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We're sitting on a > 48 hour interval with no top level posts which might be some kind of record. It's been awhile since we talked about Ukraine, so here we go..
It would seem that Ukraine is still slowly losing a war of attrition. Of course, the big news is Ukraine's incursion into Kursk, in which they managed to capture some Russian territory after catching the Russians with their pants down. Coupled with that, Ukraine has also been mounting more long-range attacks against Russian oil infrastructure. Neither of these actions is really what Ukraine's western allies want to see, but what can they do? Ukraine's best bet may to escalate in order to draw in more Western support without which they will collapse. But it's looking quite grim. Germany has vowed to stop new aid.
https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-halt-new-ukraine-military-aid-report-war-russia/
In response to Kursk and the oil infrastructure attacks, Russia has attacked Ukraine's energy grid.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russia-strikes-ukraines-power-grid-in-most-massive-attack-of-war/ar-AA1pt39P
What many people don't realize is that the Ukraine/Russia conflict has been in many ways quite limited. Life goes on in the cities. Casualties have largely been limited to combatants. The longer things go on, the more this might change. People in Kiev are now facing the real possibility of a winter without heat and electricity.
Here in the West, people's enthusiasm for the war seems to be waning as the news cycle covers newer, shinier topics. But the war grinds on and every day men die at the front.
Edit: As usual, the cure to a stale front page is to post about Ukraine which inspires another post on a different topic moments later.
So, anyone have a read on what a realistic ceasefire deal looks like? Does one exist? Is anyone serious mooting one around in the world of think tanks?
Ukraine's winning scenarios have run out at this point. The abortive and telegraphed offensive ate up too much time and material for them to win in any conventional sense. Prigozhin might have been the Black Swan they needed, but he pussied out. The Russian economy is showing no signs of collapse. Some point to a Wunderwaffen or to some chart that shows NATO production coming online at a faster pace from 2025 onward, but I doubt that will make a material difference. Ukraine is basically hoping for a Russian collapse as a result of some as-yet-unknown cause, which is not impossible, but not much of a strategy.
Russia's odds of winning much more than what they have so far seem longer still. They're hoping Ukraine just gives up, but that might be longer odds than a Russian collapse, as Ukrainian psychopathic nationalism seems more systemic rather than oriented around a single individual.
Neither side is going to win the kind of victory that will make good their losses. So how is a ceasefire outlined that will deliver a lasting peace?
I still haven't come up with a better idea than putting Harry and Meghhan on the throne in Kiev.
'Realistic' by who's standard?
One of the many issues of a ceasefire is that it hinges on people making realistic demands to people who can deliver on them. To date, the Russians haven't indicated either, creating a tangle of un-deliverable expectations to people who can't deliver them.
As a result, non-Russian ceasefire chatter inevitably requires assuming the Russians will selectively drop various declared conditions, with which conditions the Russians will drop changing based on the biases of the speculator.
That's certainly a take. Alternatively, Ukraine is no more on the edge of collapse than it has been constantly claimed to be since 2022 and in some respects considerably further away, 2024 has been generally unsurprising and consistent with forecasts made in 2023 bar a far greater expansion in Western comfort in Ukrainian weapon use against the Russians, no one who was unsurprised at Russia not collapsing in 2022-2023 was expecting it to collapse in 2024-2025 either, and the Russian manpower strategy is showing its limits even under the 'just pay more' paradigm.
As a result, absent some collapse of the Ukrainian nation-state (possibly some sort of mass exodus from a power grid collapse, as seems to be a reoccuring Russian point in the witners), the Ukrainians remain on track to continue the many-year process of attriting the Russian's Soviet Inheritance that serves as the military-economic center of gravity of Russia's ability to field larger armies and pose a strategic offensive threat.
Russia's strategy is not that Ukraine gives up, it is that the Americans stop supporting the Ukrainians and push the Europeans to stop supporting the Ukrainians until the Ukrainian state lacks the economic and military capacity to resist.
Calling Ukrainian nationalism pschopathic seems rather shallow as a pejorative goes, particularly given the lack of equivalent for Russia despite Russia' various policies in the war to date.
