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Notes -
Nobody seems to talk about the RU-UA war here anymore. I guess it's because we're saturated with it everywhere else.
Yet given that Ukraine has launched what is unquestionably the largest offensive since the Kharkov surge in late September when it took back wide swathes of territory, I believe a status update is warranted.
First, it is immediately clear that the Russians are much more prepared this time. The area that Ukraine took back in autumn was barely defended by a rag-tag group of volunteer militias. That was a big lapse by the Russian general command, which also led to the big mobilisation drive. This time is different.
Even pro-UA accounts like Julian Röpcke are conceding that Ukraine is losing lots of armored vehicles with very marginal gains. Western officials like the CIA chief or the US foreign secretary have all pointed out that the aftermath of the offensive will shape upcoming negotiations. Given that Ukraine has little to show for their offensive thus far, this inevitably casts a dark shadow on any prospects for large territorial compromises. Why would the Russians give the Ukrainians something at the negotiating table which they cannot gain on the battlefield?
To my mind, the best that Ukraine can hope for now is a stalemate. This war has shown that in the era of ubiquitous ISR capabilities, trying to surprise your enemy is much harder if he's on his toes (which the Russians weren't in the autumn, but they are now). Consequently, offensives are simply far costlier and harder. The Russians had the same problems, which is why capturing Bakhmut took such an absurdly long time.
For those of us who would want to see a negotiated settlement, the reality is that neither side is running out of money or arms. Russia is spending a moderate amount of money and the West can keep supplying Ukraine enough to keep going for years if the decision is made that defensive action is the way to go. The only way this war ends is if the West tells Ukraine to give in and accept large territorial losses in return for a settlement and possibly security guarantees. Such an outcome would be nearly impossible to sell to Ukraine's domestic public and would almost certainly end the career of whoever was leading the country, including Zelensky. Whatever comes out of this war, I'm not optimistic about Ukraine's long-term prospects.
The counteroffensive was politically inevitable. Even if Russia had already shown to have lost practically all its offensive potential, Ukraine still had to show its best effort to liberate the occupied territories to advance the war towards a negotiated settlement. A counteroffensive that makes meager gains and is ground to a halt with a lot of losses on both sides is probably counterintuitively the quickest way to a political resolution of the war:
if it's quickly blunted by the Russian defenses, it will reignite Russian jingoism, leading to the next phase in the war where Russia tries to advance further into Ukraine again
if it makes politically significant gains (i.e., cuts through the land bridge), then the total liberation of Ukrainian territory can be measured in about several more similar packages of military aid. That is, it's relatively affordable, but will take several more years. You can fit lots of black swans into several more years
of course, if Ukraine manages to push Russian forces all the way to its 2013 borders in one fell swoop, it's a total victory that makes further negotiations irrelevant, but so far it doesn't look like it's going to happen
But if Ukraine's hopes and dreams of recovering the occupied territories via military force are shown to be just those, then the war can move to the next phase, the phase of resolution. And I'm not sure Ukraine and its allies have the same goals in mind:
there's the Indo-Pakistani solution, with both countries saturating the recognized border and the line of actual control with troops in case the other side tries something, with regular standoffs and border skirmishes, if not additional wars/special operations down the line
there's the "cutting the losses" solution, with Ukraine ceding the occupied territories in exchange for security guarantees and Russian frozen foreign currency reserves
The old EU prefers the latter. The US prefers the former, Pakistan has successfully kept India busy for 75 years now. The new EU prefers the former as well, as Russia that is permanently busy with Ukraine won't have time for them. Which one Ukraine itself prefers? Does it have enough power to influence the outcome? I think we'll see in a year or so, when its northern border with Russia is reinforced on both sides and makes raids impossible.
Ukraine, and most Ukraine supporters, don't seem interested in the 2013 borders - the goal is to totally destroy Russia as an independent power capable of threatening Ukraine. This could mean destruction of the country or a large annexation of a buffer zone, but ideally they'd want both.
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Russia can't be allowed to act with impunity just because they have nuclear capability. At the same time, they are not paranoid - they really are in great danger, albeit as a result of their own actions.
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