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What will be left of Ukraine after Russia and the West are done with their proxy war?
It's hard to get good numbers as both Russia and Ukraine lie about everything. But it feels that Ukraine is exhausted and will soon lose this war. My heuristic for this is reading between the lines of the news. Every optimistic story about Ukraine's war effort in the last year has failed to bear fruit. And nuggets of facts go unchallenged, such as the average age of Ukraine's soldiers now being 42.
The U.S. estimate as of August (according to Wikipedia) is that 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed with another 120,000 wounded. I would treat this as a floor, personally. The Ukrainian forces at the start of the war were 200,000 regular soldiers and 100,000 paramilitary. I think it's safe to say these troops have been utterly gutted. The size of the Ukrainian army is reportedly 800,000 today but at this point it must be nearly entirely conscripts. Conscripts with an average age of 42. To channel George Carlin, think of the average 42 year old. How would they fare in a trench? Now realize half of Ukrainian soldiers are older than that.
Millions of people have fled Ukraine. The population (as of 2022) had already declined from 51 million to 36 million within the 1991 borders. It is likely much lower today. We will soon see the first instance in more than 150 years of a country losing half its population. (Either the Potato Famine or the Paraguayan War seem like the last potential candidates for this happening).
What people don't realize is how incredibly RARE this is. The population of other war-torn regions such as Afghanistan and Iraq has skyrocketed. You can't even see the conflicts on a population chart. Syria had a brief decline but has rebounded and is now higher than ever before. The population of Russia dipped during WWII by about 10% but by 1955 had rebounded again to an all-time high.
The combination of low fertility, huge emigration, and war deaths will depopulate Ukraine to a degree that hasn't been seen in modern times.
I have to ask, at this point, why does the West still support Ukraine? Yes, it's very convenient that Ukraine is willing to destroy itself to hurt Russia. But, as a utilitarian, I am very skeptical of the benefits of "grand strategy" type decisions like this. The world is complicated. If we let Putin have the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine will he then demand the Polish-speaking parts of Poland? No. It's not like this war has been a resounding success. Furthermore, he could die tomorrow.
But the deaths suffered by Ukrainian conscripts (and yes Russian conscripts too) are very real. We are trading the deaths of real people for theoretical future benefits. And we are destroying an entire country in the process. Why not go to the bargaining table and end this cruel and pointless war?
Because Putin has shown 0 interest in meaingfully negotiating, his minimum position is "I win, you lose" and this is obviously unacceptable to Ukraine/'the west'. Putin has shown again and again and again that any compromise will be taken as a sign of weakness that emboldens him to push further. If you wish to minimise human suffering, focus on winning the war and defeating Russia to the point where it stops launching such stupid and wasteful wars in the first place.
Because 'the west' broadly empathises with the desire of Ukrainians to not be Russians, I certainly know that I'd be fighting and dying if I was in their shoes and would appreciate all the help that I could be given. While there are certainly those who are seeking to control this war for more cynical ends (looking at you, idiots in the US state department) they are by far and away in the minority, popular support for Ukraine in the west is driven much more by sympathy for the plight of their fellow Europeans, resisting aggression and a desire to reassert the taboo against major wars in Europe. Russia and its foreign cheerleaders have taken great pains to try and depict this war as one between NATO and Russia, with the Ukrainians cast as pawns in the greater struggle, but this is a complete misreading of the situation designed to flatter the egos of the Russian people and portray the west as villains. The reality is that if the Ukrainians didn't want to fight, they wouldn't fight and certainly they would not fight with the tenacity and resourcefulness that they've shown.
"My source? It was revealed to me in a dream."
The narratives around this war have been as changeable as a wind sock, turning to match each gust of changing fortune. I wouldn't bother trying to guess how this will all end, nobody can tell from where we are now.
We, the West, cannot win this war and should not try. It simply is not going to happen. All this rhetoric has done and all it can do is make an angrier, more threatening Russia with a bigger chunk of a more devastated Ukraine.
Firstly, the Russians will scale up their war effort symmetrically with our commitment to Ukraine. This is what they did in the past, mobilizing more troops back in September 2022. If we send more weapons, they'll increase their mobilization. The weapons we've sent have already exhausted much of our stockpiles, as has been admitted by many of our senior leaders.
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2023/09/21/western-help-for-ukraine-is-likely-to-diminish-next-year
https://www.the-express.com/news/us-news/121416/us-warning-ukraine-war-funding-weapons-supplies-dwindle-nato
So we cannot even send aid without seriously weakening readiness. Western military '''industry''' is very slow to produce new weapons and it seems that Russian military industry produces more than all of us combined in certain key areas. Artillery is the king of battle and the Russians have a lot more of it:
They've got superiority in shells: https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-ammunition-manufacturing-ukraine-west-officials-2023-9
They've got superiority in drones: https://bulgarianmilitary.com/2023/11/30/ukraine-produces-50000-fpv-drones-per-month-russia-300000/
They've had superiority in aviation through the whole war, the Ukrainian air force is reduced to flinging a trickle of standoff missiles from inside SAM cover. It's hard to see what a few F-16s can do to change this situation, seeing how many SAMs the Russians have, along with their many air superiority fighters.
