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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.
I've become exceedingly fatalistic about the 'outcome' of this war because it really feels like the ultimate destiny of each nation (for the next 50 years, at least) is largely baked into the cake at this point.
Ukraine may very well be able to maintain autonomy over most of its' own territory. But their population has been in decline for decades now. Now add in a few facts:
Lots of Ukrainian men are dying on the frontlines instead of starting families.
Even those men who survive have been deployed for a year+ and probably won't be starting families anytime soon.
Russia has apparently been abducting tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian Children. The prospects of getting these kids BACK even if Ukraine wins are slim-to-none.
I don't see any way to slice it to avoid Ukraine entering terminal population spiral/decline, and it may as well already be there. If the war drags on for another year then even if Ukraine prevails and all the men return and start enthusiastically knocking up women it'll be 16 or so years before those kids can become economically productive in any way.
In short, win or lose I don't see how Ukraine maintains itself as a functional nation as their demographics become untenable to support economic activity. Unless perhaps all the other nations of the world commit to pouring massive ongoing support into the country.
And most other countries face a similar, though less sharp, demographic crunch.
Russia, well, they're slightly more likely to hold together as a country but it seems increasingly unlikely they'll achieve their overall goals for territorial security and so I would assume they will just continue to fight a war of attrition to their last man rather than return to the status quo ante.
I'm no Russia apologist but this seems like maximally uncharitable framing, and I'm extremely skeptical of that wiki article since it seems like blue tribe has thrown in completely with Zelensky. Having never heard of that, I assumed that Russians were literally driving around in vans and snagging kids to send them back to the motherland to process into Soylent Green or something since I can't imagine why they would bother rounding up kids in a war zone. But apparently they're just collecting war orphans, kids who were stuck in government institutions, and kids who were orphans before the war broke out, and trying to place them in Russian homes.
I'm not really sure what the alternative is. Send them across a chaotic active military front? Leave them to scrounge for rats to eat in bombed out apartment blocks? Having read the AP news article cited in the wiki (NYT one is paywalled), the biggest complaints are that the kids aren't being sent to the other side of Ukraine (which makes sense since as far as Russia is concerned eastern Ukraine is part of Russia now) and that the kids are being taught Russian which apparently counts as "genocide." From the kids' perspectives, western Ukraine and Russia are probably both very foreign, and wherever they get sent in Russia will almost certainly be farther away from the warzone then wherever they'd end up in Ukraine.
This is as bad as "kids in cages," and it makes it really hard for me to take seriously any claims of Russian war crimes (of which I'm sure there are many real examples) since western media is so eager to exaggerate to push an image of Russians as sadistic child-stealing orcs.
The point I'm trying to make is less about whether Russia is committing war crimes or not and more about those kids being removed from the Ukrainian population, sharpening the demographic crisis.
Ukraine needs kids if it is to continue to exist as a nation, and this war is blowing a hole in their already-sinking birthrate.
I accept that point and agree with you. Regardless of whether or not it's actual "kidnapping," it is is surely very bad for the future of an independent Ukrainian nation.
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