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Since everything is looking like a Trump win now, what are your actual predictions for the trajectory of the Ukraine war?
As far as I'm concerned, the doomsaying consensus predicting something like an end to supplies, forced armistice followed by Russia rearming to strike later with accumulated force struck me as unfounded and downright strange. If we even accept the premise that Trump would in fact cut supplies and force a truce, it's not at all clear to me that this would be to Ukraine's disadvantage. If anything, UA currently seems to be the side that would greatly benefit from a pause, as they could actually train up their masses of conscripts (probably to a higher standard than is available to Russia, judging by performance of "elite" Ukrainian vs. "elite" Russian troops) rather than burning them as fast as they can be equipped and give their backers time to actually ramp up production of crucial high-tech equipment such as air defense platforms, where it's clear that in the limit the West's ability to produce would outstrip Russia's ability to attrite but they just happen to be stuck on the back foot. Meanwhile, it's not clear how well Russia's losses and departures and weird 8D economic sprezzatura would even hold up under a sudden few months of deafening silence if the guns were to rest, and they don't really have all that much slack left to ramp production up further.
Conditional on Trump forcing a truce, my modal scenario is actually that in a year's time a stronger Ukraine steamrolls a weaker Russia, while conditional on everything continuing as before I would now expect Ukraine losing more and more until its will to fight is broken and it feels compelled to sign a much less advantageous treaty of its own accord. Why is the former scenario not even being treated as a possibility by respectable publications? Is it just that they all tried to convert some pro-Ukraine goodwill into anti-Trump sentiment?
Trump will get stonewalled by Putin on his demands, resort to threats of reducing or cutting off aid to Ukraine as a way to force them to make whatever concessions to end the war, and hang the failure on the Biden admin and lack of support by the European satropies. Ukraine will end up a rump, disarmed state, with something like a constitutional requirement of neutrality as well as disarmament (with inspections). Russia will have more territory than it's already currently inducted into the Russian Federation.
Russia gains nothing from stopping the conflict. Everything is in their favor. They are winning all along the front. Every single week their military gets larger, stronger, and better equipped. Ukraine gets weaker, smaller, and less equipped.
I predict the war will end in 2025 with a significant chance of a cascade-failure of the Ukrainian army, likely as a result of a big arrow move by the Russians. I also expect serious political instability or coup against Zelensky & Co., likely by the nationalist faction who implement a universal conscription program in an attempt to stabilize the line and I think this will fail. I think there is a small chance in the event of a cascade failure, Europeans and/or NATO will attempt to put "peacekeepers" into parts of Ukraine in order to stabilize the conflict, perhaps first a trickle in places like Lvov and more if it's not punished enough.
The war will end as a huge embarrassment for the West with permanent degradation in the perception of the West's financial and military strength. It'll be yet another feather in the cap of failure by the US state department over the last 25 years.
It isn't a victory, but isn't the fact that Ukraine is still fighting this far still an impressive feat?
At some point, you can't expect the West to be able to defeat Russia in every proxy war context.
This isn't even a symmetrical proxy war. The West is fighting only as a proxy against full Russian involvement. Feels a lot like Russia's Vietnam, even if in the long run Russia might eke out a points victory - a major power thwarted by a minor nation backed by opposing major powers, except even less flattering for Russia because at least Vietnam was half a world away and not bordering America.
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