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tl;dr some quick attempts to get inside the mindset at the Kremlin concerning events in the war, in the run-up to Putin's speech expected in a few hours. Everything below could be immediately and awkwardly falsified if he announces some desperate escalation like general mobilisation or a nuclear strike against a Ukrainian military target.
Ever since the Ukrainian successes in the northeastern campaign, I've been trying to get inside the mindset of the Kremlin to figure out what their likely response is.
One thing that is almost certainly true (and easily underestimated) is that they are in their own psychological bubble, and there is no elite team of intelligence operatives whose primary job is to give Putin objective analysis. Human minds don't work that way: we easily form fenced-off epistemic communities that downplay our shameful fears and play up our pride. You can even see this reading the reports of US decision-making throughout the Cold War, when interservice rivalry ran hot and the USAF nuclear strategy advisors were giving opinions based not on what was in humanity's interests or even the USA's, but instead what would get them the most planes and status compared to the army and navy. And of course, you can see it easily on reddit, even getting a rush of ideological whiplash as you flit from one politically aligned sub to another.
(What about people like Girkin? Well, he's a doomer, and an outsider, and his criticisms are mostly quite careful. As far as I've noticed, he talks about the conduct of the war, not the wisdom in initiating it in the first place; or he says that Russia should be more committed, without once questioning whether the war is winnable even with full commitment.)
Given all the above, I think a useful and necessary starting point for understanding Russia's position is to try to imagine what your view would be if Russia's strategic situation was a lot better than you probably currently think it is (this is one reason why contrarian posters are valuable to any subreddit that takes itself intellectually seriously).
What does this involve? Maybe it means you think that Ukrainian morale is weak. Maybe you think that the EU is less united than it appears, and winter will be harder than Europeans are prepared for. Maybe you think that the United States is being opportunistic and will drop Ukraine without looking back when the conflict starts to swing back Russia's way. Above all, you're probably convinced that there won't be another breakthrough like in Kharkiv oblast: that was a one off, heads have rolled, and now discipline and morale have been restored to the troops. Reinforcements are coming in, Iran is sending useful drones, and the forthcoming referenda will encourage a surge of volunteers from the DPR and LPR.
Let's say that you, like Putin, were in the grip of this relative sunny outlook. What would follow from it for your reflections on the wider strategy of the conflict?
Above all, I think you would be aiming to take the long view of things, because the fundamentals are on your side. Forget today's battles and next week's offensives - focus on longer-term military-industrial capacity, and associated active measures in the Russian and foreign populations. You probably don't want to risk a general mobilisation - that might compromise your longer-term war fighting ability - but you want to get as many new volunteers as possible, ideally from less economically active areas of the country. And finally, nuclear weapons wouldn't be on the table; after all, you're winning this war, albeit more slowly and less gloriously than you'd hoped. Why would you risk alienating friends and allies and giving NATO a chance to intervene?
But you might ask, at what point does this Pollyanna-Putin outlook begin to crumble? When does the filter bubble burst, and Putin has his Downfall-style meltdown? When Ukraine liberates Kherson? Lysychansk? Donetsk? Sevastopol? I think the only answer we can give here is that people in general are very bad at facing up to uncomfortable realities, and can keep themselves from accepting painful truths for their entire lives if necessary. Or think of psychologist's Leon Festinger's now famous work on cognitive dissonance on doomsday cults: when the doomsday prophecy fails, people will go to great lengths to avoid accepting that they've been duped. I expect Putin to go out the same way, with his final thoughts being confidence that Russia can still be victorious, even as he has an unfortunate fall from a window.
("What about you doglatine? Why are you so sure that Putin's the one in the filter bubble rather than you?" Answer: Well, I've been trying to make clear predictions throughout this conflict both online and to my circle of geopolitics friends - this post is in that same vein - and I'd say I'm fairly well calibrated so far in terms of events on the ground. Part of the appeal of making explicit predictions is to try to break yourself out of these epistemic lagoons in the first place. All that said, I recognise that of course I'm in a filter bubble, sometimes through deliberate choice (once the novelty value wears off, it's just not fun to consume propaganda you disagree with). But even if my intentions were pure, filter bubbles are all but inescapable. Usually the best you can hope for is to get good at spotting the early signs of a bubble collapse so you can make a clean exit with your life savings and a modicum of your dignity intact. But that's far easier said than done)
In any case, I am curious what others think.
