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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.
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 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?
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 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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