This is a good post making a good point, but there are a few marginal things I'd like to correct (to the extent predictions and what-ifs can be correct).
1. I'm not convinced that Ukraine will be worse off from this war *in the long term* even if it wins. A positive example here is Israel, which is not as different as it may sound. The Ukrainian diaspora is not Israeli- or Armenian-size but significant (with well-known representatives such as Chrystia Freeland). And there are quite a few countries interested in the Ukraine winning on its own terms (first and foremost, most Eastern European countries). So I don't think the West will leave Ukraine out in the cold once the main danger has passed. This is not to say that the EU's role in its further development will be entirely positive... but it'll beat any future determined by Russia.
2. Being a Russian satellite might have looked like an okay proposition for a country 15 years ago, but the world has changed. Belarus has been a dictatorship entirely thanks to Russia, and is now in danger of violent collapse again entirely thanks to Russia. The one time Russia could have helped an ally recently -- Armenia --, Putin decided to stay out as he wasn't fond of their current government. Asian post-Soviet states are now moving under Beijing's umbrella for entirely understandable reasons.
3. I have yet to hear a Western public discussion of nuclear risk from the Ukraine war that isn't missing the fourth cell of the table: What happens if a strong response *prevents* nuclear escalation, while appeasement would make it more probable? Putin has a history of starting foreign conflicts whenever his ratings fall (2008, 2014, 2022). If this is allowed to continue, where will the next shoe drop? There are progressively fewer opportunities. Kazakhstan is now under Chinese protection; Armenia means incurring Erdogan's wrath (which Putin has proved unwilling to do); Belarus might be next, but its moments of weakness won't necessarily fit Putin's schedule. Leaves the Baltics, and Article 5 and all that entails. And of course, there is no way to convince Putin that we would defend the Baltics unless we now defend Ukraine. On the other hand, it seems likely that we will indeed defend the Baltics at least enough to get a real war there. Now that is one truly diabolic case of information asymmetry, guaranteeing the worst-case scenario. The risks of the Ukraine war look nowhere near this bad.
4. Apathy is the "driving" force of contemporary Russian society. I don't think anything can reliably mobilize Russians to *willingly* fight Ukrainians on a large scale. Muscovites care little about Crimea and even less about their own border towns. (I would happily bet against such a mobilization if there was a good way to.) I find it somewhat more likely that continued war crimes will drive a wedge between ethnic Russians on one side and ethnic minorities from the Caucasus and Syberia on the other, since the latter are already taking some of the fall (thanks, Pope Francis!). The whole mix will become even more explosive if Kadyrov visibly grasps for power. Even then, I wouldn't bet on the "race war on the streets of Moscow" scenario that people loved to paint in the early 90s; more likely, a sequence of locally violent revolutions culminating in a less ambitious version of Putin.
5. How much exactly is the global economy suffering from the war? I don't know, but you seem to be straight-up assuming that it's a lot. Again, I'd like to see some data. In the US, inflation started before the war, and appears to be mostly the bill for our war on COVID (lockdowns and stimuli) and various other handouts coming due, no matter what Biden wants us to think. I'm less sure about the rest of the world, but Sri Lanka has shown that being governed by idiots will get you a famine no matter what Putin does or doesn't. Yulia Latynina likes to say that the Ukrainian grain exports lost due to the war are less than the grain utilized for biofuel, and if we are really this worried we might cut down on those subsidies for a couple years perhaps? I'm not sure how good those numbers are (and they don't cover fertilizer), but large parts of the world are not *behaving* in a way I'd expect if a famine was looming.
Great comment. Yes, the famine stuff was always nonsense. The real economic problem is energy but that will get solved too so this isn’t that big of a deal to the global economy in the grand scheme of things.
Ukraine would have been much worse off if they had allowed Russia to conquer them. What kind of future would they have had? This is the part of Hanania’s argument I most strongly disagree with.
If Ukraine had allowed Russia to install a pro-Russian regime, then it would look more or less what it looked like in 2013 the last time it had one, which is more or less what it looked like in 2021, a corrupt, badly governed country with an average IQ of 90. Now what does it look like?
Yes, Ukrainians are idiots. The average IQ in Ukraine is 91. But even if they were of normal intelligence, they could still be idiots in the sense you are using. In 1914, millions of Englishman went off to die for some complete garbage to do with Serbian nationalism, muh plucky Belgium, and images of gorillas with German helmets, permanently consigning their own country to second-rank status in the process. Nationalism and war fever make people idiots.
"How much exactly is the global economy suffering from the war? I don't know, but you seem to be straight-up assuming that it's a lot. Again, I'd like to see some data. In the US, inflation started before the war, and appears to be mostly the bill for our war on COVID (lockdowns and stimuli) and various other handouts coming due, no matter what Biden wants us to think. I'm less sure about the rest of the world"
This comment neatly encapsulates just how much Americans simply do not care about the devastating harm they are doing to their 'allies' in Europe. And yet we are supposed to believe that Europeans are going along with this wanton destruction of their prosperity because they sat down and rationally calculated that America's incorporation of Ukraine into its imperial sphere was just worth it. Truly Lolcow stuff.
Lets not make it America vs Europe. Europe is supporting Ukraine because it wants to, not because America says so. Eastern Europe, for instance, is much more "gung-ho" than US and would like much stricter sanctions. And European Union operates on consenus, you need all countries on board, including Eastern Europe.
Take a latest row over price cap to Russian oil. European Union and G7 (USA) want to hurt Russian oil revenues, but not too much, so their initial proposal was 70 dollars per barrel. Poland and Estonia blocked it - too much, they said. Next proposal was 65 dollars. Still, Poland and Estonia refused. Now, latest offering is 60 dollars and afaik, Estonia is still threatening to use its veto power. Ursula von der Leyen and Janet Yellen have made several phone calls to Poland and Estonia trying to convince, but have not been too succesful.
What Europe 'wants' is not some given fact that is independent of 70 years of being an American protectorate. It 'wants' things in the same way a transvestite 6 year old, or a vegan dog does. Objectively, its interests are in peace in the Ukraine. (Eastern Europeans, it is true, are different. Poland wants war for understandable reasons though Philip Pilkington is pretty sure it will blow up in their face).
Ukraine is getting incorporated into the Eastern Europe "sphere" first and foremost, although I'm sure the US is hoping for some market access.
My family lives in Germany and isn't seeing this wanton destruction of their prosperity for now. The electricity bills have gone through the roof, but the rest is doing fine. The 1970s oil crises were far more disruptive, but they didn't destroy American prosperity either. Uncontrolled 3rd world migration and the closing down of nuclear plants, those are what will be draining European prosperity over the next decade.
You realise factories also use electricity right? Six months from now, you will be saying that apart from 25% unemployment Germany is doing fine. Then six months later, that apart from widespread civil unrest it is doing fine.
And uncontrolled 3rd world immigration is a consequence of being subject to America too.
A few commentators have observed that this argument boils down to preserving U.S. global hegemony because the 'norm' being enforced is 'only the US has the right to resort to military force to solve inter-state disputes'. But there is another more subtle way this is true, because the 2nd order norm, namely 'only military invasion is an actionable offense' itself enforces U.S. hegemony since the US is just so much better at soft power than anyone else. To put it another way, Russia resorted to war in the first place, because America was cleaning its clock in the subversion war in Ukraine. So, essentially, if you try to compete with the U.S. the soft-power way, you lose, and if you resort to arms, the U.S. will use its soft power advantage to make the world punish you.
Now, you may say 'all's fair in love and war' and I'm not trying to say it's unfair that the U.S. has global hegemony. Might makes right, literally. However, there is a major elephant in the room: it isn't just Ukraine you are sacrificing for US hegemony, it's the whole of Europe, which is on the brink of an inflationary recession that will make the 1930s look mild and which can be avoided only through peace in the Ukraine. So your argument is really 'Europeans should destroy their countries to preserve US global hegemony', which doesn't sound so great. Which is why the public argument is 'something, something brave Ukraine'.
It makes sense that Russia wouldn’t like it, but a world where everyone competes in a soft power way is superior to a world where people compete through military force, so if that’s the result of American hegemony it’s a good thing. And the US advantage isn’t because the CIA and State Dept are so brilliant, it’s because people can rationally see an alliance with the US is better than opposition to it.
" . . . it’s because people can rationally see an alliance with the US is better than opposition to it."
LOL. It's a rationally better choice only because the CIA will attempt to stage a coup against you if you aren't sufficiently allied with us. Ask Poroshenko. Or Assad, or Erdogan, Imran Khan, Gaddafi, Mossadeg, Diem, etc, etc, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change
Clearly wrong. It's not in western Europe's rational interest to go into a depression, it's not in Germany's rational interest to have its gas pipeline blown up, hell it's not in Ukraine's rational interest to become a deathzone. Countries do these things that are manifestly not in their own interest, and manifestly *only* in America's interest, because American soft power is just too good. The CIA is part of it, but more important is Google, Apple, CNN, NYT, Goldman Sachs, Blackrock etc. (Please just read Unqualified Reservations already!)
Or let's take a different tack. Your newfound enthusiasm for American global hegemony (democracy) happened after China disappointed you by going full retard over Covid. Well let's follow that logic where it leads. The less retarded you are about Covid, the better you are. Which was the least retarded European country? Not Sweden, but Belarus. Maybe it's just a coincidence that the only Russian puppet state in Europe was the only one in Europe that didn't lock down. But maybe it's because, though Putin is himself a technocrat germophobe, he doesn't have the information infrastructure (and, perhaps, will) to impose whatever fad he is into throughout his sphere of influence. Russian puppet states objectively have much more independence than American puppet states ('democracies'). American hegemony means a world where every American white-woman fad becomes global policy.
The problem is that Russia tried soft-power competition, and even _won_ it in Ukraine by giving better funding options and industry utilisation... and US flipped a table there and went with what Russia sees as coup support - direct interference outside of bounds of local law.
So Russia escalated with similar more overt "coup" in Crimea, and then things went from there to where we are now.
Not really. Russia won Yanukovych over, but then there were protests against him, which is a normal thing that happens in countries all the time. It wasn’t legal, but it wasn’t American “hard power” either. It was at most American soft power. Still within the rules of the game.
By "unwritten rules" clearly Russia considered that EU should have honored the deal they arranged with Yanukovich - that is, early elections with him still in the running. By that point billions of money Russia pledged to him as well as industrial orders would start to trickle in, and it was possible for Russia to win "fairly".
That they didn't burned insane amounts of goodwill, and Russia went into "anything goes" scenario with Crimea - where they did have enough soft and hard power to make a difference.
What would be "proper" soft-power way to respond to coup that actively hunts your previous leader to kill him?
I think the problem is that Hegemon is irrational. If US was invading countries to steal their oil, you could at least calculate a proper response and thus prevent invasion by offering oil on the platter. Instead it all seems very arbitrary.
"However, there is a major elephant in the room: it isn't just Ukraine you are sacrificing for US hegemony, it's the whole of Europe, which is on the brink of an inflationary recession that will make the 1930s look mild and which can be avoided only through peace in the Ukraine."
You are correct. Hence, though I am still in favour of a negotiated solution, I do not accord the issue the weight I did then.
I don't think it' necessary to go through one's comments from 2 years ago and correct any errors, but since you flagged this one up, yes I was wrong in significantly over-estimating the economic damage the war would cause to Europe.
One thing to consider is the possibility that an attempted deal by Ukraine would’ve been met with subsequent encroachment by Russia. Perhaps Putin wouldn’t be satisfied with formal recognition of Crimea for his legacy. What disincentive would a deal give Russia to not try again someday when the West is further divided? Or after Trump possibly retaking office, for example?