Secondly, Ukrainian manpower is rapidly being depleted. They're drafting women now (only with a medical background to start with), along with the old and infirm men. Even if the Arsenal of Democracy actually worked properly, there is not a sufficient number of fit Ukrainians left to use the weapons we give them to take any significant ground, let alone their 2022 borders, let alone 2014 borders. Encouraging their best units to attack into deep defensive belts against an enemy with air superiority and more artillery probably had something to do with this. Russia started off with more manpower and retains this advantage. How can Ukraine possibly win the war if their counteroffensive got nowhere, now that their manpower is reduced and aid is running out?
Thirdly, Ukraine is not a strategically vital front to us and the Russians know this. They enjoy escalation dominance and if they were losing they could deploy nuclear weapons and compel the Ukrainians to back down. Ukraine is vital to Russia, it's the Black Sea, contains many of their coethnics, it's a country they fought immensely hard to retake back in WW2 and their direct neighbour. Britain, France and especially the US are far from Ukraine, it simply does not matter in the same way as it does for Russia. There's no scenario where they can credibly threaten nuclear weapons to counter Russia. Poland does care deeply but has little power. The knowledge that they know it's more important to them is a great source of Russian strength, since they know they just have to wait for us to give up.
The front with China is far more important to the West holistically and deserves a higher priority. Taiwan is strategically vital in terms of bases, semiconductors, leverage over East Asia. Spending more effort in Ukraine distracts us from the real issues. The nightmare scenario is depleting reserves in Ukraine, losing there and then losing in Asia as well.
True, they've certainly fought hard. But victory in this kind of war, where both sides are determined, goes to the side with more men and munitions. I also note that there aren't nearly so many videos of Russians being dragged out of their homes by draft officers.
Also, Russia got substantially weaker and Europe got reminder how cooperation with Russia ends.
This is not going to happen.
Ukrainians are not going to counterinvade actual Russia.
The Russian military was weaker at the start of the war than now, there was a lot of confusion, inexperience and ineptitude. It was also smaller and less experienced, with less military-industrial production capacity.
Furthermore, we've drained reserves of munitions that will take years to refill. So has Russia. But China hasn't lost anything.
If the narrative is 'don't cooperate with Russia (where cooperation is trading with them) or US vassals like Ukraine will blow up your energy infrastructure' then this is not an especially convincing anti-Russian argument. Germany is also in a recession driven in large by higher energy costs.
The Russians define Crimea as actual Russia. Crimea is officially a Ukrainian war goal. I agree that the Ukrainians aren't going to threaten Crimea but theoretically if the Ukrainians were winning, they would be invading actual Russia insofar as it would plausibly trigger nuclear use. It's a conditional claim that makes Ukrainian victory a serious problem.
See the Rand Report where they agree, listing this as a major concern, more important than Ukraine getting more of its land back: https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PEA2510-1.html
The Russians also defined the newly captured territories as actual Russia. I somehow doubt reclaiming them would trigger nuclear use. The definition of "sovereign totally Russian historical territory" has depreciated as of late.
Note that the response to strikes at actual, 1991 borders Russian territory was not "nuke them".
OK, so the Russians pulled out of Kherson after defining it as legally Russia. They intended to come back and secure the territory because their army was not decisively defeated, they chose to withdraw because holding a beachhead across a river is hard (as Ukraine is now experiencing with its Dnieper adventure). Furthermore, Kherson is not as 'actual Russia' as Crimea is. Crimea is not as 'actual Russia' as St Petersburg but it's very important to the Kremlin.
Ukraine also managed to break some windows in Moscow, a raid at Belgorod and they blew up some airbases. Sure, none of that deserves nuclear counterattack.
But say that the counteroffensive had performed as promised, an armoured thrust securing Tokmak and Melitopol, land bridge to Crimea cut off, armour racing through rear areas, encirclements, supplies cut off by HIMARS, all of the OSINT predictions actually coming true... Say the Russian army was reeling and lacked confidence in defending Crimea. Then there is a decent chance that they'd drop the hammer because what else is left but defeat, collapse and a trip to the Hague?
It is reasonable to assume that collapse -> losing Crimea and a trip to Hague. However, I don't see how purely losing Crimea is supposed to bring Kremlin to Hague. Last time I checked, Kremlin is in Moscow.
Losing this war means downfall for Putin and co, that's what I was trying to get at. Or there's a high enough risk that they'll act as though their lives are on the line.
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brutal internal oppression and throwing out of window anyone who points out that war was Putin's fault seems much better than pulling out nukes
And at least nukes are not the only option left.
Which probability of nukes flying would you consider acceptable risk for banishing Russian armies (and by that point, armed population) from Crimea? Some can say if nukes start flying, it's not theirs fault, but Russia and they were always right in pointing that Crimea is not Russia. But it's not answer. Putin's regime is not going to survive fall for Crimea, that's for sure.
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