Lasting ceasefires hinge on some combination of a belief in the other party's intentions, and an evaluation of their capabilities. Due to Putin's lack of credibility, a ceasefire acceptable to the Ukrainians and Europeans will be built on Russia's loss of long-term capabilities vis-a-vis the Europeans, who both want Russia to lose the Soviet inheritance and to build their own military production capability so that post-war Russia can't out-arm them.
This is not the structure Putin has in mind at this time, however- Putin almost certainly believes the Americans are the hyperagent whose decision will be decisive, that the Soviet stocks are so indefinite that they are functionally infinite, that if he can de facto control the de jure territory of the separatists oblasts then he can compel western parties to accept the Russian annexation of those regions, and that as part of a peace deal Russia can economically re-connect with Europe and end the various sanction regimes / get back the frozen war chest assets.
This is unlikely to happen, but Putin is also a strategic procrastinator, and absent a critical disaster is likely to keep delaying any decision on EU-acceptable concessions in hopes that one more election cycle in the US / Germany / EU may do the trick.
As a result, the war will likely continue for years more, easily beyond 2026. Putin is likely to try for some sort of negotiations in 2025 with the new US president regardless who wins. It will probably fail due to the difference in the politically acceptable positions between what Putin is willing to offer and what the US/west would be able to legislatively deliver, but he will then hold out hope that the 2026 mid-terms might shape the US president's position. It would be the end of the 2026 campaign season before the results were realized, and by 2027 the prospects of the next cycles will offer the next excuse to procrastinate.
Nowhere did I say Ukraine is one the edge of collapse, I actually said the opposite in the next section. I think we're past the point where we can reasonably expect a Ukrainian collapse and Russian surge into Kiev, (almost) regardless of levels of Western aid flowing into Ukraine.
But I also don't see a realistic scenario in which Ukrainian forces retake any significant amount of territory from the Russians, absent a complete Russian collapse. Which doesn't seem likely.
Neither side can win a victory, at this point, that will justify the costs paid.
Sure there is. Survival of the Ukrainian nation, not only in this war but in the prospects of the next.
The invasion of 2022 was the third continuation war in a decade launched by Russia against Ukraine, and done on the basis including the belief that there was no Ukrainian nation and that the Ukrainians should be disabused of this by conquest, systemic killings, and re-russification of the rest. This was, has been, and remains, in a very real sense, an existential struggle of which the current moment of Russian inability to deliver upon its intent was not guaranteed and cannot be guaranteed in the future absent further changes to the Russian belief and capabilities. That includes not only the belief and capability of Russia's ability to prevail in this war, but the potential to prevail in a fourth continuation war- a prospect that the Russians have already signalled an intent to prepare for via their demands in the 2022 ceasefire talks, when Russian demands included levels of Ukrainian disarmament that would have left Ukraine with fewer tanks than they've since lost in this war.
You say that we're past the point that we can reasonably expect a Ukrainian collapse regardless of levels of Western aid flowing into Ukraine, and many others will frankly disagree. You may disagree with that, but that justification remains, and in any utilitarian 'worth the costs' comparison existential risk is the categorical trump card.
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I'm not sure they're entirely relying on normal weariness on the West's part; I do wonder if they aren't subtly pushing the PRC and DPRK to start shit in the Far East to pull the West's resources away (and/or destroy chunks of those resources, if there's a nuclear exchange).
They aren't, for much the same reason that Russia has been not-so-privately lobbying Iran to not expand the current conflict with Israel: if the people currently selling Russia war material get into their own major wars, they are going to stop selling material to Russia, and if Russia is seen as part/party to these broader conflicts, then Russia's ability to try and disengage from Ukraine next year via a negotiated cease fire goes down.
There's also the point that there's no particular interest for the Chinese or North Koreans to to start a war for Russia's interest rather than their own. North Korea, for example, is presumably making bank selling munitions to the Russians.
Interesting. Would you mind giving me some further reading on the "not-so-privately lobbying Iran" point?
