Since then Presidential office spokesperson has added:
120 km security zone within Russian borders.
I don’t think Ukraine is under any illusion that the war ends in serious negotiations with the existing regime. They know it started in 2014 with the Russian kleptocrats response to Ukraine’s democratic revolution against kleptocracic oligarchs and ends with the end of that system in Russia as well as Ukraine.
This war will end in some form of negotiation. It is unrealistic to expect a total defeat like WW2. There is a potential timeline where Russia’s falls apart, but it is extraordinarily unlikely.
The dilemma here is a Russian loss likely results in the death of Putin. This isn’t a nation state versus nation state, it’s a nation state versus a mafia controlled state. How do you get Putin to negotiate when doing so could trigger his own assassination?
I don’t see a clean end here. What I can say is this will continue until Russia has been defeated and knows it has been defeated. That requires support enough for Ukraine to get short term gains and locked in long term aid that Putin cannot wait it out.
P.S. Trump saying he’d end the war in a day by making Ukraine stop bombing Russia and that everyone would be happy… that alone is probably the biggest driver of Putin continuing the war.
Moving down both sides of that river (Mokri Yali) is interesting.
If the East side turns eastward the West side blocks any forces attempting to cut their supply lines.
Some discussion of the terrain at Daily Kos but with the usual focus on south to Mariupol and no reference to Vuhldehar or Bakhmut or where the uncommitted Ukrainian forces might be.
Good question. You would need to answer it in order to make your preceding claim worth discussing. Doesn’t the absence of any such answer make it more difficult for you to be so confident about this?
This war will end in some form of negotiation. It is unrealistic to expect a total defeat like WW2. There is a potential timeline where Russia’s falls apart, but it is extraordinarily unlikely.
complete collapse of Ukraine, returning them to a Russian puppet state
hand over of the 5 oblasts controlled by Russia
recapture of the south, but handing over Crimea and the Donbas.
recapture south and turn Donbas and Crimea into independently governed territories, with a 30 year blaa blaa diplomatic blaa.
full military withdrawal from all of Ukraine
And that could be driven by:
Zelensky loses support / gets replaced
Putin dies
Putin crafts a propaganda narrative for backing down somewhat
Putin gets domestic threats that make backing down the safest option for him
Putin gets overthrown in an elite coup
Putin gets overthrown in a popular uprising
Putin escalates somehow and forces the other side to blink
There might be other paths. I really don’t know, nobody does. But most of the scenarios that lead to a good outcome require a mix of short and long term support.
For the Blitzer who wanted Grossi to provide more information on his visit to the ZNPP, go to the horse’s mouth - his latest report (his 166th) is now up on the IAEA site
Before Putin took over nobody knew who he was. Putin’s replacement is someone who currently is well positioned with a level of support, but isn’t obvious enough of a threat for Putin to have already eliminated him. There’s no real way to predict who will step up, because if it’s obvious enough to an outsider, that person is probably about to fall out of a window.
I think this idea is incomplete and maybe not the initial motivation for Putin’s expansion 10 years ago into the Donbas and Crimea.
The idea of ‘Great Russia’, the assumed superiority of Russian culture, religion, science and military doesn’t start from the premise that the West is better and Russians en masse will follow western culture and political thought. Rather they believe the West is degraded, hypocritical, spiritually bankrupt. They see Russia as the rightful rulers of so-called nations like Ukraine.
I think the statement above that Russia fears what is happening in Ukraine is more true now, as Putin is confronted with a military alliance that he did not expect.
I’m suggesting the major motivator for Putin going to war is not ‘I fear the West and what it could offer my Russian people’, but rather ‘Russia rules this part of the world by right given our might, superior culture and values’.
These flimsy ideas of mine are built more on my experiences in China rather than any knowledge of Russia, where I’m confronted with the nationalistic fervour that in fact China is the cultural centre of the world and the West is degraded and unappealing…and as we’ve noted previously at the same time sending their kids to university in the USA.
I see it all as a response to losing Ukraine as a puppet state. When power via corruption and intimidation didn’t work, Putin shifted to military means. He doesn’t want his sphere of influence to collapse. If Ukraine is aligned to the EU politically, it makes it extremely hard to maintain influence over nations like Hungary and Moldova.
Do we have 3 distinct ideas here as to possible motivators for Putin to start this war?
Fear of Ukraine becoming democratic, economically prosperous and appealing to Russians, hence he loses control of the people and risks revolution.
Putin could not control Ukraine, so he invaded out of fear of a reduction in his power base/sphere of influence.
Putin invades Ukraine because it rightfully belongs to Russia. Russian superiority in all things makes this task readily achievable and leads to the greater good for all Russians.
Putin’s desire to be a great Russian leader remembered forever fits more with 3 above. But the day-to-day pragmatic reality his corrupt regime faces, favours 1 and 2 as drivers of his insanity.
The reality is probably he was driven by some melting pot of these ideas.
I think the main path missing from your list is a stalemate due to Ukraine not having the manpower to eliminate the Russians and or lifes they are willing to risk in keeping on trying.
This years offensive is critical if they don’t make headwind it will only be harder next year as Russia will have another 12 months to fortify.
There is a cost in lives to be on the offensive at some point that equation won’t work for Ukraine.
There’s another layer that Putin saw the Maidan revolution as a CIA operation, rather than believing the Ukrainian people had agency. Because he saw it as a CIA assault on his interests, he responded in what he saw was an in-kind retaliation. His racist view of Ukrainians combined with his FSB upbringing likely distorted his perception of events, leading to poor decisions in response.
Yeah. I think if there’s a stalemate it likely ends in a frozen conflict or Ukraine negotiating away territory in some form. But that will take some time for Ukraine to acknowledge they have no path to victory. This fighting season will not be the end, both sides feel they can lose this bout and still win the war.
On the establishment of USSR as a nation in 1922, its republic constituents included Ukraine, Belarussia and some Transcaucasian republics. They had a different status from the rest of the Soviet bloc. They came within the Soviet borders. Although no longer within Russia’s territorial borders, it was enough to have Belarus is in its pocket, Ukraine also until 2014 while accepting the others to join NATO (and for Ukraine’s Constitution to forbid NATO membership)
Germany is currently commemorating 70 years of the East German uprising . Before then there was the Berlin blockade of 1948, after that the Berlin Wall of 1961.
