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The idea that Ukrainians are only fighting out because mean old NATO made them do it is absurd. In the months leading up to the February invasion, it was widely assumed in Western capitals that Ukraine would fold like a house of cards, and that would be that. The only reason the West got sucked into the conflict in its current capacity is because Ukraine put up an impressive resistance, stopping the Russian offensive in its tracks and pushing them back rapidly. Relatively recent polling data from Ukraine (a few months old, but after the failed summer offensive) shows continued strong support for the war and confidence in the UAF. Now, I'll happily grant that Ukraine's 2023 summer offensive was a disaster, not so much because of casualties but because it significantly depleted Ukrainian munitions and led to the current "shell hunger" being experienced across the line, and all for very little return. But despite this setback, Russia has not been to shift the lines significantly either, suffering lopsided casualties for minimal territorial gains at Bakhmut and Avdiivka, and the largest successful advances of the war after the initial invasion still remains the Ukrainian Kharkiv counteroffensive of Q3 2022.
The bitter lesson of the last year, I would suggest, is that the operational environment in Ukraine now strongly favours defensive operations, and large breakthroughs are unlikely. On the one hand, this is bad news for Ukraine: any dreams of sweeping advances into Crimea or liberation of Donetsk City have been thoroughly quashed. However, it's also bad news for Russia, insofar as it makes an outright military resolution of the conflict unlikely. Instead, it will be a battle of stamina and will between Ukraine (and its backers) and Russia (and its backers). It may be that the Ukrainian people decide it's not worth fighting on, and will sue for peace, and that's ultimately up to them, but we're a long way from that point. Moreover, it's not clear that the fundamentals of the battle of stamina really do favour Russia: we're witnessing dramatic scaling-up of munitions production in Europe and the US, the continuing depletion of Russian armoured vehicle stocks, and increasingly bold attacks on Russian oil and gas infrastructure hundreds of miles behind the border. It seems to me that the resolution of the conflict remains wide open.
Was it that, or more that Russia is much more pathetic (and apathetic - just look at their public's reaction or the level of mobilisation/defence spending that Putin can muster) than anyone expected?
From what I have seen, it's not so much that Ukrainians have been fighting well, and more that Russia's ability to project power beyond its borders is almost completely gone. Once they could dominate Eastern Europe, now they take months of grinding to gain worthless plains within a country that they once lorded over directly.
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The resolution, yes; the outcome, no. Appalling amounts of lives and infrastructure have been destroyed, and whatever lines end up being drawn up on the map, the people of those countries deciding the lines will be dead or impoverished. It's only a question at this point of how many dead and how impoverished.
It may be up to the Ukrainian people to decide whether it's worth fighting on, but I'd point out that in that poll, 42% favor negotiations to end the war. I'd be curious to see crosstabs: are the young men being
forced at gunpointasked to sacrifice most well-represented in the small majority who favor continuing the war without negotiations?More options
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The west would have benefited from Russia taking Ukraine in a week. Ukraine's pensionsystem is a complete mess, their infrastructure is worse than Russia's and they would have gotten 20 million new citizens that hate them. Combine this with sanctions on Russia and it could easily have toppled Russia. The plan was probably to give Ukrainians light weapons, training and let Ukraine become a Soviet-Afghan war 2.0. Three billion dollars of aid to the taliban played an important role in sinking the Soviet union. The architects behind the war had experience from Iraq and saw poorly funded militias cost the US tax payer the equivalent of the GDP of a medium sized country.
Instead they have gotten a nightmare in which Russian mass produced drones are being shot down by 250 000 dollar missiles in limited supply.
The neocon plan was to pull out of Afghanistan, have a quick collapse of Russia and then focus on China. Now they are the supply line for a Ukrainian military the size of the American force in Vietnam at the height of the war that is fighting a far more intense war while Russia is turning into a large arms factory. The aid won't stop when the fighting ends. After this war a force 4-5 times the size of the US marine corps including its reserves has to be completely rebuild and then sustained. They now have a military the size of the French, British and Germany military combined that is consuming supplies at WWIII levels and will need a complete restoration after the war. The pivot out of the middle east ended with a 7+ month war over a tiny strip of resourceless desert.
Meanwhile China builds more tonnage of military ships than all of NATO combined.
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It's one thing to support a war in the abstract. It's another to volunteer to actually fight the war. There is not sufficient volunteer manpower, so Ukraine is forced to round up men at gunpoint and force them to serve.
I do not believe that the continued prosecution of the war (for what aims?) can justify the human rights tragedy that is unfolding.
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