The disincentive would be Putin being satisfied with having his legacy and not wanting to ruin it by starting a war. "I`ll remembered as the greatest President of modern Russia. Now let me risk it all for a bunch of land, I don`t actually need, since I`ve got entire Russia." Putin could have rolled into Ukraine in 2014. The fact that he didn`t means, he is subject to disincentives.
He couldn't have rolled in Ukraine in 2014. If he could, he would have. And he really wanted to. How do we know? Check open-source intelligence as of 2014, 2016 and onwards pointing to multiple unsuccessful attempts to gather Russian army around Ukrainian border. The stall of russian-orchestrated military operation in Eastern Ukraine confirms just that. He always underestimated Ukraine.
It was impossible for Putin to invade Ukraine in 2014? But after 8 years of Ukraine building fortifications, training their army and receiving western military assistance, he decided military balance shifted in his favor?
In 2014 a bunch of rebels in Donbas & Luhansk successfully seceded from Ukraine and held territory for the next 8 years. So, again, a bunch of rebels, likely backed by Russia, could do it - but professional Russian military couldn`t?
Hint: they never were "a bunch of rebels". Referring to Putin as to some being driven by impeccable logic and trying to explain facts through this lens is, well, not helpful. Russian army proxies could do that and exactly that. If they could do more, they would have. Please google the rise and fall of Novorossiya project. In russian-speaking internet, there are answers to all such questions.
1. Yes, he starts a war, no, without knowing that. Putin allmighty made a mistake. Does that break your worldview?
2. Yes and yes. Exactly that, plus Putin has not yet decided that full-scale invasion is his last resort and counts a lot on his hybrid missions. Perfectly explainable. That has changed over time, after him seeing project Novorossiya fail miserably.
That's very magnanimous, from Americans overall, creating this whole new Afghanistan right in the middle of Eastern Europe, even though Putin could have been kept perfectly happy with money, playing Dance Dance Revolution in his megadacha until the next sociopath comes along to take his place (aka. the Endless Russian Cycle).
But no, Ukraine had to be turned into a country-sized landmine that will take the rest of the century to clear, and that's an optimistic guess. When the C-17s will eventually leave (as they always do), it's up to us, Eastern Europeans to live with the consequences.
"They say that we are Putin's interlocutors, when the question everyone should be asking is whether or not Russia will be in our neighbourhood for the next 100 years - I think it will be"
I'll be the last one to tear up when one golden toilet Slavic stong man gets replaced by another one, but this war is just a net loss on this side of the Atlantic, for everyone. Except maybe Norway.
Russia, left alone, has its own problems, as we all do. Demographic rot. So this was as necessary as any meddling since post-9/11.
Burns said so in the 2008 cable 08MOSCOW265_a. Thanks, Wikileaks. This is like a zombie movie starring John McCain.
"I don’t need to tell you about Transcarpathia, you’ve all became instant experts on Ukraine overnight in late February. I get the impression that I know less about that place, which was right next door, all my life, than some pit mommy from Ohio with a blue-yellow flag in her Twitter bio."
"Unlike most of you lot — terminally online Twitter people in the West — we have first hand experience with them: they came as Soviets, and they were indistinguishable. We called them Russkies then. Then we’ve spent half a century in forced proximity, which should be plenty of time for nuances to be noticed setting Russians, Belorussians or Ukrainians apart, yet none surfaced. They remained alien and homogenous to us, so we still call them Russkies. Their current cousin war doesn’t change that. All that’s barbaric about a Russian is present in a Ukrainian and vice versa" mfw Americans talk about this topic (excluding Mearsheimer).
Inb4 a Westerner has the audacity to lecture Eastern Europeans that we had it way too good for way too long, and turning a nuclear power next door hostile, one that our economy depends on, more than yours on sucking Saudi cocks ever will, is a worthy sacrifice that we should all accept, without a hiss of dissent. Pointing at suicidal Poles as exemplary students optional.
I wish I wasn't so full of paprika on this topic, but unfortunately, this comment, and those posts I linked, will age like fine wine, unless some miracle happens. When the Empire shifts its focus, when the C-17s leave this particular Afghanistan, no one will care about the mess left behind, outside the usual people who care about Eastern Europe, Eastern Europeans. Many of us will have a hangover, Poles especially. I won't.
Hunter Biden's position in Burisma wasn't important to us because we care about your elections: it was important because it proved that the elite in Washington views Ukraine as just another free for all shithole to meddle in. Just like they - used to - view us. So please, spare us the sentiment.
To the extent I understand what this comment is about (which, to be clear, is a very small extent indeed), it seems you're mad about Trianon and/or Yalta, and that Ukraine=Russia.
The former legit for any Hungarian, but I do have to point out that it comes as a result of losing two very important wars. RIP the Vienna Awards amirite? Sorry, that's glib but I can't resist prodding irredentists (You know you can just immigrate to the United States and forget all this crap, right? We'd be happy to have you!)
The latter is a bit absurd. You say that Russians and Ukrainians are barbaric in the same ways (which we'll assume is true for purposes of this reply, but personally I think the idea that any 'people' as a whole is 'barbaric' in a particular way is absurd and offensive; people can be barbaric, peoples cannot).
But as to which you, as a Hungarian, would rather have on your border, I ask: of the two, which has invaded a sovereign neighbor? There's your answer. Transcarpathia, however little you might want it to be, is part of Ukraine. When Ukraine reduces the rights of a minority, maybe that's a cause for a diplomatic protest or a regular protest. No one destroyed the formerly Hungarian castle with artillery.
Personally, if I were a Hungarian, I think having a giant land mine separating me from Russia (a major power that I've been on the other side of in two world wars) would be just fine. Also, if you think they're so equivalent, shouldn't you be cheering at the mutual bloodletting?
You say the war is a net loss (which I agree with), but what you care about doesn't seem to include the ways it actually IS a net loss (mainly economically). You have a sentence or two for how the pipelines start in Russia, or how it's important to be less butthurt (your word, not mine). And then you have an entire essay about how bad it is a statue was removed and how much insight it gives you into the soul of the Ukrainian, how it's the fault of a no-name US diplomat, or about how much Romania or any other given neighbor of Hungary's (even Poland!; not a neighbor) sucks. You even talk about Transcarpathia as 'yours.' This is being less butthurt?
"To the extent I understand what this comment is about (which, to be clear, is a very small extent indeed), it seems you're mad about Trianon and/or Yalta, and that Ukraine=Russia."
I'm not mad about Trianon at all. The second post I linked offers an explanation, although it takes some stamina to get through it.
To save you and anyone else that effort, I'll quote the conclusion:
"The right answer to this “outrageous provocation”
You’re a Hungarian nationalist and want to take action? Do it in the bedroom, and make it count! At least that’s a positive attitude, unlike whining non-stop about past injustices. Do it well enough, and we can conquer all of Eastern Europe, if the rest keep having a low fertility rate."
"[European total fertility rate snapshot.]
If Hungary was a dark green patch on that map, our neighbors would be shitting bricks now. The whole of Europe would. The future would be more Hungarian than not. Conquest requires no hypersonic wunderblyat, just to multiply like rabbits.
So, to end on a positive note, my message to all the Hungarian nationalists out there: stop caring about provocations abroad, stay home and go fuck yourselves!"
One of my guiding principles is to stay above the butthurt of the Butthurt Belt, always.
The whole post (https://www.magyar.blog/p/bsp1-an-incident-in-transcarpathia) gives an answer that should be a welcome exception to your - otherwise very prescient - assumptions. I'd be honored if you read it, you seem to know more than most, I treasure a valuable reader!
Oh yes, Yalta. Not mad either. In fact in the linked post I hint at a future explanation of how we started viewing Russkies as fellow victims in the world of Fukuyama, almost overnight after the USSR fell.
"You know you can just immigrate to the United States"
I'm surrounded by love, and no one expects me to hate myself here. Maybe a tiny powerless minority does, but they are hopelessly powerless. Why should I contemplate such thing?
" I think the idea that any 'people' as a whole is 'barbaric' in a particular way is absurd and offensive"
I am aware, heard the argument before, many times. Yet clarity is too tempting to give up, and stereotypes offer a better model more often than not. I'm open to reevaluate all my presumptions on an individual basis, always. But clarity takes precedence, and I like to have a handle on the world. Since I'm incapable of omniscience, I have to simplify. Absurd and offensive or not.
It seems to me that to make all these moral claims on America in the course of a rant about how America is amoral and doesn't care about you is a tacit admission that you are completely full of shit.
Like, if I'm arguing with a CCP guy, I'm not really going to spend a lot of time and emotion trying to appeal to his sense of fair play. I might make moral arguments instrumentally in order to make him look bad in front of other people, but mainly I'd be trying to convince him of my side's willingness to resist and ability to make trouble for him. It would be very weird and voluntarily self-diminishing to act like some colonial subject making a moral appeal to the throne instead. On the other hand, the anti-colonial anti-Western narrative is a powerful one, and perhaps some people secretly wish they were Africans.
I don't care about the honeymoon. The press coverage, the flags in Twitter bios. I care about the day after the C-17s fly on to a more important project.
Give me some assurance for that day, or shut up, Evan.
Maintaining American hegemony is not a good thing. It is destructive to America and the world. It enslaves rather than frees. America doesn't out right conquer countries, but it still controls them, so the list of territorial conflicts is largely a lie.
30 years ago the US should have accepted the multipolar world. It has been a bad deal for the American people and the decline is real
After the end of the Cold War, there was a lot of discussion about the future world. One idea was that the US would let a multipolar world develop. There was lots of discussion about the how European Great Powers interacted in a multipolar world in the 17th, 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries.
A choice was made to be the world's only superpower and establish the American hegemony. Because so many American foreign policy hacks were trained in a bipolar world (even though it wasn't during the Cold War), they kept declaring enemies and creating opposition.
American decline is real, especially the destruction of the middle class and working class. Our infrastructure is poor.
It seems to me that the means by which the multipolar balance-of-power world of the early 20th century transformed into the bipolar with-us-or-against-us world of the mid 20th century is that the multipolar world collapsed utterly into two unfathomably destructive wars, one of which was ended by two atom bombs, and that this outcome has implications for the desirability of future multipolar world orders going forwards.
As to your point about fertility and a country collectively being unconcerned about propagating itself, perhaps this conflict has energized the Ukrainians into caring about their existence. As you have said previously, a man is invigorated by a physical fight, even if he is injured. Idk, maybe their Christian nationalists will have a baby boom after the war. Or maybe they'll convert to US style LGBT worship, continue to decrease their TFR, and eventually be displaced by immigrants (which would make their opposition to Russia pretty hilarious).
I think a major problem for them is EU. Ukrainians may opt to have that baby boom in countries with functioning infrastructure, social assistance and higher standards of living. Unless EU expels women and children back to Ukraine, the prospects look bleak.
On the contrary, they may be counting on it. Germany needs immigration to not turn into Japan demographically, and Ukrainians would probably assimilate more easily than Turks.
Yeah putting myself in their shoes, I would take my family somewhere else and start over. It would be interesting to get the perspective/worldview from a Ukrainian soldier that didn't come from an outlet promoting propaganda. Is your family better off with u dead in Ukraine or living with them in Poland or whatever? They surely think there is something to salvage but what? If he is motivated by nationalistic love for a homeland, what does that mean for the US since we actively denounce nationalism?
Hi there. Ukrainian here. In order to avoid the war, it would NEVER be enough to "surrender a good chunk of territory and pledge not to join NATO". Can't quite believe I have to write this.
The moment Ukrainians demanded to be a different people from Russians war has been mad certain. You can't have two people groups in one country. History forbids it. Ukraine will either have to let eastern regions occupied by ethnic Russians go or it will forever have war.
