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Curious about where the "escalating pace" point comes from.
I'm too bubbled up on this, I think. I occasionally see videos of Russians getting mowed down by FPV drones or the Ukrainians pulling off a strike inside Russian motherland territory, and then usually Russian retaliation, but very few updates on battle line movement.
The battle lines are moving pretty fast by Ukraine war standards. Pokravsk and Konstantivka are surrounded. Bilohorovka has finally fallen, tightening the Russian cauldron around Siverisk. The result of these three sieges is that the final 2014 era Ukrainian hardened defensive line through Sloviansk-Kramantorsk-Konstantivka is on the verge of being cauldroned.
Additionally, Kupiansk on the northern end of the eastern defensive line is almost encircled. In the south there’s a slow moving but consistent Russian breakout coming from the Avdiivka-Vuhledar direction.
In far north-central Ukraine, the offensive salient into Kursk has been fully rolled back. Russian troops are beginning to push into Ukraine towards Sumy.
Taking all these things together, it means you could see a complete collapse of the front in about six months.
That sounds like a fair definition for 'escalating pace.'
Not sure what can be done for Ukrainian morale if their sole foray into Russian Territory is now completely reversed. With, allegedly, 70k casualties? the scale of this war still blows my mind sometimes.
And man, a lot of westerners who have staked so much of their personality on the belief that Ukraine can win this thing will presumably be inconsolable for a while if Ukraine throws in the towel with Russia making actual territory gains.
From a purely military perspective the invasion may have been the right move. They inflicted serious losses on the unprepared Russian defenders and diverted an impressive amount of manpower away from the main attack in Ukraine.
But from that perspective they should have cut their losses and run when the Russians brought their entire war machine to bear on the pocket. Trying to replicate attacks like the Kursk attack in other places along the Russian border would probably have been smart. But the fact of occupying Russian land was probably too much to just give up without a fight.
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Doubt it. In my bubble those are the same people that wore masks until 2023 and bend the knee for floyd. If Kiev falls - in 24 hours they will find another pet cause. And ukraine war will be memory holed.
I mean they can pivot straight over to Palestine or like a half-dozen other slightly more trivial matters.
They're probably already addled with anxiety and depression, so it'll result in a spike of therapist visits.
I'd guess they keep the Ukraine Flag in their profiles for at least a couple months.
These guys could really use a win, but it sure seems like they won't get one. They've been losing ground on abortion rights, gun control, most of their favored economic policies, climate change, affirmative action... and things ain't going well for either Ukraine or Palestine.
Genuinely hope we don't get more of them setting themselves on fire.
What if they get a win because Trump opens the spigot?
Which spigot is that?
The military gear spigot via these NATO purchases.
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Please do bear in mind that most people who wanted Ukraine to win thought they were going to lose in weeks/months, and were pleasantly surprised that the Russians proved so incompetent at modern maneuver warfare, and the Ukrainians so resilient. This includes the bulk of Western military/geopolitical analysts.
Ukraine continuing to exist as an independent state at all is a "victory" that many thought very unlikely.
If the Ukrainians deem it in their best interest to accept territorial losses then so be it. They fought way harder than was reasonable to expect when this first started.
I do distinctly remember saying at the time - not here, but to friends and coworkers - that Ukraine's best scenario (that was realistic without the US or EU doing most of the heavy lifting) was creating a Vietnam-style quagmire. In broad strokes, it seems to me that's what's happened.
More of an "Iran-Iraq War" quagmire in terms of style (trenches, not jungle), but yes.
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And, for many purposes, they established a very credible lesson about it for the future.
That is to say, even if they end up losing some eastern territory, they will have demonstrated that the cost to get it was extremely high -- both in absolute terms and relative to expectation.
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I mean... this outcome is almost the precise definition of a Pyhrric victory.
There is not a long term strategy that results in Ukraine happily returning to status as a decently prosperous second-world country. Not that they were very happy before anyway.
I don't want Russia to 'win,' but look at my comment from just over two years back.
(Russia's victory will be Pyrhrric as well, but will at least advance some of their goals)
Oh, and this comment chain from two years ago about the children being kidnapped (Russia KNOWS it needs more young blood), the Ukrainian demographic collapse, and Ukrainian women fleeing the country.
Even if all the people who fled come back there is no chance of Ukraine repopulating over the short term. And it would take hundreds of billions of dollars of investment to rebuild the country. From whence is all that money actually going to come?
All in all, the best case scenarios for Ukrainian survival (regardless of who rules the territory) were:
#1 Russia never invades.
#2 Russia invades, Kiev falls quickly, the country folds, NATO reinforces every border and contains further aggression.