No matter how much Russia underperforms, screws up, or fails against seeming ridiculously favorable odds...
They can mass mobilize a million+men any time it gets heated, while Ukraine is already maxed out (in terms of new troops per week)
they have the old soviet stockpiles that means even as the average equipment regresses decades, they can feed the war machine, whereas the European and even American stockpiles are getting hazardously low.
The Russian economy is actively profiting from the war and global increased scarcity, whereas the Germans are preparing warming centers because they won't be able to keep the lights or heat on.
The collapse of international supply chains if this continues are going to start Arab spring style regime change and civil war throughout the world, which draws the American empire away from Europe and towards Middle eastern deployments, whereas Russia has already secured Assad and its few major allies.
Ukraine's GDP was 3k per capita before the war, Russia's was 10k. As the Eurozone economy collapses and shortages hit the world, the Average Ukrainian's standard of living is going to collapse even if their government has properly managed their food stores so they won't starve (which who knows?)
Russia has already conquered all the territories it geostrategically needed. It has Donetsk and Luhansk, it has Crimea, it has its land border, it controls Kherson and the mouth of the Dnipro river... Those are its victory territories. Those are its bare minimum victory territories... but that's it. If the borders never move Russia has secured everything it strategically needed from this war.
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Winter is not going to favour the Ukrainians... Russia is already in place and has its supply lines. Russia does not have to pull off big maneuvers to win. And the economies Russia is intimately tied to aren't going to collapse and fall to riot and rebellion this winter.
Ukraine just made a big deal of taking 1000 square kms... Russia has taken hundreds of thousands of square kilometers, and the lines have barely moved in 5 months. Unless the Russians mutiny and break, which is very very unlikely...the lines are likely to stay there til next spring at the earliest... all drawing out the war is doing is killing 10s of thousands of Ukrainians a month, and ensuring that the inevitable global humanitarian crisis is all the worse.
there should have been a negotiated end to this war months ago, and the European countries should be pushing Ukraine to cede and accept their loss... not egg them so their constituents can freeze (probably to death in the case of the elderly), global famines can wrack the world, and more Ukrainians can die under Russian artillery... and all to prop up America's hegemony, not even their own empires.
I think you, like some of our mutual acquaintances, have been putting too much stock in the Russians With Attitude Podcast without adding the requisite pound of salt.
I don't listen to RWA. I just pay attention to the relevant ratios, who's consistently shown to be full of it, and what get leaked or admitted.
none of even the serious pro-Ukraine people expect them to win the fight. Peter Zeihan is a full on neo-con and he keeps talking about pushing Kherson and cutting off the water and Electricity supply to Crimea, that that'd be a bargaining chip, or taking out the bridge at the Kerch strait and cutting off rail supply... but neither of those seem to be materializing, and it seems more likely Russia would just retaliate against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure. And aside from that, he's just "Ya Ukraine is outperforming... really showing bravery, too bad the default is they'll probably lose"
And every neo-con or belicose commentator is like this once you ignore the high energy announcements and get into their analysis and predictions its "Ya no its exciting they could pull off this crazy dramatic campaign we've never seen signs of them doing and it would change everything ever... but odds are they won't and they'll get ground down and lose everything slowly and painfully... but hey we still bleed Russia and stop the Germans from pivoting to them, so a US geostrategic victory"
Every time, as soon as you dig into one of these more serious commentators that stake their influence on major us intellectuals taking them seriously, they'll spend ten minutes hedging, praising the UKrainians bravery, lay out some absurd tele-lazer snipe Zelensky could do if he levels up his mech to 5 stars... and then they say "But they need something like that, because as is they're going be ground down militarily and economically until they collapse"
Zelensky admitted 200-500 deaths a day, that's probably 1000-1500 total casualties once you include wounded. That's not sustainable. Their squads that go around black bagging people for the front are going to become predictable and conscripts will dry up. Especially in a corrupt country where gdp is 3k per person, everything runs on bribery, and perhaps even a majority of America's 100 billion went to just paying people off.