Could you kindly expand your comment with two details that might hint on what this war is about: 1) When did this moment happen exactly (Ukrainians willing to be separate people from Russians, you don't mean after the collapse of soviet right?..)? 2) What was happening with the now-occupied territories at that point in time, who lived there?
1) The flashpoint where Ukrainians officially proclaimed that they are different was at Maidan. This was not so at collapse of the Soviet Union or through the Rape of Ukraine of the 1990's where oligarchs took apart Ukrainian industry and sold it for parts. Something happened around 2014 where Ukrainians officially decided to that it can no longer stand to be ethnically similar to Russians.
2) Crimea and Dombas was build by Russians. Their grandfathers came there and worked the same jobs their fathers worked, where their children work now. Russians made those regions into what it is now. Ethnically those people see themselves as Russians and were willing to keep quiet as long as Ukraine remained just a regional label (much like it was in USSR). The moment ethnic Ukrainians started pushing for Western re-alignment, these ethnic Russians rebelled (why should they be forced to join the West when they are clearly, ethnically, aligned with the East).
gandreyev, Donbas was mostly built by Ukrainians. Sure, lot of them russified over time, but most of migration to Donbas came from other parts of Ukraine, not from Russia. Crimea, indeed, is different.
And ethnic separatism argument is not so strong as you may think. In 2014 many pollsters asked questions like "do you eant to join Russia", "do you want union with Russia" or smth similar. If I rember correctly, in Souther-Ukraine (Herson, Odessa, Zaporozhije regions "yes" answers were ariund 2-5%, in Kharkiv region aroun 5%, and in Donets and Luhansk around 10-20%. So yes, in Donetsk it was higher but far from majority.
Another sign. Look at local collaborators. Mr Hanania has written about Kirill Stremousov. But Denish Pushilin, current head of Donetsk. Before 2014 he was low level salesman for a local Pozi scheme, then he was unemployed, tried to go to politics and got 77 votes. And suddenly, leader of separatism and president of Donetsk who is signing agreements with Putin. Really? Or Igor Plotnitsky, the head of LNR who signed Minsk Agreements, total nobody and small time crook.
Genuine sepratism needs genuine leaders: local politicians, businessman, local intellectual leaders. But you did not see it in Donbas and this is another sign that it was not an authentic separatism.
From where the Russians in Donbas migrated is not important -- we all migrated from somewhere. What's important is the ethnic identity of these people. They see themselves as Russians.
If the movement was not authentic you would see a sizable revolt (what you saw in Maidan). The fact that Crimea and Donbas saw no such revolts is a strong indicative to show which way the people lean.
You are correct that Donbas, initially did not care to join Russia. It wanted to be a separate state to call its own shots -- naturally. Initially, it simply wanted re-affirmation of federal autonomy. But after increased hostilities from Kiyev (backed by NATO), it only made sense for them to join Russia.
There are a lot of anomalies of what happened in Ukraine. Ukraine is corrupt. Neither what happened in Maidan or Donbas is organic -- it was all engineered by outside influences. But in both instances this engineering "worked" only because it moved along a populist sentiment. Again, in the West they see themselves ethnically Ukrainian in the East, Russian. There does not need to be a fight. Just draw the border correctly and be good neighbors.
2) No. All you wrote is kremlin propaganda. Go learn some history, bloody hell, whom am I even writing to.. it is impossible to comprehend just how many russian trolls I met in comments to this article.
1) Your knowledge of Ukrainian history is exactly 0. "Something happened in 2014" is kremlin BS. Google Stus. Google Ukrainian fighting for independence. Google Ukrainian "love" for russian empire. Google russian laws forbidding the use of Ukrainian language. We were separate nation with separate language and distinctive character way before 90s, let alone Maidans. You sound like a perfect russian bot with this argument. Only somebody living in putin's TV can assume "something happened spontaneously in 2014". By the way, I was at Maidan in 2004. Our will to have nothing to do with Russia was as strong as ever. Even your knowledge and understanding of these very recent events of Ukrainian history is pure laughing stock.
I was born in Nikolayev, Ukraine. I went to school there. I would know something about Ukraine before the 90's. Those Russian Soviets who banned Ukrainian language for some reason forced me to learn Ukrainian in their schools.
Your understanding of history is not complete. Ukraine territory is not a monolithic ethno-state. Again, the East is not like the West and if you so insist to be different from Russians then do reasonable thing and go separate ways.
I was born in Sevastopol, Ukraine. I would know something about Ukraine before the 90's, and after too. My mother could not find a job as a teacher of Ukrainian languages because there were exactly 4 schools teaching the subject in whole Crimea. The history of last soviet years does not represent the whole topic, and yet, when you were in that Ukrainian school, Vasyl Stus was dying in a Russian camp for exactly that - Ukrainian language. Please do some research before extrapolating your personal experience. What was going on in your school is in no way the whole picture. Did you notice, by the way, how they force children to learn English in american schools? Why even use word "force" here?..
Also, "Ukrainian territory?" Ukraine is a state. That's it. East is not the West in the USA, so what? Are you going separate ways? How about Russia, is that an example of "monolithic ethno-state"? Go separate ways, lead by example. And stop telling Ukrainians what to do, for starters.
It might have something to do with my ability to understand Russian and Putin's habit of using it while describing explicitly what he intended to do in that circumstance. It is beyond me how world-acclaimed thinkers and so-called "experts on Russian matters" alike refuse to use deepl to check what the man himself stated repeatedly. Also, feel free to observe how Russia is responding to Finland's move towards NATO if you want to check that hypothesis.
The closest parallel to this conflict historically is Russia's Winter War with Finland. Finland had and still has a tiny population, less than 1/5 that of Ukraine, but that never kept it from being economically successful or from defending itself, even after losing 10% of its territory to Russia. Saying the Ukrainian nation has already been "destroyed" is a little bit hyperbolic. Ten years ago Ukraine was a nation divided between Western and Russian sympathies; because of this war it is more united as a nation than it has ever been in history.
Not a good comparison. The Finnish war lasted three months and did not see a quarter of its population flee. Ukraine will probably “win” but be in terrible shape for decades at least.
If the Ukrainian people wanted to roll over and maintain some degree of their present (meager) material comforts at the expense of sovereignty they had ample opportunity to do so long before the first western gun entered the country.
One of the things the normie right and left in the US have correct compared to the horseshoe theory-fulfilling nutjobs to their extremes is that patriotism and nationalism have objective value. They are a necessary, if oft-insufficient, condition for a high-trust society that isn’t a shithole for its people.
Why deny Ukraine’s people that same sentiment? If the US and NATO stop sending aid, they’ll still fight, just less effectively. I think that’d be a bad outcome for the “West”, but let’s not pretend that it would be driven by concern for the Ukrainians themselves.
On a side note, I actually suspect that regardless of whether they succeed in fully expelling the Russians from all their pre-2014 de jure territory, a healthy sense of nationalism will produce more coherent and effective politics and governance that will see Ukraine richer than it was in 2019 before long.
People don’t flee to the countries with the most sovereignty, they flee to those with the highest GDP. That’s why Ukraine is bleeding people, and will continue to do so as long as the standard of living is poor, which it will be as long as the war goes on and probably long after.
Ehh, doesn’t really address the point and is also a completely different argument from your initial one?
My points are simply that the Ukrainians have agency in this, so it’s in the US interest to support them as long as they wish to fight (and they clearly do), and welding together a sense of nationhood is the only way for Ukraine to have a shot at one day having “the highest GDP” that would make it a good place to live.
Without patriotism in the most basic sense of “I give a damn about my fellow citizens,” which Ukraine did not possess in 2013, high-trust societies with rule of law and resulting prosperity are not possible.
They do not come to exist and will quickly fade if they outlive that precursor.
That`s not necessarily how wars work. After WWI veterans split into political factions that violently hated each other. After WWII, in Europe it was a high trust society - but also a weakened and enervated one. Only US came out stronger for it, because it has suffered negligible war damage. Yugoslavian War - my knowledge is limited about participant`s economies, but I don`t believe nationalistic countries with war damage are prospering today.
Sure, conflict can have many social outcomes. But the worse ones are not what seems to be happening today, as best I can tell from the outside. It seems that Ukraine is experiencing a revival of patriotism even in demographics which traditionally were in conflict with the majority and the central government. I believe this to be good for its mid-term economic and social prospects after the conflict ends, assuming it’s not conquered outright or subject to nuclear strikes.
I’m not resorting to analogies because they’re all bad ones.
The second anyone mentions the word IQ in this context I know they’re completely divorced from empiricism, data, or evidence and I can just blow them off completely.
Richard, despite having similar views, can restrain them long enough to produce interesting and insightful analysis on other fronts, but most of the IQ-as-destiny folks are a pointless waste of time and I will act accordingly.
Ukraine's best chance at boosting its GDP is to integrate with the West and global markets, not remain a Russian patsy. That was not going to happen without inflaming Russia
They became an American patsy. There's nothing now in Ukraine which is not owned by America. Ukraine has traded in their Russian rusty iron chains for American gay velvet chains.
Ukrainian people wanted to join EU for material comforts. Zelensky was elected, on promises to make peace with Russia. We have here a classical situation of leaders taking power on promises of bread & peace and delivering something different. Patriotism and nationalism can be quite productive, when interests of the citizenry and the state are aligned. In this case I would argue, that interests of the Ukrainian state and Ukrainian people are not the same. You can of course make the same argument for Russian state and Russian people.
The problem w/ Ukraine is that it has no representation of a healthy sense of nationalism. The East of Ukraine want to be a slave or Russian, the West of Ukraine wants to be a slave of America. Show me somebody who wants to be independent.
I am from the West of Ukraine. No, we don't want to be a slave of America. Stop spreading kremlin narratives, I'm sick and tired seeing this post flooded by russian trolls coming in all flavours possible.
Most Ukrainians think that you russian trolls are just not able to get why we are absolutely not triggered by the sound of russian скрєпи falling, quite the opposite, we love it. The % of population with same-sex attraction is stable throughout the world, you cannot increase it, and guess what, you cannot decrease it either (only in russia, you can of course pretend to be God-chosen nation without gays).
Sad that you dismiss the many indications that Russia did not want to get four oblasts, nor "de-nazify" Ukraine, but total surrender and annexation. Putin said it in so many words in August 2021 https://www.prlib.ru/en/article-vladimir-putin-historical-unity-russians-and-ukrainians and Dugin and all the propagandists inside and outside of Russia have been setting the scene since at least 2014. Surrendering territory before February 24 would not have prevented the invasion, and surrendering it today will not prevent it from recurring once Putin rearms.
And should Putin prevail, his next targets will be Moldavia, the Baltic states and Finland. His vision is to restore Russia to its imperial greatness, nothing less. And his previous wars and de facto annexations (Transnistria, Abzakhia, South Ossetia and Chechnya as a whole) are a clear indication that this is the case.
As a European, I have to see any move towards appeasement and surrender as a rehashing of Chamberlain's ill-begotten efforts. You cannot appease Putin, only surrender completely. And since his aim is to defeat the "Satanic West", we are in for destruction unless he is stopped. And unfortunately, this can only be done on the battlefield. Which pains me, since I am a pacifist but also a realist. Just as Bertrand Russell realized Hitler had to be defeated, I also see no other way to stop the imperial plans of the old KGB hand.
If you actually read that essay, the only hint of seizing Ukrainian territory relates to Donbas ("Apparently, and I am becoming more and more convinced of this: Kiev simply does not need Donbas."). As for the rest of Ukraine, here's the last line of the essay: "And what Ukraine will be – it is up to its citizens to decide."