#3 Russia Invades, makes a mess of it, and decides to keep at it, and the U.S. happily works to prolong the conflict to the tune of hundreds of thousands of lives and billions of dollars of military hardware and aid.
...
...
#45 Russia deploys nukes.
We're deep in scenario 3, and whether Ukraine or Russia 'wins' does nothing to solve the demographic hole that's been blown into both countries.
For a smaller country fighting a larger one, a Pyrrhic victory is in some ways the goal. You either surrender, flee, or say, "Fuck it, everyone loses." If the deal is, "I steal everything from you, and you get to do as I say," you mash the defect button and try to make sure they're miserable. The alternative is your state exists only so long as someone else doesn't want it.
Yes, the Taliban pulled this off to massive success (by their standards/on their terms) not too long ago.
But in Ukraine's case, WHAT IS THE LONG-TERM STRATEGY.
Beat back Russia, maybe even join NATO, fine.
Your population still drops off a cliff. Protracting the war is hastening the decline there.
What sort of deal can you make that even lets you feel safe for the next couple decades?
The fertility crisis isn't going to be solved in or by Ukraine. If a solution is found, then Ukrainian wartime casualty counts will be irrelevant assuming they stay within 20th century (i.e. WWI level or less) norms, but could make the difference between Ukraine existing or not as a sovereign state in the future. Presumably the soldiers fighting are motivated by nationalism and care about such things. If a solution isn't found, then we go extinct and this discussion is moot.
Ukraine has a fertility stable population in the far west- which Russia will oppress because Galicia is the Balkans-level ultranationalist part of Ukraine. It's not the majority(or even close) but the UGCC has managed to get Galicia's fertility rate to stable just-below-replacement levels overall. Ukraine will be smaller but it will still be Ukraine.
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The problem isn’t birthrates, it’s excess deaths and emigration. The population is much lower because people who didn’t flee are being killed in the war. And keep in mind that win or lose, the population will not be enough to weather another invasion later on.
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No idea. Every option for Ukraine is losing. Making a deal with Russia is pointless because the only condition they will accept is not having a military, which is the same as surrendering their country to Russia. Either they accept being taken over by Russia and enduring whatever Putin does to secure control, or they throw themselves into debt on the hopes that they barely survive. If they win, then throw themselves on the mercy of Europe and endure having nothing while they try to rebuild.
I'm playing around with the idea of them basically becoming a semi-colonized nation where they sign various deals for access to their resources with enough countries, and have enough 'foreign' infrastructure built up in certain areas of their territory, (ideally nearer the Russian border) that there's now broader interest in maintaining their independence.
This would also grant more interest in providing foreign investment to rebuild. Unfortunately I probably underestimate Russia's motivation to crash such a party.
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I wouldn't be so dismissive of the possibility that solutions exist which simultaneously make Ukraine too weak to make it attractive for it to resume the war at a later point and reclaim territories (what is really Russia's minimum condition) and too strong to make it attractive for Russia to do so and capture more. The most obvious option is for NATO to provide a binding, boots-on-ground guarantee to defend it should Russia attack again. As far as I can see, the problem with this option is strictly that neither the current Ukrainian government (which surely would collapse in such a situation) nor the West (for whom a neutral Ukraine with present borders is of little value, and they would have to credibly signal that they would defend it, vs. the option to have it cheaply continue killing Russians and gamble on the absolute bonanza that a surprise Russian collapse would be) would actually want it.
Without EU membership/emigration opportunities/gibs, even the Ukrainian people (who are largely happy to accept a chance of death for a chance of climbing the butter mountains and swimming the wine lakes) would see no reason to accept such a peace, though I thought Russia at one point softened its stance on accepting an Austria-like "EU but no NATO" arrangement.
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For Russia, yeah. Ukraine has to choose between two bad scenarios for the situation imposed on them--a costly victory or a costly defeat--so they might as well win.
The Ukrainians are intimately aware of the tradeoffs between fighting Russia and being ruled by Russia; I defer to their judgment on that question.
I think you're overly concerned with demographic collapse scenarios and insufficiently concerned with the risk of a resurgence of wars of conquest.
Ideally, the Russians have overextended themselves militarily and economically such that some kind of crisis forces the Russians to back off and Ukraine survives.
But if Russia takes enormous losses in a Pyhrric victory such that they and other would-be aggressors are sufficiently deterred from further warmongering then I can only thank the brave Ukrainians and their will to fight for dying on behalf of improved regional security.
I actually think the former feeds into the latter, so my concern encompasses both.
I'm prepared to defer to Ukraine's wishes on HOW they want to go out. This war has had shockingly little direct impact on my life.
I'm just noting the dismal reality.
