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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.
Ukraine seems to be more and more desperate for peace. They seem to have given up on making gains in the primary theatre in the east and gone after Kursk instead, looking to use it as a bargaining tool for the short-term.
However it takes two to tango and the Russians have repeatedly indicated they're not interesting in negotiating until the goals of the SMO are achieved. Presumably this means annexing all of their claimed provinces, demilitarizing the country and installing some kind of new government in Ukraine for the 'denazification' angle. I expect this to happen. When a great power is fully committed to defeating a middle power, there's not going to be a ceasefire, they'll win. Everyone agrees the Russians have more POWs than Ukraine, presumably they must have inflicted more casualties. They do have more firepower and more manpower.
Possibly there's some kind of contingency where NATO troops enter should the Ukrainian army disintegrate, as Macron has threatened. At that point, everything is up in the air. Then this war would truly become like Korea, where we have two great powers at war.
I think this is highly unlikely. Ukraine currently has sovereignty and still about 80% of it's claimed territory. There's no reason for them to give that up for nothing, not while they can still fight and launch effective offensives. If Russia wants all Ukraine, it's going to have to get it the hard way.
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Western claims that Russians are losing way more people than Ukrainians. Can you point to something contradictory?
The Russians have a lot more heavy weapons. If they expend more munitions, they should be inflicting more damage. Most casualties in conventional war come from artillery and the Russians have a lot more guns and shells than Ukraine. They also have more drones.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/04/23/ukraine-war-artillery-shortage-production-military-aid-bill/
Consider the state of long range bombing - Ukraine has damaged some Russian oil refineries and occasionally damages some buildings in Moscow. Russia routinely fires massive volleys of missiles at Ukrainian power generation, causing rolling blackouts and large-scale destruction of grid infrastructure. There are no such blackouts in Russia.
Ukraine has been drafting intensively, there are many, many videos of Ukrainian men being dragged struggling into vans for the front. One man, Ruslan Kubay, was drafted despite having no hands, which was subsequently reversed. People are drowning as they try to flee the country. People have been fleeing Russia too but not to such a great extent, more for business reasons and (legitimate) fear of conscription. However, Russia has mostly been filling its front line by promising generous bonus, they have not been forcibly conscripting. A much larger proportion of the country has fled Ukraine than Russia, I suspect that they have made a logical decision.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/29/i-am-not-made-for-war-the-men-fleeing-ukraine-to-evade-conscription
I was probably wrong to say that there were more prisoners held by Russia, I can't find any independent proof of that. Nevertheless, the Russians have demonstrated more capacity to inflict damage than Ukraine has, while Ukraine seems much more desperate than Russia. Furthermore, I think it's unwise to trust Western military estimates or any military estimates for that matter - they lied all the way through Afghanistan and Iraq.
While I do agree that Western estimates aren't to be trusted, Russia hasn't given us any casualty numbers to compare (other than a claim of 5,000 or so made fairly early on in the war). In war, truth is the first casualty, and we aren't going to get any reliable numbers until after the war is over. Or maybe never, given the wildly varying estimates you can still see for many historical conflicts.
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