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It seems to me that to attain anything resembling Ukraine's maximalist goals (that is, retaking all of its original territory), a collapse of the current Russian government is an almost unavoidable precondition - the territories Russia conquered since the start of the war are one thing, but the war on the Donbass front seems to be largely fought by separatist forces who are much more highly motivated and have their backs to the wall, Crimea is nominally actually under the Russian nuclear umbrella in a way that I doubt either Ukraine or its Western backers are particularly interested in testing, and both have local populations that are likely highly hostile to the Kiev government and could probably not be pacified while Russia's promise of support remains credible. In that regard, hastening such a collapse (which would also make the actual job of reconquest significantly easier) seems like it would be a natural objective of the counteroffensive. Clear victories would of course do this, but so would baiting the Russians into making self-defeating mistakes such as general mobilisation. For the latter purpose, in particular, it seems that it would make sense to maintain the impression of steadily increasing operational intensity even if this comes at a high cost and achieves few tactical objectives. Every victory evokes a feeling of "if we couldn't hold this village now, what's going to happen next week?", and makes it just this much more likely that Putin or a critical mass of members of his inner circle will blink.
(Regarding mistakes that Russia could be baited into, I've also been curious for a while if there are any non-public "red lines" that the American alliance has communicated to Russia. There are a number of seemingly sensible actions that they seem to markedly refuse to take, including, to the dismay of Russian milbloggers, attacks on bridges (outside of that one particular one near Odessa) and power plants in the Ukrainian rear, and (to my own greater incomprehension) a WWII-style dumb carpetbombing of Avdeevka which seems to continue punching way above its moral weight in pinning down the DNR. Perhaps there is a tacit agreement to leave the bridges in Ukrainian cities intact in return for the Crimea bridge, but I could also see that such actions would motivate greater Western engagement. Of course, in that case, baiting Russia into performing them is another way to get the necessary footbullets.)
This is something fascinating to me as well and the fact that it is not discussed openly almost at all is crazy for me. Currently there are no good explanations for why Russians aren't using tried and tested shock and awe tactics like this. Why is there a single railway junction or energy plant or bridge still standing in Ukraine? The Russian explanation (they are just too humane) and the Western explanation (they don't have the capacity) are both obviously bullshit. Early in the war the sensible explanation was that Russia wanted the infrastructure intact since it would soon own them, or need it for its own troop advances. Now that doesn't look likely either.
All of this makes me think there are a lot more backroom communications and dealing going on than what is being acknowledged for PR reasons.
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Then it's very clever of Russia to throw the remaining male population of those areas into combat: with continued Western support for Ukraine, they'll keep lining up against that wall and falling there.
I think the collapse of Russian war effort and probably government can come with little fanfare and forewarning, certainly no nuclear option.
On this note, what do you think about Kadyrov's retirement announcement?
Kadyrov is back
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I don't know how much combat deaths will actually matter demographically at the current mode of warfare. Losses are still counted in (tens of) thousands, whereas the populations of the DNR (Ukraine) are counted in (tens of) millions, and, well, there isn't a lot of human capital in that entire region anyway. Both parties are still squarely in the "spend materiel, preserve people" phase of systemic warfare, where on the margin being willing to preserve people a bit less benefits you because it lets you spend your remaining materiel much more effectively.
Anything could happen, of course, but the likelihood of this strikes me as grossly overstated. I don't think that nukes are likely in absolute terms, but my modal expectation of the situation in a year is an uneasy stalemate on a frontline that doesn't look too different from the current one, not the ideas of widespread collapse of any organised externally-directed violence that seem to be based on a Western conception that Russians will wake up and realise how their narrative is largely wrong and the Western one is obviously correct any moment now.
No opinion; I've only seen it filtered through so many non-neutral intermediaries that I couldn't discern whether it was really made, let alone any subtleties about how it was made if it was.
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