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Notes -
Trump threatens to bomb Moscow, simple as!
Nah, probably not this time – this time the call just says "cease-fire?"
Obviously the war would actually stop after a lot of wrangling and haggling and might even start up again but if Trump threatened to cut Ukraine's aid off unless they negotiated they almost certainly would show up, and Russia showed up last time.
There would need to be a threat to Russia that if they aren’t somewhat reasonable we would increase funding to Ukraine while providing a carrot of removing sanctions.
There is no threat that the US can make - there's no amount of funding the US can provide that would make up for the current situation. If they deploy force in the amount required to change the outcome of the Ukraine war, they would be unable to defend Israel and Taiwan... and there's a very decent chance that they would actually lose the conflict militarily to boot (assuming no nukes are used, because if they do get used the world just ends). As for removing sanctions, they're already moving to systems of trade and exchange that bypass the US' hold on the financial system because they don't trust it anymore (and can you blame them?) - they'd view it as nice, but they would presumably then just take all their money out and leave anyway.
Sure, Trump would probably be able to negotiate a surrender, but what could the US actually do to change the situation beyond giving up? When you take into account other commitments like Taiwan and Israel there's no stick at all - Trump would just be negotiating the US exit and surrender. That said, my personal view is that the Ukraine war was a terrible idea, a massive waste of blood and treasure, so the sooner that happens the better.
I agree that Ukraine was always a mistake. But you could say “we will provide XYZ (better weapons compared to what they have today)” while telling Ukraine “if we want you to take deal “ABC” and you don’t, then you get nothing.
I could basically see it freezing the lines roughly where they are today. I guess that’s a surrender. But realism needs to hold sway here.
And yes, the sanctions removal isn’t a huge benefit for them (and was a massive mistake for the US) but it is some benefit.
Who do you think has the ability to ensure Ukraine gets nothing?
It's certainly no American- the Americans haven't even been the majority supplier of aid to the Ukrainians. The single biggest supplier, yes, the single most important yes, but EU institutions have given more financial aid to Ukraine than the US has given in value of all combined military / financial / humanitarian, and this is without addressing European national contributions.
Even if the US gives nothing, Ukraine still gets quite a bit. And if the cause of a cutoff is Donald Trump- and I'll just note that people have long downplayed his willingness to conditionally support Ukraine to take his opposition as a given- the Europeans are not going to meekly follow him, when both their own domestic-political interests and strategic interests remain with supporting Ukraine even, or especially in definace to, American pressure otherwise.
Why do you think Realism is any friend of freezing the fight along the current lines and surrendering?
Realism would note that the current war is at least the third continuation war Russia has pursued against Ukraine since the initial invasion of Crimea. (The first continuation war being the astroturfed Nova Russian campaign intended to spark a civil war, and the second continuation war being the direct military intervention when the Nova Russian uprising failed and was on the cusp of complete collapse.)
Realism would note that the Russia's leadership intentions and objectives that drove the current war are still unresolved, and thus the motivation basis remains for a fourth continuation war.
Realism would note that Russia's terms of cease fire and negotiations have for years hinged around limiting Ukraine's ability to resist a future incursion, and thus been conditional on the conditional basis for a fourth continuation war.
Realism would note that the center of gravity of Russia's conventional military strength at a strategic level, the Soviet inheritance of stockpiles, are being expended at unsustainable and functionally irreplaceable rates, and that once they are expended Russia's long-term capacity to conduct a fourth continuation war would be removed.
Realism would note that Russia's military edge is ebbing, that it's current rate of expenditures are unsustainable, and thus that relative negotiating position power will decrease away from Russia's favor of the coming years, and thus potentially create the conditions for negotiations that would not lead to a fourth continuation war.
Realism would note that the Western coalition, on the basis of supporting Ukraine against Russia, is actually mobilizing the political and economic capacity to scale military production, productions that must be greatly scaled to meet other major global competitors but which historically have observably not been invested in solely on the notional basis of those other competitors.
Realism would note a great many things that would work against arguments for a ceasefire in the near term.
'Realism' is no more a legitimization of 'what I want' than trying to claim to be a 'Rationalist' means your positions are any less monkey-brained than your opponents.
