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From my perspective and understanding of the situation the idea that Ukraine will take back Crimea is on the same level as a burning barn deciding to put itself out. There's no path from the current situation to them achieving their goals - any kind of nuclear exchange just immediately ends the world, and Ukraine does not have the manpower or resources to take back the contested territories without mushroom clouds.
The lack of quality in terms of troops is exactly what you would expect to happen when they start running out of actually fit recruits. Though I don't think this argument can actually be settled because the precise numbers are closely guarded military secrets. My interpretation of the information around recruiting efforts and the relative "success" of the counter-offensive is that Ukraine is having manpower problems and is unable to provide quality soldiers in enough numbers to make a difference despite incredibly heavy-handed and corrupt conscription efforts. But again there's no real way to settle this without access to that red hot information.
I don't understand how the conflict could be existential for Putin given that he's reportedly a strongman dictator who doesn't have to care about his public reputation, but Ukraine absolutely does have important territorial ambitions for Russian land. Crimea is a vitally important base for Russia, and if they don't have control over that area someone could just go and bomb the gas transit pipelines they spent so long setting up. I think it is fair to say that the US certainly viewed the Cuban missile crisis as an existential threat, and I think there's a very direct equivalence to the idea of Ukraine becoming a NATO outpost. To the best of my knowledge, the reason they view it as an existential threat is that they think NATO missile interdiction systems would give US authorities the false belief that they'd be able to win a nuclear exchange.
From a conventional perspective, Ukraine managing to sever the land bridge would put Crimea under risk. It's not particularly defensible terrain (Perekop is no Thermopylae) and the supply interdiction problems Russia would face would make the campaign like a scaled-up version of the Kherson offensive. Not a guaranteed victory for Ukraine of course, but the template for their victory would already be there.
The nuclear threat is vastly overplayed. For a good primer on escalation theory, this video is a good primer. Putin himself decreased the legitimacy of the nuclear deterrent when he annexed the 4 oblasts, effectively putting them on the same footing on Crimea, i.e. a normal battleground like any other, no special nuclear protections given. It created a very clear brightline between the 1991 borders and the rest of Russian land.
This is more an issue of training and experience than raw bodies. Even assuming very pessimistic estimates of both Ukrainian casualties and population loss due to refugees (e.g. tripling estimates for both), it's clear they still have a lot of fight left in them.
What? Pipelines are vulnerable basically everywhere. If Russia wanted to "protect" its pipes for their entire length then they'd need to annex half the EU. As far as I know, Crimea doesn't even host any major pipelines directly. And in any case Russia is pivoting towards Asian markets as a result of the conflict.
There's nothing Ukraine in particular offers on this front that Romania, Poland, Baltics, Finland, etc. don't already offer.
I do not think that Ukraine has the operational capability to actually pull this off in a real, lasting way. But again, the information that could actually resolve this argument is a tightly guarded secret in the middle of a war. We're both reading tea leaves and trying to divine the inner state of a state that is actively fighting a war and considers that information extremely confidential. That said, I still feel very comfortable placing a bet that the victory being described will not happen.
Also, while I'm sorry, I'm not actually going to watch that hour long video until I get a good time to do so, which I can provide no guarantee of happening any time soon.
Putin had previously stated before the war that nuclear options were on the table when it came to defending Crimea. To the best of my knowledge that hasn't been walked back, and the US government is still reticent to give Ukraine assistance that they think would allow them to actually retake Crimea.
I think that the raw bodies is absolutely a factor at the moment, but again there can't be any settling of these questions until the war is over or there's a dramatic leak of Ukrainian state secrets. The stories that I've seen regarding conditions on the ground and the tactics being used by their recruiters/conscriptors suggest that the number of raw bodies is relevant - but the lack of training is absolutely another big factor.
This is a reference to the US' threatened and then actual bombing of gas transit pipelines.
You could be correct - I don't know enough about current nuclear missile interdiction systems to know with certainty what's the case here. But Russia certainly seems to be behaving as if this is important to them and have said as much in the past multiple times. I think the strategic importance of being able to maintain their naval base in Crimea is extremely relevant as well, but I'll freely concede this point otherwise.
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