Point me to a single statement by Putin between February 2015 and April 2022 declaring an intent to permanently seize Ukrainian territory outside of Crimea and Donbas. I haven't been able to find any, and no one has been able to point any out to me either. Even on February 24, Putin explicitly denied any intention to occupy "the Ukrainian territory," after only recognizing Crimea and Donbas as not part of Ukraine.
This is backed up by the actions of Russian soldiers on the ground in the first few weeks of the invasion. In every settlement they captured within Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, they immediately replaced Ukrainian flags and other symbols of the Ukrainian state. As far as I can tell, they did not do this anywhere outside of Crimea and Donbas until after Boris Johnson blew up peace negotiations on April 9. In particular, Ukrainian flags were not taken down in Kherson until April 10. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/04/11/intimidating-russian-soldiers-tear-ukraine-flag-occupied-kherson/
Everything from troop numbers to the invasion plan to statements from Putin and similarly high-level Russian government officials are far more consistent with the initial plan being essentially a scaled up and geography-adjusted version of Georgia 2008: push government military forces out of separatist-claimed territory, temporarily seize important port cities for diplomatic leverage, and send an armored column or three towards the Capitol city to scare the government to the negotiating table.
Which would mean that the annexations of the 4 Oblasts are an escalation of Russian territorial goals, not a deescalation.
And I have yet to see even the faintest shred of evidence that Putin has any territorial designs on Finland or the Baltic states. Putin's publicly stated position on Finland joining NATO is that given that the Finnish government has stated that they do not intend to host NATO bases or missiles it won't make much difference. Back in the 2000s, Putin probably could have kept the Baltic states out of NATO, by putting pressure on France or Germany or if all else failed set up "People's Republics" in ethnic Russian enclaves in Estonia and Latvia to trip NATO's "no territorial disputes" rule, but he did not.
As for Dugin, he has next to zero actual political influence in Russia. I see no evidence that he is relevant at all.
Yes, the Russians have been so successful in conquering Ukraine, and no doubt if they are bogged down in occupying Ukraine and losing buckets of soldiers and rubles propping it up, they will no doubt seek to go directly head to head with NATO by invading the Baltics. What did the Nazis march into Poland 1.5 million soldiers? What did Putin invade Ukraine with, 190,000 soldiers? Clearly he thinks the Russian soldier has 8X the combat power of the Wehrmacht at its prime because otherwise, no rational person could ever conclude that the SMO was intended to be an occupying force.
Russian has no colonial ambitions and since collapse of the Soviet Union it went nowhere outside of its ethnic territory.
If you want to see a good example of a country which pines for imperial greatness, invading sovereign countries, and overturning governments look no further than USA.
Europe was already conquered by America. America says "jump" and Europe responds "how hight?" A far fall from once glorious people.
Oh, goody, the old Soviet "whataboutism". But, wait a second, "ethnic territory?" Wasn't that Hitler's alibi for the Sudetes, Austria and the invasion of Poland?
Hear Dugin speak about a "Holy War" where non-ethnic Ukrainians must be destroyed. Hear the Duma deputies demanding the reconstruction of the Soviet Empire minus the Marxist ideology.
You fool no one. The world is in danger because of Putin, not because of Russia or the Russian people, who have been dragged into this imperial fascist dream.
Again, the only people running around the world with their military, invading countries of wholly different ethnic makeup, capsizing governments not their own, is America and their minion array of European lilliputs like Great Britain.
Historically speaking, people of same ethnic makeup need to belong in a same boundary. This is the first thing you learn by studying history. Ignore this only if you want mass graves and never ending revolutions.
What's the reason for thinking that keeping Ukraine out of NATO is a good idea? If the war ends with Ukraine still disputing Russian occupied territory, then not having Ukraine in NATO makes sense. But if Ukraine is happy with the territorial situation on the ground, then having them in NATO could make the situation much more stable going forwards. Russia may say that keeping Ukraine out of NATO is important to them, but Finland's membership didn't seem to bother them much in practice, going by how little Russia seems to mention it. An offer of NATO membership if there is no frozen conflict might encourage Ukraine to make territorial concessions in Crimea -- whether that's good or bad is another question, but it would shorten the war.
Because Russia has done terribly in this war without Ukraine in NATO. It now knows an invasion of Ukraine is costly, and next time Ukraine will have much better weapons and there will no longer be any pro-Russian element in the population. There’s a chance that a no-NATO pledge could be taken as a symbolic victory for Russia. They’re not going to want to repeat this anyway.
You consistently overestimate the "pro-Russian" sentiment even in the Donbass. There was never remotely a majority for joining Russia there, and the "separatist"movement was propped up by Russia from the outset, rather than an "organic" Irredentist movement. You muddy both the moral and the analytic waters with this misjudgment.
Both pro-Western and pro-Russian sources have made a pretty convincing case that the initial uprisings in Donbas started independently of the Russian government, as a bottom-up largely spontaneous reaction to the Euromaidan coup and the annexation of Crimea.
But even leaving that aside, quoting a Time magazine article from April 14, 2014:
"According to local media reports, the presence of Ukrainian forces in and around Donetsk has been minimal, and local police and security officials have been defecting en masse to the pro-Russian side."
You don't get local police defecting en masse without *some* grassroots sentiment.
As far as "never a majority for joining Russia there," the original Donbas uprisings were a coalition of people who wanted the Donbas to become part of Russia and people who wanted greater local autonomy. The original referendum in Donetsk back in 2014 was for "self-rule". And the greater local autonomy option actually became the official position of the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republic governments for 7 years after the signing of the Minsk 2 accords in early 2015. And adding support for secession and support for greater local autonomy in the polls consistently does add up to a majority.
I think you need to reassess your naive supposition that Russia has been performing poorly in this war. They have totally eliminated the fighting capacity of the Ukrainian military and NATO with a strategy of long, grinding attrition, not just in the sense of the actual military conflict but also in the economic war of attrition that they are waging with the combined West. Europe is gripped in a death spiral from which they will never recover. Russia is an extremely resource rich nation and will be stable for the next 100 years because of this war.
Again, we’ll see if this proves correct. We can talk in 2 years and understand most of the relevant outcomes to prove these statements true or false.
But even if your supposition is correct, why in hell would one regard this “strategy of long, grinding attrition” as a Russian success of any sort?
Given the on-paper differential in combat power between Russia’s armed forces and those of Ukraine nine months ago, “success” should have been defined as combat outcomes similar to those achieved by the US in the first Gulf War, ffs!
Bless your delusional lil heart. Extremely resourse rich nation the mantra. "Stable because of this war" sure wars are a renown source of stability and prosperity. Keep posting!
What about this argument: Let's say that the war ends with a compromise (e.g. Russia keeps Crimea, perhaps with the promise of a future referendum, but Ukraine gets the DPR and LPR back) which both sides sign on to (no frozen conflict) but which leaves them both with further territorial ambitions. Ukraine's security can be guaranteed with new Western weapons, or immediate NATO membership and rather fewer new Western weapons. With NATO membership, Ukraine has less ability to launch a future aggressive war (if Russia starts to break up, and looks particularly weak, for instance). Anyone who believes that Ukraine needs "denazification and demilitarization" should prefer that. From Putin's point of view, immediate Ukrainian NATO membership helps the "we were really fighting NATO" narrative, which helps excuse him losing the war. Putin is not the most nationalistic Russian politician, so to the extent that NATO membership takes a future Russian aggression against Ukraine off the table, this may help Putin against his opponents. Of course it would be hard for Russia to admit that they want NATO membership for Ukraine, but they might resist it less than we think.
The various military commenters seem to think it's actually much easier for Ukraine to take Crimea than to reclaim Donetsk (largely because of the greater ease of resupply in the east). I actually expect that to be the ultimate resolution. Ukraine will threaten Crimea which they will agree to not invade in return for Russia withdrawing from the rest of Ukraine.
That, plus the massive costs Russia has born prosecuting the war seem sufficient to enforce the norm. After all, deterrence merely requires making sure it's clear the expected gain is negative.
But Russia needs to be willing to either give up it's holdings in mainland Ukraine or to accept NATO troops in Ukraine since Ukraine can't trust that Russia won't just rebuild it's forces and reprosecute the war.
What news are you reading? Ukraine is so heavily disadvantaged that there is no conceivable way that this war will end with anything other than a total and complete capitulation of Ukraine and the West.
Well not quite. I think we both agree that Crimea isn't on the table yet. If Ukraine can't manage to cut the land bridge it probably never will so if that doesn't happen we can't be sure if Crimea was more vulnerable than the parts of Donetsk and Luhansk seized in 2014. But it's at least hopefully testable.
I’m pretty sure we’ll know beyond any semblance of a doubt whether Russia can force a total surrender from Ukraine well within that timeframe. What might not be clear is whether Ukraine and it’s foreign backers can prosecute a war through to restoring her borders as of 2013.
I personally doubt it, but we’ll see. No point in committing to an endgame until the Ukrainians have had a chance to show what they can achieve.
The poster to whom I was responding seems to think that Russia is imminently going to break through in Bakhmut and will then be able to exploit to regain everything they’ve lost in the last several months, the latter of which is obviously a fantasy.
Well I believe that one comes from the various ex-nato/us officers that get interviewed on EU news programs all the time (but I could be misremembering).
Basically, the argument is that Crimea is very hard to resupply. If Ukraine can break through to the sea (e.g. recover Mariupol...which is to the west of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that Russia has had 8 years to fortify) then they've cut off any resupply via the land bridge and will be close enough to destroy the Kerch bridge. At that point Russia could only resupply their troops in the area with either ships (many of the big ports on the east can also be threatened from Mariupol) or by air (expensive and likely subject to AA defenses).
OTOH the parts of Luhansk and Donetsk which broke away in 2014 have borders with Russia so can't plausibly be deprived of Russian resupply.
Of course this all becomes academic if Ukraine can't cut the land bridge. I think we'll have to see what happens this winter. Ukraine, with it's fancy NATO cold weather gear and support from the population, is probably in it's most advantageous position as Russia hasn't yet had time to train or properly equip it's new conscripts. So if they don't make either large territorial gains or substantially reduce Russian capacity over the winter their chances go down considerably.
It's nice when powerful friends who support freedom, democracy and all that take an interest in your trials, but what seems to be missing in this discussion is a recognition that the war in Ukraine is not really about the USA. Putin may say that it is, but that's not the country he has decided to invade. This is about Ukraine, and Russia, and what is best for Ukraine, I would expect the people of Ukraine to have the clearest view of.
Now it may be that Ukraine giving up territory and not joining NATO would satisfy Russia, but they tried that in 2014 and it didn't. You can understand the belief that concessions will make Russia worse not better.
"But from the perspective of the interests of Ukraine itself and taking a purely materialist view, I don’t think there is any doubt that the country would have been better off surrendering a good chunk of territory and pledging not to join NATO in order to avoid a war."
How is this steelmanning? Suppose Ukraine gave up Donbas and pledged not to join NATO; a big win for Putin. Why would he not then invade the rest of the country? Regardless of whether or not his concerns over NATO expansion are heartfelt, he's made his imperial ambitions very clear.
I agree Ukraine should give up Donbas (and Crimea for that matter). These territories are dead weight: they are (or were) mostly ethnic Russians who want to be a part of Russia. However you don't give up something for nothing, especially to an imperialist. The West ought to encourage Ukraine concede these territories (plus water rights for Crimea) in exchange for peace and NATO membership. The only way for Ukraine to become a successful country will be if it has security guarantees against Russian invasion, and that means NATO.
Unfortunately Putin didn't just annex Donbas, he also publicly committed to taking Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. Hopefully he can backtrack here, because I don't see Ukraine giving these up.