It would be interesting in hearing why you think the sanctions strategy was a massive mistake for the US, given that the US/European sanction strategy has clearly delivered it's intended goals of limiting Russian economic capabilities (which is why Russia's only meaningful growth is now a result of a militarized economy rather than it's civilian economics), restrict access to global markets (which is why Russia has to pay significant mark-ups and risk-premiums on both imports and sales, and gets stuck with things like it's India Rupee savings), and done so in a way that didn't cripple the pro-Ukraine coalition's economic and political viability in the midst of major economic input rearrangements (the Europeans haven't cratered their own economies in the process of building up import-substitution infrastructure, and negated the Russian energy blackmail threats).
Is this going to hinge on arguments that the US didn't go far enough to try to enforce some sort of global embargo on Russian exports- which it wouldn't have had the political capacity to do? Or that the Europeans continued to import energy from the Russians- when building the physical infrastructure to import from other sources was going to take time? Or that Russia is expanding its economic dependence on China- a factor which has led the Europeans to be far more concerned and willing to distance themselves from China than they were before?
It is worth noting that the United States applied a lot of pressure to make this happen.
It is not. As per Ukraine's commander-in-chief:
(Source)
NATO officials are now saying that a Ukrainian victory would not end the Russian threat:
(Source)
I agree broadly with you on the problems with a ceasefire tomorrow (in part because of the above): if Russia isn't very satisfied with the conclusion, is has every incentive to come back for more.
Minor addendum:
I agree that it probably hampered Russian access to certain high-end stuff (microchips) that it needs for war production. But the World Bank upgraded its economic status this year. So it seems like the Russian economy is "fine" (although perhaps they're running an internal house of cards to keep that up somehow and it can't last forever - I don't have any particular reason to believe this, though.)
It's also worth noting that, having made this happen, the same dynamics that make it difficult to occur (entrenched political consensus, established interest groups for the status quo) also make it even more difficult to reverse (not only entrenched political consensus, but the active dismantlement of the pro-Russian interest groups in key economic sectors).
The pre/early war resistance to supporting Ukraine depended on factors that are no longer prevalent in the European political decision making.
It is. Note that Ukraine's commander-in-chief does not actually make a position on relative assets, i.e. what Ukraine has gained since the war started in 2022.
Russia's military edge in 2022 hinged on relative quality, relative quantity, and the industrial/economic capacity to support it. These have changed, and not in Russia's favor, as the expenditure of advanced military capabilities has been substituted by less quality, the quantity of support Ukraine has received has jumped remarkably, and the industrial-capacity spinup has begun to move against the Russians who also were always behind on the economic capacity.
We are nearly three years into a war in which Ukraine was believed to be imminently about to run out of artillery ammunition, air defense ammunition, vehicles, and so on. We've long since passed the point of 'Ukraine is about to run out', to 'Ukraine doesn't have enough relative to the size of the force it wants,' even as the Russians have increasingly transitioned from internal-economic stockpiles and production to relying on imports of Iranian drones instead of cruise missiles, and North Korean artillery ammunition instead of their own production. There are still questions of if Ukraine has enough, but its shortages are nowhere near the level that Russian planners and advocates were expecting in the opening years of the war when a good part of the strategy hinged on expecting Ukraine to just run out of resources and ability to resist.
Russia's biggest period of industrial advantage is/was this year, due to having started a deliberate industrial mobilization before the Americans and especially the Europeans 2 years ago. This period of first-mover advantage is concluding, hence why the Russian strategy this year has been about trying to shape impressions before the American political election season, without regard to sustainability over another 4 year period vis-a-vis achieving a nearer-term ceasefire.
Sure you do- the nature of the economic interventions that have been employed over the years to prop up public metrics, the obfusication and removal of economic data to validate metrics, the Russian-acknowledged reallocations of the war economy as a share and level of government spending, and the dynamics around the ongoing labor shortage. You can even just look at migration data, both in terms of Russian external-migration which hasn't been re-captured despite efforts to, and the relative weakness of immigrant workers due to both currency weakness and recruitment-pressures.