The Guardian has an article titled Putin reportedly calls for Iran to limit damage in any retaliation against Israel as a starting point. Rand published a think-piece earlier this year titled Why Russia Doesn't Want War Between Israel and Iran. Stimson has a piece on how Russia Benefits from Continued But Calibrated Israel-Iran Hostilities.
It's not a single article or even group of articles, and it's been a dynamic that has evolved over years, so it's less recommendations of specific readings and more on topics.
Key points are on the foundations of the current Russia-Iranian good relations (it's the sale of war material from Russia to Iran in exchange for technology / other goodies), the evolution of Russia's relations with Israel over the same period (Russia has shifted from a relative neutrality to a default alignment to Iranian positions vis-a-vis Israel, but not pro-Iran vis-a-vis other regional arab states), the various shuttle diplomacy the key actors like Shoigu to the Iranians earlier this month (a Security Council rather than diplomatic VIP indicating security-focused engagement in the context of the Israel assassination of the Hamas leader in Iran), the Russian diplomatic / information framings and implied recommendations around the time (condemning the assassinations, but various 'Anonymous Sources' allusions offering suspected motive that the assassination was to scuttle peace and draw the US into military action, i.e. to resist the assassinations Iran should not complete the scuttlign and draw the US into military action), and the under-whelming Iranian response and similar Russian leadups in not just this incident, but earlier ones (demonstrating successful lobbying in general against more powerful retaliations).
You can find some academic / think tank papers on Russia relations / interests in the Middle East as well. Rand had one in the last few years on Russia's interests given that it's preoccupied in Ukraine. There's also a general history of reading into Russia's tradition as a geopolitical spoiler in which Russia wants to be part of the negotiation for resolving any conflict, as a way to build influence / interests, but the flip side is that if Russia can't profit / can't get involved to profit, it doesn't want there to be the sort of conflicts that move things forward in ways that might leave it out.
For not-so-private lobbying in general, the Russians have a diplomatic narrative trope in that when unclear actors do something to someone else that Russia is seeking to influence, they often hypothesize a motive that just so happens to be what the Russians want the party to not do. This creates narrative structures like 'This was totally bad and done by Bad People and I'm on your side, and I'm not going to tell you to not do the thing you might want to do just because I don't want you to do it, I'm just gonna say that the people who did this to you want you to do the thing I'm not going to tell you not to do, and so if you do it you're playing into the Bad People's hands.' It's not a uniquely Russian trope, or omnipresent, but it's familiar enough in the same way that certain commentary tropes can be distinctly European or American.
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While I don't agree with your overall point, I think you had a valuable insight here.
There's not going to be a ceasefire because neither side's bare minimum terms are acceptable to the others - there's no way Putin can offer a deal that the west would accept without being immediately couped by someone under him. At the same time, the west can't make any deals either - their credibility also isn't that great, and there's nothing they can offer which would be worth the continued existence of a hostile and belligerent Ukraine on Russia's border.
Its not about whether the "the west" will accept it its about whether Ukraine will accept it.
If it's not equivalent to "Ukraine ceases to exist as a nation" or worse, then "the west" can put sufficient pressure on Ukraine to accept it.
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The problem here is the Russian progress in the east. Once Kramantorsk falls, the line gets much harder to defend, and the chances of a rapid collapse of everything east of the Dnieper gets a lot higher. Also, this is an industrial war, not a low intensity police action like the two Afghanistan wars. Barring a Korean War-style partial armistice, one of the sides is going to get too heemed to continue, sooner rather than later.
Rapid as in, what, another century?
This is a funny misreading of the map and the progression of the last year of the war, but still a misreading. Setting aside that the Ukrainian collapse cascade trope has been trotted out for every significant urban area since the start of the war, the fundamentals of why Russian progress has been limited to marginal advances in very narrow parts of the east remain. Marginal advances over time add up, but there's a reason you need regional zoom-in maps rather than the early-war whole-of-country maps of the frontline to see an appreciable difference between the end of 2022 and current 2024. It's the same reason the Russians characterize their advances as 'significant' or 'consistent' more often than 'large'- large implies a lot of territory, when what has actually changed hands in 2024 is very small compared to metrics like, say, what the Russians achieved in early 2022, or the even larger breakthroughs that would be needed to reach the Dnieper. The 2022 meme of Russia's imminent encirclement of Ukraine's eastern forces comes to mind- and note how many of the main cities you've heard about in the last year or two are in that snapshot.