I'm sure the U.S military (industry) wants endless war, but eventually voters will tire of bleeding $100B / year. Biden is nothing if not politically minded, and by the end of his term he may want to hang a 'Mission Accomplished' banner over Ukraine.
Article makes alot of effort ignoring the most important variable in territorial stability -- people.
I don't care what stupid laws stupid politicians bloviate about as they talk of some imagined territorial sovereign. They do so because they:
1) think too much of themselves
2) don't know history
No territory will ever be stable where there are different peoples. Texas was built by Americans, that's why it was correct for USA to annex it from Mexico. Dombas and Crimea was made into what it is by Russians. These Russians still live there. That's why it should be with Russia. You can ignore this rule much like a madman would attempt to ignore gravity -- it feels good falling until an inevitable collision with reality. In case of history, this reality manifests as a mass grave, a genocide, or a bloody revolt.
Hey history lover, would you please remind us when and how did those Russian people first inhabited the Donetsk region? And even more interesting, who made Crimea not "what it is", господипрости, but who actually lived there for the most of history? Hint hint. Russian narrative about "people as indicator of whom should the land belong" doesn't go well with actual historical facts check.
No matter where you look at you will always find a territory and a people who previously inhabited it. There was a time when Ukraine was not; different people lived there. But Kiev, Odessa, and L'vov -- as we know this region -- is what it is because of ethnic Ukrainians. They made these territories into what they are now. Before that, these territories were something else... and an injustice done a long time ago was already done (by the Mongols). Would we add to that injustice by breaking apart these territories just so that we can return them into what Kiyev-Rus was? No.
Yes. Before Crimea and Domabs were turned into industrial sectors by ethnic Russians there were "natives" who occupied them. Crimea was occupied by Tatars and Muslims. Dombas was probably occupied by Khazarian tribes of some sort. But these were not the industrial territories which we know them as now. Only one ethnic group is primarily responsible for that -- the Russians. As such it would be injustice to force them to ether:
1) pick up and leave -- this is their home and was such for many generations or
2) demand that they change their ethnic realignment.
Which is almost a certainty. What can the Ukrainians do to stop a massive Russian offensive once their fortifications in Donbas are breached which seems to be rapidly approaching given the recent reports of the encirclement of Bakhmut.
"Almost a certainty" means not certain. You can't be semi-certain.
If there's one thing I've learned about this war it's this: never make a prediction. That's why I used the word "if." But I think that odds are there will be a winter offensive. And it will be horrible. My heart goes out to anyone caught in it, soldier or civilian.
This is a good post making a good point, but there are a few marginal things I'd like to correct (to the extent predictions and what-ifs can be correct).
1. I'm not convinced that Ukraine will be worse off from this war *in the long term* even if it wins. A positive example here is Israel, which is not as different as it may sound. The Ukrainian diaspora is not Israeli- or Armenian-size but significant (with well-known representatives such as Chrystia Freeland). And there are quite a few countries interested in the Ukraine winning on its own terms (first and foremost, most Eastern European countries). So I don't think the West will leave Ukraine out in the cold once the main danger has passed. This is not to say that the EU's role in its further development will be entirely positive... but it'll beat any future determined by Russia.
2. Being a Russian satellite might have looked like an okay proposition for a country 15 years ago, but the world has changed. Belarus has been a dictatorship entirely thanks to Russia, and is now in danger of violent collapse again entirely thanks to Russia. The one time Russia could have helped an ally recently -- Armenia --, Putin decided to stay out as he wasn't fond of their current government. Asian post-Soviet states are now moving under Beijing's umbrella for entirely understandable reasons.
3. I have yet to hear a Western public discussion of nuclear risk from the Ukraine war that isn't missing the fourth cell of the table: What happens if a strong response *prevents* nuclear escalation, while appeasement would make it more probable? Putin has a history of starting foreign conflicts whenever his ratings fall (2008, 2014, 2022). If this is allowed to continue, where will the next shoe drop? There are progressively fewer opportunities. Kazakhstan is now under Chinese protection; Armenia means incurring Erdogan's wrath (which Putin has proved unwilling to do); Belarus might be next, but its moments of weakness won't necessarily fit Putin's schedule. Leaves the Baltics, and Article 5 and all that entails. And of course, there is no way to convince Putin that we would defend the Baltics unless we now defend Ukraine. On the other hand, it seems likely that we will indeed defend the Baltics at least enough to get a real war there. Now that is one truly diabolic case of information asymmetry, guaranteeing the worst-case scenario. The risks of the Ukraine war look nowhere near this bad.
4. Apathy is the "driving" force of contemporary Russian society. I don't think anything can reliably mobilize Russians to *willingly* fight Ukrainians on a large scale. Muscovites care little about Crimea and even less about their own border towns. (I would happily bet against such a mobilization if there was a good way to.) I find it somewhat more likely that continued war crimes will drive a wedge between ethnic Russians on one side and ethnic minorities from the Caucasus and Syberia on the other, since the latter are already taking some of the fall (thanks, Pope Francis!). The whole mix will become even more explosive if Kadyrov visibly grasps for power. Even then, I wouldn't bet on the "race war on the streets of Moscow" scenario that people loved to paint in the early 90s; more likely, a sequence of locally violent revolutions culminating in a less ambitious version of Putin.
5. How much exactly is the global economy suffering from the war? I don't know, but you seem to be straight-up assuming that it's a lot. Again, I'd like to see some data. In the US, inflation started before the war, and appears to be mostly the bill for our war on COVID (lockdowns and stimuli) and various other handouts coming due, no matter what Biden wants us to think. I'm less sure about the rest of the world, but Sri Lanka has shown that being governed by idiots will get you a famine no matter what Putin does or doesn't. Yulia Latynina likes to say that the Ukrainian grain exports lost due to the war are less than the grain utilized for biofuel, and if we are really this worried we might cut down on those subsidies for a couple years perhaps? I'm not sure how good those numbers are (and they don't cover fertilizer), but large parts of the world are not *behaving* in a way I'd expect if a famine was looming.
Great comment. Yes, the famine stuff was always nonsense. The real economic problem is energy but that will get solved too so this isn’t that big of a deal to the global economy in the grand scheme of things.
Ukraine would have been much worse off if they had allowed Russia to conquer them. What kind of future would they have had? This is the part of Hanania’s argument I most strongly disagree with.
If Ukraine had allowed Russia to install a pro-Russian regime, then it would look more or less what it looked like in 2013 the last time it had one, which is more or less what it looked like in 2021, a corrupt, badly governed country with an average IQ of 90. Now what does it look like?
Yes, Ukrainians are idiots. The average IQ in Ukraine is 91. But even if they were of normal intelligence, they could still be idiots in the sense you are using. In 1914, millions of Englishman went off to die for some complete garbage to do with Serbian nationalism, muh plucky Belgium, and images of gorillas with German helmets, permanently consigning their own country to second-rank status in the process. Nationalism and war fever make people idiots.
"How much exactly is the global economy suffering from the war? I don't know, but you seem to be straight-up assuming that it's a lot. Again, I'd like to see some data. In the US, inflation started before the war, and appears to be mostly the bill for our war on COVID (lockdowns and stimuli) and various other handouts coming due, no matter what Biden wants us to think. I'm less sure about the rest of the world"
This comment neatly encapsulates just how much Americans simply do not care about the devastating harm they are doing to their 'allies' in Europe. And yet we are supposed to believe that Europeans are going along with this wanton destruction of their prosperity because they sat down and rationally calculated that America's incorporation of Ukraine into its imperial sphere was just worth it. Truly Lolcow stuff.
Lets not make it America vs Europe. Europe is supporting Ukraine because it wants to, not because America says so. Eastern Europe, for instance, is much more "gung-ho" than US and would like much stricter sanctions. And European Union operates on consenus, you need all countries on board, including Eastern Europe.
Take a latest row over price cap to Russian oil. European Union and G7 (USA) want to hurt Russian oil revenues, but not too much, so their initial proposal was 70 dollars per barrel. Poland and Estonia blocked it - too much, they said. Next proposal was 65 dollars. Still, Poland and Estonia refused. Now, latest offering is 60 dollars and afaik, Estonia is still threatening to use its veto power. Ursula von der Leyen and Janet Yellen have made several phone calls to Poland and Estonia trying to convince, but have not been too succesful.
What Europe 'wants' is not some given fact that is independent of 70 years of being an American protectorate. It 'wants' things in the same way a transvestite 6 year old, or a vegan dog does. Objectively, its interests are in peace in the Ukraine. (Eastern Europeans, it is true, are different. Poland wants war for understandable reasons though Philip Pilkington is pretty sure it will blow up in their face).
Ukraine is getting incorporated into the Eastern Europe "sphere" first and foremost, although I'm sure the US is hoping for some market access.
My family lives in Germany and isn't seeing this wanton destruction of their prosperity for now. The electricity bills have gone through the roof, but the rest is doing fine. The 1970s oil crises were far more disruptive, but they didn't destroy American prosperity either. Uncontrolled 3rd world migration and the closing down of nuclear plants, those are what will be draining European prosperity over the next decade.
You realise factories also use electricity right? Six months from now, you will be saying that apart from 25% unemployment Germany is doing fine. Then six months later, that apart from widespread civil unrest it is doing fine.
And uncontrolled 3rd world immigration is a consequence of being subject to America too.
A few commentators have observed that this argument boils down to preserving U.S. global hegemony because the 'norm' being enforced is 'only the US has the right to resort to military force to solve inter-state disputes'. But there is another more subtle way this is true, because the 2nd order norm, namely 'only military invasion is an actionable offense' itself enforces U.S. hegemony since the US is just so much better at soft power than anyone else. To put it another way, Russia resorted to war in the first place, because America was cleaning its clock in the subversion war in Ukraine. So, essentially, if you try to compete with the U.S. the soft-power way, you lose, and if you resort to arms, the U.S. will use its soft power advantage to make the world punish you.
Now, you may say 'all's fair in love and war' and I'm not trying to say it's unfair that the U.S. has global hegemony. Might makes right, literally. However, there is a major elephant in the room: it isn't just Ukraine you are sacrificing for US hegemony, it's the whole of Europe, which is on the brink of an inflationary recession that will make the 1930s look mild and which can be avoided only through peace in the Ukraine. So your argument is really 'Europeans should destroy their countries to preserve US global hegemony', which doesn't sound so great. Which is why the public argument is 'something, something brave Ukraine'.
It makes sense that Russia wouldn’t like it, but a world where everyone competes in a soft power way is superior to a world where people compete through military force, so if that’s the result of American hegemony it’s a good thing. And the US advantage isn’t because the CIA and State Dept are so brilliant, it’s because people can rationally see an alliance with the US is better than opposition to it.
" . . . it’s because people can rationally see an alliance with the US is better than opposition to it."
LOL. It's a rationally better choice only because the CIA will attempt to stage a coup against you if you aren't sufficiently allied with us. Ask Poroshenko. Or Assad, or Erdogan, Imran Khan, Gaddafi, Mossadeg, Diem, etc, etc, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change
Clearly wrong. It's not in western Europe's rational interest to go into a depression, it's not in Germany's rational interest to have its gas pipeline blown up, hell it's not in Ukraine's rational interest to become a deathzone. Countries do these things that are manifestly not in their own interest, and manifestly *only* in America's interest, because American soft power is just too good. The CIA is part of it, but more important is Google, Apple, CNN, NYT, Goldman Sachs, Blackrock etc. (Please just read Unqualified Reservations already!)