Russia's economy is 'fine' in the sense that increasing government spending boosts GDP. Russia's economy is not fine for all the old reasons that government-war-spending driven growth is anti-reliable over longer times and comes with real opportunity costs. This does NOT mean that Russia is anywhere near about to fail, but it is making future problems progressively worse, and much of the growth we are seeing is centered around converting stockpiles rather than producing from base materials.
And this is why the 'I'll trade stockpiles for production capability' defense of Russia is a misnomer. Because the Russian military-industrial production is primarily conversion, the production numbers only stay high as long as there are material inputs to convert. Once those stockpiles go, you either produce from scratch- which the Russians have not demonstrated they are set up to- or you import new inputs for conversion- which there is relatively minimal sourcing for- or your don't produce at all.
Russia's war economy is dependent on increasingly less-large stockpiles. These will last for some time yet, but once expended, Russia isn't getting them back with its current or forseeable economic capacity. The Russian production rate will be tied to it's (considerably lower) inputs for from-scratch production, which is nowhere near the current expenditure rate of conversion-production, which itself isn't enough to inflict decisive defeats.
He does on equipment, specifically: "there is a ratio of 1:2 or 1:3 in their favour..."
I don't think this is true with regards to heavy armaments – the simple fact that Europe has a finite amount of tanks to donate makes it very easy to stop donating them. I find this more persuasive with economic aid and lighter armaments (small caliber ammunition, etc.) However, economic aid appears to be dwindling from some quarters – Germany is reducing its donations, specifically. So clearly cutting Ukraine a blank or even large check isn't set in stone going forward, although perhaps that's merely a German position (Germany of course being one of the most relevant EU nations!)
A lot of those figures are public, though – somewhere around 500 new tanks were delivered to Ukraine, for instance, whereas Syrskyi says (if I interpret correctly) that the Russians have gained about 1,800 over even Russian losses. The Ukrainians have not made comparative gains. The advantage is moving towards Russia.
The Russians are still using cruise missiles (although the Iranian drones are very good for draining Ukrainian air defense stockpiles) and they are improving the quality of the missiles used. (See e.g. the Kyiv Independent). While I certainly believe that the Russians have brought a lot of less-capable vehicles out of stockpiles (T-62s being the headliner item) the Russians are continuing to develop and iterate their weapons capabilities, and they are continuing to manufacture and iterate new weapons systems. The biggest development is probably the Russian glide bomb, which were neglected in the run-up to the war (a huge Russian L!) but is now being used in numbers.
This seems plausible to me wrt Russian motivations, but I've still seen no signs that NATO industry is ready to catch up to Russia in mass production within a relevant timeframe. The United States aspires to get to 100,000 shells a month by 2026. Russia is currently producing 250,000 shells a month. Over the next four-year time period there's every reason to believe they could sustain their production, and many reasons to believe that the US and NATO aren't interested in sending another 500 tanks and can't compete in terms of artillery shell production.
This seems reasonable to me. My low-economic-IQ take is that sanctions may have helped Russian cashflow in the short term by raising oil prices. Of course it might have hurt them in other areas (microchip access) but that still can translate as a raw economic boost.
Again, publicly-available Western sources consistently attest to Russian shell production superiority, so even if most shells hitting the battlefield right now are conversion, Russia will win the shell production battle in the long run unless the West has either deeper stockpiles or deeper production capability – and it doesn't seem that they do. That isn't the only name of the game, but it's a very important part of it. I think the Russians will have more problems with more advanced items, but they're still making tanks (where they've increased production), aircraft, cruise missiles, etc. China isn't going to stop selling them FPV drones anytime soon. In short, Russian military production has in fact increased, and while I agree that production will never equal the ability to casually drawdown a million shells from inventory, Russia merely needs to produce more than the West is willing to donate and Ukraine is able to build to maintain an advantage. So far they have the edge and appear to be positioned to maintain the edge in artillery production and small drones, and unless the US decides to donate more tanks + APCs in quantity it appears that Russian production (even if it's a paltry dozen a month) of ground vehicles will outstrip Ukrainian production.