"Survives" is doing a lot of work here. Check out that population projection. Not enough young people to rebuild and support the older generations = Ukraine has no economic prospects to speak of.
Likewise Russia (the government) probably sees this as an existential crisis, which implies they will NEVER back off unless they run out of men.
Or the aggressors who have been able to stockpile weapons might believe they've got an opening to re-open old conflicts now that the U.S. has stretched itself thin.
One thing is certain, a lot of Ruskies and Ukes have died to develop the absolutely Bleeding edge in drone-based warfare, which has probably changed the face of any conflicts from here on out. And that's BEFORE we've figured out how to have AI guided drones produced en masse.
I have my thoughts on how conflicts will go based on what's been proven to be possible and effective
I also think conflicts have become more likely under current economic and demographic constraints, and that Ukrainian sacrifice isn't doing much to decrease that likelihood because that doesn't change the underlying incentives.
Let's not exaggerate here. The US has in almost no actual way "stretched itself thin" in supporting Ukraine. We have not even significantly altered our force posture. (Which we did for Iran recently.)
The USAF and USN would absolutely demolish their Russian counterparts given their abysmal performance against Ukraine. Tactical drones are nice and all in trench warfare, but good old-fashioned air dominance is even better when you can get it.
That's not to say drones aren't important, they are and will be, but the US military is aware of that, as is Palmer Lucky and his competitors.
If wars of conquest (not motivated by ideological commitments that aren't "rational" in the usual sense) are shown to be more costly than they are worth, even in victory, then that's a huge deterrent.
I'd also guess you're very wrong in that age is negatively correlated with aggression and violence, and so older populations would seemingly be less warlike by default.
Well, can you? The closest we have seen to an attempt to get it over a country with a modern multi-layered air defense system was in fact Russia over Ukraine, and it failed. Of course, the question is to what extent the conclusion should be "Russia sucks" and to what extent it should be "this is a hard problem", but it's not like Ukraine can fly manned planes close to Russian-held territory either. I imagine the US is actually not convinced that it could pull it off either, and is more interested in maintaining the strategic ambiguity (that maybe it could) than risking rolling the dice and establishing that the answer is no for all to see. (Of course, the possibility that the answer being yes leads to nukes is also a factor.)
I can only say I am looking forward to the day China goes for Taiwan, as it will finally re-peg some of the nationalist hypothesizing about who could win if they really tried to reality.
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I keep reading stories like this:
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/us-stockpiles-missiles/
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/05/21/united-states-defense-pentagon-military-industrial-base-ammunition/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/08/us-pentagon-military-plans-patriot-missile-interceptor
Now, granted, there is only one possible opponent on the world stage we could maybe be concerned about challenging the U.S. directly.
But I think it's pretty obvious that the U.S. is less able to intervene in various conflicts than it would be in the world where the Ukraine war didn't pop off.
Some places are going to notice that.
Right.
And seeing that both you and your potential opponent are in a demographic spiral, the 'costs' of doing so shift. This is the problem as I see it, we have not seen this particular phenomenon in the modern era: governments hitting economic crises that they will only expect to worsen as their populations collapse, and getting desperate enough to try and seize territory and resources to stave off disaster.
The point is more that countries will run out of young, male citizens to man their military force. If your country is composed mostly of the old and infirm... you'll look pretty vulnerable to your neighbors whose population pyramid is slightly more favorable.
This is likely the primary impetus for Russia invading Ukraine at all.
Oh, and having a country made up of the old and infirm means you aren't as productive, so you can't produce as many weapons nor can you afford to purchase as many weapons. Non-nuclear states are going to have a hard time keeping neighbors at bay, potentially.
So I worry that we will simultaneously see economic crises that provide the impetus for wars to seize territory, and demographics crises that make certain countries more vulnerable to such attacks.
ALL OF THIS whilst the U.S. is increasingly less able to intervene in places that flare up.
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If the institute for the study of war is trustworthy, or at least consistently biased enough to use as a metric, it does look like the Russians are making some real pushes.
Check today's map from one on this day two years ago for comparison. They're nibbling at the edges of the northern border.
If it's just the position of the front, most available maps should be accurate enough. As biased as the reporting may be, they can't fake the front more than a few miles.
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ISW is considered mostly a joke by people who aren't pro-Ukrainian. Nakedly partisan, not that smart. E.g. they said this about the failed Ukrainian summer offensive.
"may" means "may", it's not an assertion. At least when I've looked at their stuff, they usually are clear about this kind of thing, and language like this is speculative.
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If that's the case, then isn't ISW admitting Russian advances an even stronger signal of accelerated Russian gains?
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This is kind of why I despise the inherent Pro-Ukraine bias of most western reporters/forums, they can't reliably report on Russian successes since that reads as treason to the good guys, even if its more accurate as to the situation on the ground.
