they did in Syria. Reduce the economic viability/potential and then make them more vulnerable to corrosive populist politics, like they are clearly fudning across the world. Having failed with the 3 Day Operation, maybe the plan is a Hungary/Slovakia model, rot from within through disinformation to soften them up and then go for it all again in a couple more years. It seems safe to assume that Putin intends this to happen in his lifetime, and not leave it to chance that a successor shoudl get the glory.
Guess what I’m trying to say is that there are strategic goals, which are not being met, and tactical goals, which might be getting them very slow progress militarily, but aren’t a scalable model for occupation and pacification. Ukraine can still continue to bleed out the russian army, trading relatively small amounts of land for time. There are limits to everything, of course. Broadly, I wonder if the timeline for this war is measurable by however long Trump has to live. Not that American politics has to permeate everything, but - if a democrat had won in 2024 and Ukrainian assistance had continued from the U.S., this war might have concluded by now on less favorable terms than Pootz hopes to extract with his vassal running the White House. At this point - Ukraine can probably trade destroyed towns for hundreds of thousands of Russian casualties for a few more years, just on European and Domestic arms production. If a democrat comes into office again, that might close the window on the viability of this war. Trump was a once-in-a-lifetime gift that has an expiry date. Anyways - as you say - hot air.