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As I'm sure many of you are already aware, it's been another insane 48 hours in Ukraine. The "side offensive" in the northeast that accompanied the "main offensive" in Kherson has made astonishing progress, with Ukrainian forces pushing all the way to the Oskil River, with Kupyansk under attack and Izyum and Lyman both threatened. None of this will mean much to most us, I realise, so here's a quick (already outdated) map of the progress.
It's important not to get carried away here; while this is the closest we've come to a true war of movement since April, and there are reports of desertions and surrenders by Russian forces, we're dealing with one front in a war with at least three more (roughly, in the Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and Donetsk sectors). This will probably not trigger a general collapse of Russian forces. Moreover, it is still possible that Ukrainian forces will find themselves overextended and vulnerable to counterattacks. However, as matters stand, this looks like a decisive operational-level victory for Ukraine.
My main uncertainty in what follows is what Russia's response to this apparent defeat will be, given that the underlying tides seem to favour Ukraine. Mass mobilisation may have helped a few months back, but - in addition to its political difficulties - it's unclear whether this late into the war it will be sufficient to turn the tide. Obviously there's always the option of nuclear escalation, but this would be a colossal gamble for Russia, potentially leaving them diplomatically isolated while providing limited relief on the battlefield. Another possibility would be for Russia explicitly to use the Zaporizhzhia plant as a hostage, but again it's unclear how that would translate into gains on the battlefield. And all the while, Russia's gas blackmail strategy seems to be floundering; not only have European reserves filled at faster than expected rates, European gas futures continued to fall, suggesting optimism about long-term supply issues.
Clearly, the best solution for Russia is the removal of Putin. His successor might still be able to cut a deal with the West that allows them de facto control of Crimea (for example, via a Hong Kong-style lease agreement, accompanied by a clever financial 'reparations package' that involves minimal pain on all sides). That will not begin to ameliorate the damage this idiotic war has caused to Russia and Ukraine, but at this point it is the least bad option. The only question now is how Russia can best ensure a relatively fast recovery from the self-inflicted harm it has created.
I don't see the clarity of this. It is not clear if there is an alternative with broad-based support in waiting, and a transition without internal fragmentation or echoes of civil war would be possible, and it is not clear why the West would just stop and offer that deal in that situation, as opposed to moving in for the kill. Even if the scenario you describe were the overwhelmingly most likely one, it is not clear to me that a better outcome for them than that is not on the table by staying on the battlefield, such as at least one that entails keeping (much of) what they have of the Donbass. Presumably, a large part of the economic isolation that Russia is subjected to at the moment would continue anyway, because the West would be foolish to trust any leader that could unite Russia as it is behind him to not immediately start plotting for a rematch of one form or another - and a Russia that changed leaders may actually be a Russia that is capable from learning from its mistakes, which could give it a rather better shot at it.
Like what, say "we'll make it meltdown unless you do X"? Seems to have all the downsides of tactical nukes plus the downside that they only get one choice of location to irradiate, which is a location they currently control.
It wasn't immediately clear to me whether you were talking about the advisability for Russia of the removal of Putin or the suing for peace. Re: Putin, any deal that Russia could get with Putin still in place would be inferior to the kind of deal they could get with a successor in place. This is widely regarded in the West as "Putin's War", and while Russia will bear the bulk of perceived responsibility even if he goes, he will at least take some of it with him. As for the hunkering down option, that could be relatively palatable for Russia, but it's not clear it's going to be strategically sustainable if Ukraine continues to have operational victories and the West continues to pour weapons and money into the conflict.
I was thinking instead that Russia would publicly signal something like "the war is endangering ZPP!" while privately signaling to Ukraine and Western governments "we'll shit on the carpet if you try to get us to leave". The advantage this would have over use of nukes is semi-plausible deniability; a major radiation incident at ZPP could simultaneously freeze all parties' military operations in the region and could be passed off as an unintended consequence of Ukrainian aggression. To be clear though, I don't think this is a very sensible option.
The issue is that Putin doesn't take responsibility for the war in the Russian political context if he's ousted- whoever ousts him does. And it's the Russian political context which matters to Russian court politics, because who is going to depose Putin for the sake of being the ritual sacrifice as the one who's going to assume the responsibility of bearing the bad news? A palace coup comes with most of the negatives of the 'stabbed in the back' narratives, with the issue of it actually being true, regardless of whether the war was already being lost or not.
Russia, in aggregate, would probably be better off, but Russia, in aggregate, doesn't make decisions. Individual people make decisions, and they do so in their individual contexts and interests. Whose interests, specifically, are buoyed by couping Putin and not simply setting themselves up for the blame/follow-on coup?
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I meant the removal of Putin (in the current situation/short term). I think you are probably right in that all other things equal, in any given scenario with s/Putin/some other leader/, the expected value of a West/Russia peace treaty for Russia would be higher, but the "all other things equal" does a lot of work here. The current expected cost of suing for peace is surely not "unconditional surrender"; a sufficiently weak leader presiding over a sufficiently fractured Russia, though, might wind up having a negotiating position that gets arbitrarily close to that. (...and I think that sufficient weakening as a result of the power transition is more than likely, in no small part by Putin's own design.)
All in all, I still don't see a good way out for Russia - and especially not for Russian-Ukrainians except for those that had the clairvoyance to conspicuously commit to the Western horse early on - that does not depend on contingencies ranging from the very optimistic to major miracles. It seems to me that modulo high-variance paths like political transition, tactical nukes or Kesslering low earth orbit, and generic changes the feasibility of which we outsiders can not begin to estimate ("reform the military to use drones more effectively"), their best strategy really is hoping for a low-probability event, and perhaps maneuvering into a position where more distinct redeeming low-probability events become possible. To that end, what they are doing in terms of grand strategy seems basically correct: hold out for the European economy to crash and/or antiglobalist parties to come to power, reach out to China presumably urging it to accelerate its Taiwan schedule, hunker down and defend rather than engaging in any large-scale advances, ...
I guess that one is in fact somewhat plausible. I would think that in Western media, the blame for any incident at the plant would be laid squarely at Russia's feet no matter what anyway (even in the land of Putinverstehers itself, I could only find one major newspaper that would not routinely give >=equal weight to the Ukrainian shitposts claiming that the Russians are shelling themselves at the plant!), but considering everything they've gotten up to so far I would also not put it beyond them to actually delude themselves into thinking it will be not so. (Perhaps, on the other hand, all that actually matters is that the rest of the New Second World can keep its population believing that it is not so clear-cut.)
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