That and the tendency to outright lie. I still remember the Ghost of Kyiv story, and that was just the most egregious of several from that time.
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The pro-Russians have called the slow pace of grinding village conquests by Russians an escalating pace or words to the same effect for close to three years now, the same time they've predicted the imminent collapse of the front, Zelensky getting couped and so on.
The last year and a half really have come across has a throughput increase (scaling up results to input increases, but roughly the same proportions as smaller inputs) rather than compounding advantage. Typically a compounding position of advantage decreases military casualties because you mitigate the ability of the enemy to retaliate. Throughput just increases output gains by increasing input costs, but if you later decrease the input rate the outputs will still correspondingly diminish rather than continue at a steady rate (i.e. coasting to continued success). It's going from spending 3 to 6 in order to receive 8 instead of 4 on the back end. Bigger is better, yeah, but normally success on overmatch would be compounding, such that spending 6 should get you 10 instead.
The Russians can grind on for months and even years yet, but as long as the Ukrainians can match that- and that is the implication of matching the throughput scaling as they have so far- it's not really an enduring advantage if your limiting factor is more economic-political than literal manpower. Given the role Russian recruitment costs have played in the budget, and the tapering factor of early mobilization advantages, Russia is more likely to run out of men it can afford to bribe to volunteer before it conquers the four provinces.
That still leaves mass conscription down the road, but whatever you think of the political costs that Putin demonstratably disliked more than the current system, the political costs will be likely be worse if low-fiscal-cost conscription is scaled after years of volunteers got paid oodles, thus denying the new recruits even the pretense of equivalent bains, and after a war-recession has gotten underway.
I am not the biggest fan of social contract stability theory, and I believe I've said in the past that Putin can shoot down a revolt, but the man is a notorious strategic procrastinator and has a history of deferring this exact sort of choice.
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Collapse happens first gradually, then suddenly. I have said almost 3 years ago that both sides are losing the war and it is competition which one will lose it faster.
And I am not even sure that West's best toys can turn the tide*. And I suspect that is the reason why they hadn't been delivered to Ukraine. Taurus may be a nice piece of gear. But I am fairly sure Germans doesn't want to give China opportunity to figure out counter measures.
*If you think tide exists. Although it seems that the artillery theorem starts to work in their favor lately.
My suspicion is rather that the main consideration behind non-delivery of Taurus is that it weighs heavily on one side of a mutual restraint agreement. Taurus can hit Moscow; having to evacuate the Kremlin into hardened command bunkers would certainly be a symbolic and morale hit on Russia, cause friction on its entire government apparatus and possibly destabilise the country down the line regardless of what else happens in Ukraine. However, Russia also has plenty of militarily eminently sensible moves that it has not taken yet, presumably because of Western sensibilities, such as bombing Ukraine's NPPs to actually turn off the lights or turning to indiscriminate bombing of cities to obstruct the civilian economy implicitly supporting the military one (surely Ukrainian drone innovation would be hampered if its drone innovators can no longer buy a warm meal, take a shower or have a warm bed to sleep a full night in).
Would they still not take them if countries like Germany exhausted all escalation steps short of boots-on-ground? Would Germany go boots-on-ground over bombed out NPPs? (I am skeptical that this would necessarily entail significant radiation leaks. Russia could even announce their targets in advance and demand a preemptive shutdown, leaving the offense against the West to be limited to the vague notion of "nuclear terrorism", especially toothless after the latest Iran happenings.)
Unfortunately, the Western propaganda posture requires denying this (as it must be asserted that Russia is maximising for evil, and non-manifestation of any evil outcomes is strictly due to its incompetence), and therefore prevents questions like "What could Russia do if we delivered Taurus? Would it actually be a net positive for Ukraine?" from entering the public discourse.
Yep, the number of bridges across the Dnieper is quite limited, and yet they haven't been taken out, nor have the railroad hubs in Western Ukraine been covered with petal landmines.
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Yeah, my priors are VERY high on this just being a meat grinder of men dying in droves to secure a couple square miles of additional territory.
The only viable play (for either side) seems to be to acquire as much leverage as possible when talks finally occur.
I'm not counting out a breakthrough (Prighozin's little adventure two years ago could have shifted outcomes, for example) but claiming a breakthrough is too easy without actual real territorial gain to show for it.
Hell, Syria's civil war seemed to be at standstill then all at once Assad was suddenly ousted and on a plane to Moscow. It can happen, but good luck predicting it precisely in advance unless you were one of the people planning it.
It’s not a breakthrough yet. But Ukraine’s leverage is slowly decreasing and if there ever is a major rapid breakthrough it all goes out the window.
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