We should not expect the Ukrainian commanders to be much different than the Afghan allies the US was funding and training for 20 years... Right now they're getting those black bagged conscripts to the front, because the money hasn't dried up yet... after a winter of economic decline and the US has gotten distracted by an election cycle, another current thing, and congress and the senate are gridlocked across multiple parties, and no one can pass a Ukraine funding bill without someone attaching funding for abortion for illegal immigrant's ar-15s...
US clients have never not been like this. Vietnam collapsed the second US funding and backing started to wane, ditto Iraq, ditto Afghanistan... Hell the US almost lost Berlin to the soviets.
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US backed regional wars are a very specific genre just like slasher movies or romantic comedies There is a formula, a very simple formula.
The enemy is always on the run... except none of the "Dangerous" regions ever seem to become safe regions, and there are a shocking number of offensives that get uncomfortable. The allies are always great brave men fighting for their homeland and the best anywhere in the world... but their budgets are never trackable and they seem to be oddly overlapped with organized crime... hey is that oppium? Hey are those neo-nazi tattoos? America's allies are always winning and training and get really professional and buttoned up...yet they never seem to stop being dependent on attached mercenaries and special force... and seem to always have bad luck maintaining any initiative,
and finally The enemy is always laughably incompetent, loses every battle, and can't do even basic stuff the US expects of its worse units...and yet somehow they win the war.
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The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results... well the US kinda learned... they aren't sending their own conscripts to this Vietnam... just blowing incredible amounts propping up an ARVN force they know isn't sustainable... so instead of years and administrations before the whole thing fails, Ukraine has months and a midterm.
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America wins every invasion, and cia coup... for the same reason it loses every complex local enabled patronage war... the US in constitutionally incapable of addapting its meta tactics. Its winning formula are winning and they work, and they don't get changed... and the second a US invasion gets repelled it might literally be the end of the world, but until the end of the world every US invasion will be a cakewalk. And likewise every US backed local military force, militia and insurgency they arm and train are going to be primarily interested in scamming the American tax payer, because hell that's what the American contractors are there to do and the US isn't going to adapt tactics even if you're caught scamming them.
That people can still fall for this Afghan National Army bull... I swear some of the articles about female fighters were just search and replace and they forgot to take out the sentence about face coverings.
Its a formula. Its a very simple formula.
So many words, and so little truth and substance. Everything verifiable in your post about the war is a lie, and others are just inane ramblings.
Zelensky said that? You got a source for it? The max I remember was 50-100 a day during the most intense fighting when Ukraine was pursuing a ridiculous no-step-back strategy in Sievierodonesk. Considerable casualties for sure but 4 times less than your lies. That difficult period lasted about a month.
You got a source for the black bagging squads? If this is common occurrence responsible for any appreciable amount of conscripts then we'd have hundreds of telegram videos as proof.
Yeah? Who are those credible commentators you are referring to? Michael Kofman? Dara Massicot? It's easy to make up shit when it's unspecific.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61742736
This Zelensky Aide puts it at 200 dead and 500 more injured.
RT cites one of Zelenksy's main negotiators as putting it at the 200-500 mark:
https://www.rt.com/news/557262-ukraine-daily-military-casualties/
And here's the Axios story if you don't trust RT citations:
https://www.axios.com/2022/06/15/ukraine-1000-casualties-day-donbas-arakhamia
And here's the video of Ukrainian forces conscripting people off the streets at gunpoint:
https://twitter.com/ivan_8848/status/1556566862846169088?s=20&t=6Cp7CVwajUHcXaPalKx9zA
"RT"
Are you serious?
Lavrov in March was claiming that Russia has not attacked Ukraine.
Even official count of shot down aircraft provided by Ukrainian propaganda is more credible.
Reading comprehension is important.
I provided two sources with the exact same data
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