Or let's take a different tack. Your newfound enthusiasm for American global hegemony (democracy) happened after China disappointed you by going full retard over Covid. Well let's follow that logic where it leads. The less retarded you are about Covid, the better you are. Which was the least retarded European country? Not Sweden, but Belarus. Maybe it's just a coincidence that the only Russian puppet state in Europe was the only one in Europe that didn't lock down. But maybe it's because, though Putin is himself a technocrat germophobe, he doesn't have the information infrastructure (and, perhaps, will) to impose whatever fad he is into throughout his sphere of influence. Russian puppet states objectively have much more independence than American puppet states ('democracies'). American hegemony means a world where every American white-woman fad becomes global policy.
The problem is that Russia tried soft-power competition, and even _won_ it in Ukraine by giving better funding options and industry utilisation... and US flipped a table there and went with what Russia sees as coup support - direct interference outside of bounds of local law.
So Russia escalated with similar more overt "coup" in Crimea, and then things went from there to where we are now.
Not really. Russia won Yanukovych over, but then there were protests against him, which is a normal thing that happens in countries all the time. It wasn’t legal, but it wasn’t American “hard power” either. It was at most American soft power. Still within the rules of the game.
By "unwritten rules" clearly Russia considered that EU should have honored the deal they arranged with Yanukovich - that is, early elections with him still in the running. By that point billions of money Russia pledged to him as well as industrial orders would start to trickle in, and it was possible for Russia to win "fairly".
That they didn't burned insane amounts of goodwill, and Russia went into "anything goes" scenario with Crimea - where they did have enough soft and hard power to make a difference.
What would be "proper" soft-power way to respond to coup that actively hunts your previous leader to kill him?
How is a world where people compete using soft power superior to a world where people compete through military force?
This sounds like an unexamined axiom.
I think the problem is that Hegemon is irrational. If US was invading countries to steal their oil, you could at least calculate a proper response and thus prevent invasion by offering oil on the platter. Instead it all seems very arbitrary.
"However, there is a major elephant in the room: it isn't just Ukraine you are sacrificing for US hegemony, it's the whole of Europe, which is on the brink of an inflationary recession that will make the 1930s look mild and which can be avoided only through peace in the Ukraine."
Good thing that didn't happen then huh.
You are correct. Hence, though I am still in favour of a negotiated solution, I do not accord the issue the weight I did then.
I don't think it' necessary to go through one's comments from 2 years ago and correct any errors, but since you flagged this one up, yes I was wrong in significantly over-estimating the economic damage the war would cause to Europe.
One thing to consider is the possibility that an attempted deal by Ukraine would’ve been met with subsequent encroachment by Russia. Perhaps Putin wouldn’t be satisfied with formal recognition of Crimea for his legacy. What disincentive would a deal give Russia to not try again someday when the West is further divided? Or after Trump possibly retaking office, for example?
The disincentive would be Putin being satisfied with having his legacy and not wanting to ruin it by starting a war. "I`ll remembered as the greatest President of modern Russia. Now let me risk it all for a bunch of land, I don`t actually need, since I`ve got entire Russia." Putin could have rolled into Ukraine in 2014. The fact that he didn`t means, he is subject to disincentives.
He couldn't have rolled in Ukraine in 2014. If he could, he would have. And he really wanted to. How do we know? Check open-source intelligence as of 2014, 2016 and onwards pointing to multiple unsuccessful attempts to gather Russian army around Ukrainian border. The stall of russian-orchestrated military operation in Eastern Ukraine confirms just that. He always underestimated Ukraine.
It was impossible for Putin to invade Ukraine in 2014? But after 8 years of Ukraine building fortifications, training their army and receiving western military assistance, he decided military balance shifted in his favor?
In 2014 a bunch of rebels in Donbas & Luhansk successfully seceded from Ukraine and held territory for the next 8 years. So, again, a bunch of rebels, likely backed by Russia, could do it - but professional Russian military couldn`t?
Maybe he did not "decide that military balance was in his favor" at all. Time is a valuable thing. Putin cannot afford to wait longer.
Hint: they never were "a bunch of rebels". Referring to Putin as to some being driven by impeccable logic and trying to explain facts through this lens is, well, not helpful. Russian army proxies could do that and exactly that. If they could do more, they would have. Please google the rise and fall of Novorossiya project. In russian-speaking internet, there are answers to all such questions.
1. Putin runs out of time and starts a war, despite knowing his military is too weak to win?
2. Ukrainian army 2014 is simultaneously too strong for Russia to invade (apart from Crimea) and too weak to defeat Russian proxies in Donbas?
Hey, here's your answer from the man himself! Yeah he did want to: https://ria.ru/20221209/ukraina-1837543128.html
1. Yes, he starts a war, no, without knowing that. Putin allmighty made a mistake. Does that break your worldview?
2. Yes and yes. Exactly that, plus Putin has not yet decided that full-scale invasion is his last resort and counts a lot on his hybrid missions. Perfectly explainable. That has changed over time, after him seeing project Novorossiya fail miserably.
That's very magnanimous, from Americans overall, creating this whole new Afghanistan right in the middle of Eastern Europe, even though Putin could have been kept perfectly happy with money, playing Dance Dance Revolution in his megadacha until the next sociopath comes along to take his place (aka. the Endless Russian Cycle).
But no, Ukraine had to be turned into a country-sized landmine that will take the rest of the century to clear, and that's an optimistic guess. When the C-17s will eventually leave (as they always do), it's up to us, Eastern Europeans to live with the consequences.
"They say that we are Putin's interlocutors, when the question everyone should be asking is whether or not Russia will be in our neighbourhood for the next 100 years - I think it will be"
https://www.magyar.blog/i/57773727/the-hungarian-perspective
I'll be the last one to tear up when one golden toilet Slavic stong man gets replaced by another one, but this war is just a net loss on this side of the Atlantic, for everyone. Except maybe Norway.
Russia, left alone, has its own problems, as we all do. Demographic rot. So this was as necessary as any meddling since post-9/11.
https://www.magyar.blog/p/bsp1-an-incident-in-transcarpathia
Burns said so in the 2008 cable 08MOSCOW265_a. Thanks, Wikileaks. This is like a zombie movie starring John McCain.
"I don’t need to tell you about Transcarpathia, you’ve all became instant experts on Ukraine overnight in late February. I get the impression that I know less about that place, which was right next door, all my life, than some pit mommy from Ohio with a blue-yellow flag in her Twitter bio."
"Unlike most of you lot — terminally online Twitter people in the West — we have first hand experience with them: they came as Soviets, and they were indistinguishable. We called them Russkies then. Then we’ve spent half a century in forced proximity, which should be plenty of time for nuances to be noticed setting Russians, Belorussians or Ukrainians apart, yet none surfaced. They remained alien and homogenous to us, so we still call them Russkies. Their current cousin war doesn’t change that. All that’s barbaric about a Russian is present in a Ukrainian and vice versa" mfw Americans talk about this topic (excluding Mearsheimer).
Inb4 a Westerner has the audacity to lecture Eastern Europeans that we had it way too good for way too long, and turning a nuclear power next door hostile, one that our economy depends on, more than yours on sucking Saudi cocks ever will, is a worthy sacrifice that we should all accept, without a hiss of dissent. Pointing at suicidal Poles as exemplary students optional.
I wish I wasn't so full of paprika on this topic, but unfortunately, this comment, and those posts I linked, will age like fine wine, unless some miracle happens. When the Empire shifts its focus, when the C-17s leave this particular Afghanistan, no one will care about the mess left behind, outside the usual people who care about Eastern Europe, Eastern Europeans. Many of us will have a hangover, Poles especially. I won't.
Hunter Biden's position in Burisma wasn't important to us because we care about your elections: it was important because it proved that the elite in Washington views Ukraine as just another free for all shithole to meddle in. Just like they - used to - view us. So please, spare us the sentiment.
To the extent I understand what this comment is about (which, to be clear, is a very small extent indeed), it seems you're mad about Trianon and/or Yalta, and that Ukraine=Russia.
The former legit for any Hungarian, but I do have to point out that it comes as a result of losing two very important wars. RIP the Vienna Awards amirite? Sorry, that's glib but I can't resist prodding irredentists (You know you can just immigrate to the United States and forget all this crap, right? We'd be happy to have you!)
The latter is a bit absurd. You say that Russians and Ukrainians are barbaric in the same ways (which we'll assume is true for purposes of this reply, but personally I think the idea that any 'people' as a whole is 'barbaric' in a particular way is absurd and offensive; people can be barbaric, peoples cannot).
But as to which you, as a Hungarian, would rather have on your border, I ask: of the two, which has invaded a sovereign neighbor? There's your answer. Transcarpathia, however little you might want it to be, is part of Ukraine. When Ukraine reduces the rights of a minority, maybe that's a cause for a diplomatic protest or a regular protest. No one destroyed the formerly Hungarian castle with artillery.
Personally, if I were a Hungarian, I think having a giant land mine separating me from Russia (a major power that I've been on the other side of in two world wars) would be just fine. Also, if you think they're so equivalent, shouldn't you be cheering at the mutual bloodletting?
You say the war is a net loss (which I agree with), but what you care about doesn't seem to include the ways it actually IS a net loss (mainly economically). You have a sentence or two for how the pipelines start in Russia, or how it's important to be less butthurt (your word, not mine). And then you have an entire essay about how bad it is a statue was removed and how much insight it gives you into the soul of the Ukrainian, how it's the fault of a no-name US diplomat, or about how much Romania or any other given neighbor of Hungary's (even Poland!; not a neighbor) sucks. You even talk about Transcarpathia as 'yours.' This is being less butthurt?
"To the extent I understand what this comment is about (which, to be clear, is a very small extent indeed), it seems you're mad about Trianon and/or Yalta, and that Ukraine=Russia."
I'm not mad about Trianon at all. The second post I linked offers an explanation, although it takes some stamina to get through it.
To save you and anyone else that effort, I'll quote the conclusion:
"The right answer to this “outrageous provocation”
You’re a Hungarian nationalist and want to take action? Do it in the bedroom, and make it count! At least that’s a positive attitude, unlike whining non-stop about past injustices. Do it well enough, and we can conquer all of Eastern Europe, if the rest keep having a low fertility rate."
"[European total fertility rate snapshot.]
If Hungary was a dark green patch on that map, our neighbors would be shitting bricks now. The whole of Europe would. The future would be more Hungarian than not. Conquest requires no hypersonic wunderblyat, just to multiply like rabbits.
So, to end on a positive note, my message to all the Hungarian nationalists out there: stop caring about provocations abroad, stay home and go fuck yourselves!"
One of my guiding principles is to stay above the butthurt of the Butthurt Belt, always.
The whole post (https://www.magyar.blog/p/bsp1-an-incident-in-transcarpathia) gives an answer that should be a welcome exception to your - otherwise very prescient - assumptions. I'd be honored if you read it, you seem to know more than most, I treasure a valuable reader!
Oh yes, Yalta. Not mad either. In fact in the linked post I hint at a future explanation of how we started viewing Russkies as fellow victims in the world of Fukuyama, almost overnight after the USSR fell.
"You know you can just immigrate to the United States"
I'm surrounded by love, and no one expects me to hate myself here. Maybe a tiny powerless minority does, but they are hopelessly powerless. Why should I contemplate such thing?
" I think the idea that any 'people' as a whole is 'barbaric' in a particular way is absurd and offensive"
I am aware, heard the argument before, many times. Yet clarity is too tempting to give up, and stereotypes offer a better model more often than not. I'm open to reevaluate all my presumptions on an individual basis, always. But clarity takes precedence, and I like to have a handle on the world. Since I'm incapable of omniscience, I have to simplify. Absurd and offensive or not.
It seems to me that to make all these moral claims on America in the course of a rant about how America is amoral and doesn't care about you is a tacit admission that you are completely full of shit.