In my mind, this doesn't prove you wrong with regards to Russia's motives – they would prefer to win before the new US shell production hits, before the F-16s arrive, etc. They would have preferred to win on Day One, and tried such a strategy, and failed. But if they can maintain superior force generation and weapons production, there's every reason to think they will defeat the Ukrainians in the long run, and there's every reason to think they are superior now, because Syrskyi says they are. If they are superior now, then Ukraine needs a massive influx of foreign aid to reach parity, otherwise – even if Russia is at their peak strength, as you suggest (and you may be correct!) – they will both degrade in strength over time, with Russia retaining its edge, which it's maintained on the ground (as seen in its slow gain of territory) after smashing up the Ukrainian counter-offensive.
Which is not a reflection of how ratios have changed since the war began, when the ratios were significantly more in the Russian favor.
For the purpose of attrition- which is the strategy of both sides- the 'lighter' armaments are considerably more important, particularly as the Russian strategy militarily relies on offensive victory, but the Ukrainian strategy relies on defensive atrition until Russia's production / refurbishment rates burn through the stockpiles.
The position on Russian cruise missiles isn't that they aren't using them, but their rate of usage. Russian precision munition usage rate dropped precipitously from the start of the war, when they burned through their operational and strategic stockpiles, and is now gated by their production rate.
Which, in turn, is why the Shahed drone imports were as significant as they were: the Russians accessed the Iranian production rate at a cost-premium. But the increase in Iranian-sourced or style drones did not make up for the volume or efficacy of the precision munitions previously expended, nor did they deliver upon the drain on air defense stockpiles that was expected to enable Russia to operate freely over Ukrainian airspace. Hence the Russian reliance on glide bomb kits, as opposed to more proximal drops.
What you've just described is the relevant catchup.
For the purpose of the attritional strategy / flow of the war, what matters isn't the absolute difference, but the relative difference. This is because Russian advances to date have been extremely dependent on massive artillery-overmatch ratios, often of 5-to-1 or higher. This has been the level of overmatch needed for the Russians to suppress Ukrainian artillery and positions in order to do offensives that- despite the artillery overmatch- been relatively costly for relatively marginal gains. Without those ratios, results were worse.
As Russia's degree of artillery advantage decreases, so does it's prospects for even it's slow advances. This is why we've seen this year the Russian adoption of things like golf cart-conveyance in light infantry rushes- this is the strategic window of opportunity before more munitions make those less feasible, and gains now matter most.
This matters because while Russia's artillery production would remain such to enable it's own defensive operations to counter Ukrainian pushes for some time, potentially freezing the line, freezing the line is a losing position for Russia as it's sustainment rate hinges on the stockpiles, without the prospects of compelling a military defeat.
(This doesn't address points such as South Korean or European artillery production beyond the US's own, or the Russian's counting ammo-refurbishment as production for time-limited production rate, or the value of other systems for efficacy of use.)
This is based on first-year data and regular media conflation of different energy-export products, as well as what sanctions actually did. In terms of sanctions, sanctions are unrelated to the year-1 energy cost spike, and over time have been significantly cutting the Russian income prospects, but not their ultimate access to market (with exception of natural gas as an over-time basis).
Russian natural gas exports, which are primarily by pipeline had the bumper profits in the first year due to market-shocks even before sanctions were levied. In short- the Russians pre-war arranged for the Europeans to have a natural gas shortage (by not filling gas storage tanks in the summer per normal practices), and the Europeans lacked the LNG-gas terminals to import natural gas at scale via sea routes due to the multi-decade reliance on pipelines. Sanctions didn't target gas pipeline imports, and now the russian natural gas prospects are cratering because the Europeans are disconnecting from the Russian-pipeline network and Russian natural gas exports are gated by their terminal export capacity, which is nowhere near enough to cover the pipeline loses. Europeans paid higher gas import prices to free themselves from the blackmail mechanism, and Gazprom is having bad prospects.