And these Russian fundamentals rely on things that are limitations as well. The Russians have been relying on overwhelming artillery overmatch since mid-2022, but don't have the logistics or mobility means to push that artillery fast. The Russians have made a policy-level decision to rely on volunteer/contract soldiers rather than mass mobilization to carry on the offense, but the ever-increasing signing bonuses are indicative of a military not meeting its recruitment goals for what it thinks it needs, and it's highly doubtful they could continue this sort of personnel expenditure for years more. The level of equipment for the units the Russians do have are indicative that the limiting factor of the Russians now is their equipment rather than manpower to fit the kit, which mitigates much of the utility of a mass conscription for numbers alone but also demonstrates a retrograde from mobility warfare given that the equipment is more and more earlier cold-war standard.
These limiting factors do not mean 'Russia will be unable to fight,' but rather that even as Russia chooses to fight, that doesn't mean it has the capabilities- militarily, politically, structurally, manpower- to do any sort of 'everything to the east bank of the Dnieper' breakthrough.
Later rather than sooner, given what both sides have demonstrated their ability / willingness to mobilize, and at current industrial trajectories the Russians at maximum relative advantage have been unable to threaten the sort of gains made in the opening months of 2022, let alone destroy the Ukraine coalition's industrial base.
As an industrial base argument, Russia isn't against Ukraine, it's against Ukraine and the West, and there is a large difference between 'Russia's economy is not failing and will not for years' and 'Russia's economy is doing well and doing better at sustaining the war indefinitely than the west.'
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While I respect (though disagree with) the idea that we can't possibly talk to unreliable partners, this doesn't seem to be a position of the U.S. government.
The US has been brokering ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas literally every week for the last few months. Hamas is the least trustworthy partner I can possibly think of. They will immediately turn around and start rearming and launching terrorist campaigns the second the ink is dry.
So it would seem the US government views this war as a good war.
Thats kind of the point though isnt it? It doesnt mater how manny talks the US brokers if niether HAMAS nor the IDF are going to take them seriously.
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If 'views this as a good war' is synonymous with 'the Russians maintain that the pre-emptive Ukrainian withdrawal from the Russian-claimed oblasts is the precondition for talks,' sure, but that's more than a little silly.
But would be fair, if you were trying to be unfair. Many appeals for ceasefire are unserious, as demonstrated by your own example. The US has not been brokering ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas literally every week- the US has (and other regional actors have) been going through the kubuki theater of pretending to have ceasefire talks that neither involved party are actually interested in, which everyone involved in knows is not going to deliver, and everyone already knew this before the first dozen times Hamas walked away from one sort of condition or Israel walked away from another.
However, because Hamas claims to be interested in talks, and does not have blatantly non-starter preconditions for said talks, said talks occur even though no one expects anything from them. Russia's conditions for equivalent public talks, however, amount to a Ukrainian withdrawal regardless of the result of the talks.
This isn't a matter of the US government views. It's a matter that the US government isn't the hyperagent, and that the views of the other parties matter as well- and if a party is making unreasonable demands to even have ceasefire talks, let alone demands within the ceasefire talks, the preferences of the US government are not going to bend everyone else to make concessions to the unreasonable party for the sake of ceasefire talks.
Which, going to post you replied to, is the point that realistic talks are far away: the Russian positions are not realistic by the standards of less-silly people.
I think it's quite obvious that both sides stated positions aren't their actual final positions for the hypothetical peace treaty if it was signed right now. They just have no reason to downgrade their stated goals before any negotiations.
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Isn't Ukraine, symmetrically, still demanding Russia's withdrawal from the territories it has successfully captured as a precondition? The problem with this war is that neither side is actually even close to being exhausted, so they don't see a point in taking about negotiations except as an opportunity for games and posturing.
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