Like, if I'm arguing with a CCP guy, I'm not really going to spend a lot of time and emotion trying to appeal to his sense of fair play. I might make moral arguments instrumentally in order to make him look bad in front of other people, but mainly I'd be trying to convince him of my side's willingness to resist and ability to make trouble for him. It would be very weird and voluntarily self-diminishing to act like some colonial subject making a moral appeal to the throne instead. On the other hand, the anti-colonial anti-Western narrative is a powerful one, and perhaps some people secretly wish they were Africans.
Does America care about you?
Americans care about the whole world, George. Even Hungarians.
Ask an Afghan who went all in on the occupation.
I don't care about the honeymoon. The press coverage, the flags in Twitter bios. I care about the day after the C-17s fly on to a more important project.
Give me some assurance for that day, or shut up, Evan.
Maintaining American hegemony is not a good thing. It is destructive to America and the world. It enslaves rather than frees. America doesn't out right conquer countries, but it still controls them, so the list of territorial conflicts is largely a lie.
30 years ago the US should have accepted the multipolar world. It has been a bad deal for the American people and the decline is real
After the end of the Cold War, there was a lot of discussion about the future world. One idea was that the US would let a multipolar world develop. There was lots of discussion about the how European Great Powers interacted in a multipolar world in the 17th, 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries.
A choice was made to be the world's only superpower and establish the American hegemony. Because so many American foreign policy hacks were trained in a bipolar world (even though it wasn't during the Cold War), they kept declaring enemies and creating opposition.
American decline is real, especially the destruction of the middle class and working class. Our infrastructure is poor.
It seems to me that the means by which the multipolar balance-of-power world of the early 20th century transformed into the bipolar with-us-or-against-us world of the mid 20th century is that the multipolar world collapsed utterly into two unfathomably destructive wars, one of which was ended by two atom bombs, and that this outcome has implications for the desirability of future multipolar world orders going forwards.
Great essay. Thank you.
As to your point about fertility and a country collectively being unconcerned about propagating itself, perhaps this conflict has energized the Ukrainians into caring about their existence. As you have said previously, a man is invigorated by a physical fight, even if he is injured. Idk, maybe their Christian nationalists will have a baby boom after the war. Or maybe they'll convert to US style LGBT worship, continue to decrease their TFR, and eventually be displaced by immigrants (which would make their opposition to Russia pretty hilarious).
I think a major problem for them is EU. Ukrainians may opt to have that baby boom in countries with functioning infrastructure, social assistance and higher standards of living. Unless EU expels women and children back to Ukraine, the prospects look bleak.
On the contrary, they may be counting on it. Germany needs immigration to not turn into Japan demographically, and Ukrainians would probably assimilate more easily than Turks.
Yeah putting myself in their shoes, I would take my family somewhere else and start over. It would be interesting to get the perspective/worldview from a Ukrainian soldier that didn't come from an outlet promoting propaganda. Is your family better off with u dead in Ukraine or living with them in Poland or whatever? They surely think there is something to salvage but what? If he is motivated by nationalistic love for a homeland, what does that mean for the US since we actively denounce nationalism?
Hi there. Ukrainian here. In order to avoid the war, it would NEVER be enough to "surrender a good chunk of territory and pledge not to join NATO". Can't quite believe I have to write this.
The moment Ukrainians demanded to be a different people from Russians war has been mad certain. You can't have two people groups in one country. History forbids it. Ukraine will either have to let eastern regions occupied by ethnic Russians go or it will forever have war.
Again, it's just pure history.
Russia itself should split up anytime then into a civil war with its 185 different ethnic groups.
Could you kindly expand your comment with two details that might hint on what this war is about: 1) When did this moment happen exactly (Ukrainians willing to be separate people from Russians, you don't mean after the collapse of soviet right?..)? 2) What was happening with the now-occupied territories at that point in time, who lived there?
1) The flashpoint where Ukrainians officially proclaimed that they are different was at Maidan. This was not so at collapse of the Soviet Union or through the Rape of Ukraine of the 1990's where oligarchs took apart Ukrainian industry and sold it for parts. Something happened around 2014 where Ukrainians officially decided to that it can no longer stand to be ethnically similar to Russians.
2) Crimea and Dombas was build by Russians. Their grandfathers came there and worked the same jobs their fathers worked, where their children work now. Russians made those regions into what it is now. Ethnically those people see themselves as Russians and were willing to keep quiet as long as Ukraine remained just a regional label (much like it was in USSR). The moment ethnic Ukrainians started pushing for Western re-alignment, these ethnic Russians rebelled (why should they be forced to join the West when they are clearly, ethnically, aligned with the East).
gandreyev, Donbas was mostly built by Ukrainians. Sure, lot of them russified over time, but most of migration to Donbas came from other parts of Ukraine, not from Russia. Crimea, indeed, is different.
And ethnic separatism argument is not so strong as you may think. In 2014 many pollsters asked questions like "do you eant to join Russia", "do you want union with Russia" or smth similar. If I rember correctly, in Souther-Ukraine (Herson, Odessa, Zaporozhije regions "yes" answers were ariund 2-5%, in Kharkiv region aroun 5%, and in Donets and Luhansk around 10-20%. So yes, in Donetsk it was higher but far from majority.
Another sign. Look at local collaborators. Mr Hanania has written about Kirill Stremousov. But Denish Pushilin, current head of Donetsk. Before 2014 he was low level salesman for a local Pozi scheme, then he was unemployed, tried to go to politics and got 77 votes. And suddenly, leader of separatism and president of Donetsk who is signing agreements with Putin. Really? Or Igor Plotnitsky, the head of LNR who signed Minsk Agreements, total nobody and small time crook.
Genuine sepratism needs genuine leaders: local politicians, businessman, local intellectual leaders. But you did not see it in Donbas and this is another sign that it was not an authentic separatism.
From where the Russians in Donbas migrated is not important -- we all migrated from somewhere. What's important is the ethnic identity of these people. They see themselves as Russians.
If the movement was not authentic you would see a sizable revolt (what you saw in Maidan). The fact that Crimea and Donbas saw no such revolts is a strong indicative to show which way the people lean.
You are correct that Donbas, initially did not care to join Russia. It wanted to be a separate state to call its own shots -- naturally. Initially, it simply wanted re-affirmation of federal autonomy. But after increased hostilities from Kiyev (backed by NATO), it only made sense for them to join Russia.
There are a lot of anomalies of what happened in Ukraine. Ukraine is corrupt. Neither what happened in Maidan or Donbas is organic -- it was all engineered by outside influences. But in both instances this engineering "worked" only because it moved along a populist sentiment. Again, in the West they see themselves ethnically Ukrainian in the East, Russian. There does not need to be a fight. Just draw the border correctly and be good neighbors.
2) No. All you wrote is kremlin propaganda. Go learn some history, bloody hell, whom am I even writing to.. it is impossible to comprehend just how many russian trolls I met in comments to this article.
Here.
1) Your knowledge of Ukrainian history is exactly 0. "Something happened in 2014" is kremlin BS. Google Stus. Google Ukrainian fighting for independence. Google Ukrainian "love" for russian empire. Google russian laws forbidding the use of Ukrainian language. We were separate nation with separate language and distinctive character way before 90s, let alone Maidans. You sound like a perfect russian bot with this argument. Only somebody living in putin's TV can assume "something happened spontaneously in 2014". By the way, I was at Maidan in 2004. Our will to have nothing to do with Russia was as strong as ever. Even your knowledge and understanding of these very recent events of Ukrainian history is pure laughing stock.
I was born in Nikolayev, Ukraine. I went to school there. I would know something about Ukraine before the 90's. Those Russian Soviets who banned Ukrainian language for some reason forced me to learn Ukrainian in their schools.
Your understanding of history is not complete. Ukraine territory is not a monolithic ethno-state. Again, the East is not like the West and if you so insist to be different from Russians then do reasonable thing and go separate ways.
I was born in Sevastopol, Ukraine. I would know something about Ukraine before the 90's, and after too. My mother could not find a job as a teacher of Ukrainian languages because there were exactly 4 schools teaching the subject in whole Crimea. The history of last soviet years does not represent the whole topic, and yet, when you were in that Ukrainian school, Vasyl Stus was dying in a Russian camp for exactly that - Ukrainian language. Please do some research before extrapolating your personal experience. What was going on in your school is in no way the whole picture. Did you notice, by the way, how they force children to learn English in american schools? Why even use word "force" here?..
Also, "Ukrainian territory?" Ukraine is a state. That's it. East is not the West in the USA, so what? Are you going separate ways? How about Russia, is that an example of "monolithic ethno-state"? Go separate ways, lead by example. And stop telling Ukrainians what to do, for starters.
Yeah, ethnic conflict. The 20th Century was a massive flashing neon light warning about it.
Why do you think that being from a certain patch of land makes you qualified to predict what Russia would have done in that circumstance?
It might have something to do with my ability to understand Russian and Putin's habit of using it while describing explicitly what he intended to do in that circumstance. It is beyond me how world-acclaimed thinkers and so-called "experts on Russian matters" alike refuse to use deepl to check what the man himself stated repeatedly. Also, feel free to observe how Russia is responding to Finland's move towards NATO if you want to check that hypothesis.
The closest parallel to this conflict historically is Russia's Winter War with Finland. Finland had and still has a tiny population, less than 1/5 that of Ukraine, but that never kept it from being economically successful or from defending itself, even after losing 10% of its territory to Russia. Saying the Ukrainian nation has already been "destroyed" is a little bit hyperbolic. Ten years ago Ukraine was a nation divided between Western and Russian sympathies; because of this war it is more united as a nation than it has ever been in history.
Not a good comparison. The Finnish war lasted three months and did not see a quarter of its population flee. Ukraine will probably “win” but be in terrible shape for decades at least.
“Be in terrible shape for decades at least”
Perhaps. I doubt it, but perhaps.
And so?
If the Ukrainian people wanted to roll over and maintain some degree of their present (meager) material comforts at the expense of sovereignty they had ample opportunity to do so long before the first western gun entered the country.
One of the things the normie right and left in the US have correct compared to the horseshoe theory-fulfilling nutjobs to their extremes is that patriotism and nationalism have objective value. They are a necessary, if oft-insufficient, condition for a high-trust society that isn’t a shithole for its people.
Why deny Ukraine’s people that same sentiment? If the US and NATO stop sending aid, they’ll still fight, just less effectively. I think that’d be a bad outcome for the “West”, but let’s not pretend that it would be driven by concern for the Ukrainians themselves.
On a side note, I actually suspect that regardless of whether they succeed in fully expelling the Russians from all their pre-2014 de jure territory, a healthy sense of nationalism will produce more coherent and effective politics and governance that will see Ukraine richer than it was in 2019 before long.
People don’t flee to the countries with the most sovereignty, they flee to those with the highest GDP. That’s why Ukraine is bleeding people, and will continue to do so as long as the standard of living is poor, which it will be as long as the war goes on and probably long after.
Ehh, doesn’t really address the point and is also a completely different argument from your initial one?
My points are simply that the Ukrainians have agency in this, so it’s in the US interest to support them as long as they wish to fight (and they clearly do), and welding together a sense of nationhood is the only way for Ukraine to have a shot at one day having “the highest GDP” that would make it a good place to live.
Without patriotism in the most basic sense of “I give a damn about my fellow citizens,” which Ukraine did not possess in 2013, high-trust societies with rule of law and resulting prosperity are not possible.
They do not come to exist and will quickly fade if they outlive that precursor.
That`s not necessarily how wars work. After WWI veterans split into political factions that violently hated each other. After WWII, in Europe it was a high trust society - but also a weakened and enervated one. Only US came out stronger for it, because it has suffered negligible war damage. Yugoslavian War - my knowledge is limited about participant`s economies, but I don`t believe nationalistic countries with war damage are prospering today.