Russian (unrefined) oil is what sanctions have been designed to limit profits but keep going to markets. This is where sanctions are designed to make Russia sell at lower margins, and while Russian attempts at sanction-evasion are ocurring, these are implementing the design goal because Russia's partners can- and have been- demanding Russian concessions on prices / mediums of exchange as conditions of transaction. See here the Indian-Russia trade dispute, in which Russia wanted India to pay in Rubles (providing external capital inflow into the Russian economy), and ended up paying in Rupees (which are broadly non-usable outside of India itself).
Russian (refined) oil / gasoline sanctions have also been about reducing Russia income from the value-added processes of refining raw oil into specialized products. This is what you are often seeing in the news in pieces about 'Europe is buying Russian energy via India.' This is Russia selling alternatively the refined products at a risk-premium discount, which the recipient re-sales on the global/European markets for the arbitrage margins that aren't going to Russia, or Russia just sells the inputs for refinement to get something rather than nothing, while the recipient refinery gets the value-added margins.
I will just re-emphasize that when it comes to things like artillery production, it is the ratio that matters considerably more than who has more. Russia at a 3-to-1 artillery ratio is losing the war of attrition, because Russia needs considerably more than 3-to-1 ratios to maintain significant offensive gains while Ukraine doesn't need any sort of artillery advantage to inflict unsustainable loss rates on Russian equipment.
Add to that how the Russian production hinge on the conversion of significant but finite Soviet-era stockpiles and Russian throughput is a not an indefinite factor. It's not even a long-term advantage, as the western coalition still has many resources it hasn't even begun to meaningfully tap but which it has access to, such as the American boneyards, the pre-position stocks around the war, the South Korean ammo stockpiles, and so on. We may be talking years instead of months for the Russians to run out of cold war stocks, but at the same time we are talking years, not decades, and we aren't talking the same for the economic capabilities of the western coalition.
Ukraine doesn't need military parity with Russia in the near or medium term to win the war.
This gets into the abstract, but Russia's decision to keep spending bodies and money and stockpile isn't a force of nature, it's a policy choice that that depends on the pre-condition to afford it. If it can't be afforded, it won't, and no matter who had the military advantage beforehand, if Russia doesn't pay for the required inputs for an Army to continue functioning, it won't. There are any number of ways it could functionally collapse before literal resource starvation- coups, mutinies, negotiations, or just Putin dying of old age/other reasons and a change of leadership- but Russia's ability to wage war at an industrial scale requires it to have the industrial output to continue doing so, and when it no longer can, the only question is how it no longer does.
The issue / crux of the conflict continuing is that Russia's ability to continue doing so at its current rates is not, in fact, indefinite. Putin might be willing to continue reactivating Soviet stockpiles of tanks and APCs and artillery ammunition from now until the end of time, but he can only do so as long as those stockpiles exist. They are depleting at a rate at which the next US president could see their functional end, if said US president was willing and able to continue supporting Ukraine.
This is why the opposing strategies for the attritional conflict have evolved, with the Russians driving for a political end to the conflict in the near term, but the pro-Ukrainian coalition driving for an end of the Russian's ability to wage the conflict over the long-term. Putin doesn't just want a political change in the western governments to lead to negotiations in the near term- he needs it, because his expenditure rates aren't sustainable over the long term, but the western economic-industrial capacity support to Ukraine is.
This is why Putin has actually accelerated his loss rates this year for marginal territorial gains- not because these fundamentally change the military balance of power, but because they can shape the political narrative in the leadup for the hoped for change in political fortunes. Putin's strategy is basically hoping 'and then the enemy loses the will to fight / keep supporting Ukraine,' with near-term minor gains leading to the loss of political support for Ukraine.
Which may happen! But if it does, it can happen despite- or even because of- efforts to push Ukraine to military parity with Russia (i.e. due to high political costs for massive military aid without political buy in from opposition figures, such as Biden holding out for an endorsement of the last US aid package). And if it doesn't, his strategic loss is regardless of whether Ukraine is at parity, or 'only' half as strong, or a fifth. Unsustainable over time is unsustainable over time, to whatever that time is. More is better, but not required.
And the time limit on this is Russia's material capability to continue feeding the machine, versus the Europeans and Americans willingness to feed the Ukrainian resistance such that Russia has to keep feeding the machine.
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