Sure, conflict can have many social outcomes. But the worse ones are not what seems to be happening today, as best I can tell from the outside. It seems that Ukraine is experiencing a revival of patriotism even in demographics which traditionally were in conflict with the majority and the central government. I believe this to be good for its mid-term economic and social prospects after the conflict ends, assuming it’s not conquered outright or subject to nuclear strikes.
I’m not resorting to analogies because they’re all bad ones.
The second anyone mentions the word IQ in this context I know they’re completely divorced from empiricism, data, or evidence and I can just blow them off completely.
Richard, despite having similar views, can restrain them long enough to produce interesting and insightful analysis on other fronts, but most of the IQ-as-destiny folks are a pointless waste of time and I will act accordingly.
Ukraine's best chance at boosting its GDP is to integrate with the West and global markets, not remain a Russian patsy. That was not going to happen without inflaming Russia
If the issue was purely GDP, then the strategy, that avoids war is the best one.
They became an American patsy. There's nothing now in Ukraine which is not owned by America. Ukraine has traded in their Russian rusty iron chains for American gay velvet chains.
Sad.
Ukrainian people wanted to join EU for material comforts. Zelensky was elected, on promises to make peace with Russia. We have here a classical situation of leaders taking power on promises of bread & peace and delivering something different. Patriotism and nationalism can be quite productive, when interests of the citizenry and the state are aligned. In this case I would argue, that interests of the Ukrainian state and Ukrainian people are not the same. You can of course make the same argument for Russian state and Russian people.
The problem w/ Ukraine is that it has no representation of a healthy sense of nationalism. The East of Ukraine want to be a slave or Russian, the West of Ukraine wants to be a slave of America. Show me somebody who wants to be independent.
I am from the West of Ukraine. No, we don't want to be a slave of America. Stop spreading kremlin narratives, I'm sick and tired seeing this post flooded by russian trolls coming in all flavours possible.
No one "wants" to be a slave. But if you stick your hands out and let people put the shackles on you. I'm sorry to break it to you, you are a slave.
Tell me what's your opinion on "same sex partnerships" promoted by Zelenski? What do most Ukrainians think about that?
Most Ukrainians think that you russian trolls are just not able to get why we are absolutely not triggered by the sound of russian скрєпи falling, quite the opposite, we love it. The % of population with same-sex attraction is stable throughout the world, you cannot increase it, and guess what, you cannot decrease it either (only in russia, you can of course pretend to be God-chosen nation without gays).
If by "win" you mean becoming an uninhabitable place devoid of functional electricity and indoor plumbing, then I suspect you may be correct.
Sad that you dismiss the many indications that Russia did not want to get four oblasts, nor "de-nazify" Ukraine, but total surrender and annexation. Putin said it in so many words in August 2021 https://www.prlib.ru/en/article-vladimir-putin-historical-unity-russians-and-ukrainians and Dugin and all the propagandists inside and outside of Russia have been setting the scene since at least 2014. Surrendering territory before February 24 would not have prevented the invasion, and surrendering it today will not prevent it from recurring once Putin rearms.
And should Putin prevail, his next targets will be Moldavia, the Baltic states and Finland. His vision is to restore Russia to its imperial greatness, nothing less. And his previous wars and de facto annexations (Transnistria, Abzakhia, South Ossetia and Chechnya as a whole) are a clear indication that this is the case.
As a European, I have to see any move towards appeasement and surrender as a rehashing of Chamberlain's ill-begotten efforts. You cannot appease Putin, only surrender completely. And since his aim is to defeat the "Satanic West", we are in for destruction unless he is stopped. And unfortunately, this can only be done on the battlefield. Which pains me, since I am a pacifist but also a realist. Just as Bertrand Russell realized Hitler had to be defeated, I also see no other way to stop the imperial plans of the old KGB hand.
If you actually read that essay, the only hint of seizing Ukrainian territory relates to Donbas ("Apparently, and I am becoming more and more convinced of this: Kiev simply does not need Donbas."). As for the rest of Ukraine, here's the last line of the essay: "And what Ukraine will be – it is up to its citizens to decide."
Point me to a single statement by Putin between February 2015 and April 2022 declaring an intent to permanently seize Ukrainian territory outside of Crimea and Donbas. I haven't been able to find any, and no one has been able to point any out to me either. Even on February 24, Putin explicitly denied any intention to occupy "the Ukrainian territory," after only recognizing Crimea and Donbas as not part of Ukraine.
This is backed up by the actions of Russian soldiers on the ground in the first few weeks of the invasion. In every settlement they captured within Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, they immediately replaced Ukrainian flags and other symbols of the Ukrainian state. As far as I can tell, they did not do this anywhere outside of Crimea and Donbas until after Boris Johnson blew up peace negotiations on April 9. In particular, Ukrainian flags were not taken down in Kherson until April 10. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/04/11/intimidating-russian-soldiers-tear-ukraine-flag-occupied-kherson/
Everything from troop numbers to the invasion plan to statements from Putin and similarly high-level Russian government officials are far more consistent with the initial plan being essentially a scaled up and geography-adjusted version of Georgia 2008: push government military forces out of separatist-claimed territory, temporarily seize important port cities for diplomatic leverage, and send an armored column or three towards the Capitol city to scare the government to the negotiating table.
Which would mean that the annexations of the 4 Oblasts are an escalation of Russian territorial goals, not a deescalation.
And I have yet to see even the faintest shred of evidence that Putin has any territorial designs on Finland or the Baltic states. Putin's publicly stated position on Finland joining NATO is that given that the Finnish government has stated that they do not intend to host NATO bases or missiles it won't make much difference. Back in the 2000s, Putin probably could have kept the Baltic states out of NATO, by putting pressure on France or Germany or if all else failed set up "People's Republics" in ethnic Russian enclaves in Estonia and Latvia to trip NATO's "no territorial disputes" rule, but he did not.
As for Dugin, he has next to zero actual political influence in Russia. I see no evidence that he is relevant at all.
Yes, the Russians have been so successful in conquering Ukraine, and no doubt if they are bogged down in occupying Ukraine and losing buckets of soldiers and rubles propping it up, they will no doubt seek to go directly head to head with NATO by invading the Baltics. What did the Nazis march into Poland 1.5 million soldiers? What did Putin invade Ukraine with, 190,000 soldiers? Clearly he thinks the Russian soldier has 8X the combat power of the Wehrmacht at its prime because otherwise, no rational person could ever conclude that the SMO was intended to be an occupying force.
Russian has no colonial ambitions and since collapse of the Soviet Union it went nowhere outside of its ethnic territory.
If you want to see a good example of a country which pines for imperial greatness, invading sovereign countries, and overturning governments look no further than USA.
Europe was already conquered by America. America says "jump" and Europe responds "how hight?" A far fall from once glorious people.
Oh, goody, the old Soviet "whataboutism". But, wait a second, "ethnic territory?" Wasn't that Hitler's alibi for the Sudetes, Austria and the invasion of Poland?
Hear Dugin speak about a "Holy War" where non-ethnic Ukrainians must be destroyed. Hear the Duma deputies demanding the reconstruction of the Soviet Empire minus the Marxist ideology.
You fool no one. The world is in danger because of Putin, not because of Russia or the Russian people, who have been dragged into this imperial fascist dream.
Again, the only people running around the world with their military, invading countries of wholly different ethnic makeup, capsizing governments not their own, is America and their minion array of European lilliputs like Great Britain.
Historically speaking, people of same ethnic makeup need to belong in a same boundary. This is the first thing you learn by studying history. Ignore this only if you want mass graves and never ending revolutions.
What's the reason for thinking that keeping Ukraine out of NATO is a good idea? If the war ends with Ukraine still disputing Russian occupied territory, then not having Ukraine in NATO makes sense. But if Ukraine is happy with the territorial situation on the ground, then having them in NATO could make the situation much more stable going forwards. Russia may say that keeping Ukraine out of NATO is important to them, but Finland's membership didn't seem to bother them much in practice, going by how little Russia seems to mention it. An offer of NATO membership if there is no frozen conflict might encourage Ukraine to make territorial concessions in Crimea -- whether that's good or bad is another question, but it would shorten the war.
Because Russia has done terribly in this war without Ukraine in NATO. It now knows an invasion of Ukraine is costly, and next time Ukraine will have much better weapons and there will no longer be any pro-Russian element in the population. There’s a chance that a no-NATO pledge could be taken as a symbolic victory for Russia. They’re not going to want to repeat this anyway.
You consistently overestimate the "pro-Russian" sentiment even in the Donbass. There was never remotely a majority for joining Russia there, and the "separatist"movement was propped up by Russia from the outset, rather than an "organic" Irredentist movement. You muddy both the moral and the analytic waters with this misjudgment.
Both pro-Western and pro-Russian sources have made a pretty convincing case that the initial uprisings in Donbas started independently of the Russian government, as a bottom-up largely spontaneous reaction to the Euromaidan coup and the annexation of Crimea.
But even leaving that aside, quoting a Time magazine article from April 14, 2014:
"According to local media reports, the presence of Ukrainian forces in and around Donetsk has been minimal, and local police and security officials have been defecting en masse to the pro-Russian side."
https://time.com/61971/ukraine-powerless-to-act-as-east-slips-under-russian-control/
You don't get local police defecting en masse without *some* grassroots sentiment.
As far as "never a majority for joining Russia there," the original Donbas uprisings were a coalition of people who wanted the Donbas to become part of Russia and people who wanted greater local autonomy. The original referendum in Donetsk back in 2014 was for "self-rule". And the greater local autonomy option actually became the official position of the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republic governments for 7 years after the signing of the Minsk 2 accords in early 2015. And adding support for secession and support for greater local autonomy in the polls consistently does add up to a majority.
I think you need to reassess your naive supposition that Russia has been performing poorly in this war. They have totally eliminated the fighting capacity of the Ukrainian military and NATO with a strategy of long, grinding attrition, not just in the sense of the actual military conflict but also in the economic war of attrition that they are waging with the combined West. Europe is gripped in a death spiral from which they will never recover. Russia is an extremely resource rich nation and will be stable for the next 100 years because of this war.
Again, we’ll see if this proves correct. We can talk in 2 years and understand most of the relevant outcomes to prove these statements true or false.
But even if your supposition is correct, why in hell would one regard this “strategy of long, grinding attrition” as a Russian success of any sort?
Given the on-paper differential in combat power between Russia’s armed forces and those of Ukraine nine months ago, “success” should have been defined as combat outcomes similar to those achieved by the US in the first Gulf War, ffs!
Bless your delusional lil heart. Extremely resourse rich nation the mantra. "Stable because of this war" sure wars are a renown source of stability and prosperity. Keep posting!
What about this argument: Let's say that the war ends with a compromise (e.g. Russia keeps Crimea, perhaps with the promise of a future referendum, but Ukraine gets the DPR and LPR back) which both sides sign on to (no frozen conflict) but which leaves them both with further territorial ambitions. Ukraine's security can be guaranteed with new Western weapons, or immediate NATO membership and rather fewer new Western weapons. With NATO membership, Ukraine has less ability to launch a future aggressive war (if Russia starts to break up, and looks particularly weak, for instance). Anyone who believes that Ukraine needs "denazification and demilitarization" should prefer that. From Putin's point of view, immediate Ukrainian NATO membership helps the "we were really fighting NATO" narrative, which helps excuse him losing the war. Putin is not the most nationalistic Russian politician, so to the extent that NATO membership takes a future Russian aggression against Ukraine off the table, this may help Putin against his opponents. Of course it would be hard for Russia to admit that they want NATO membership for Ukraine, but they might resist it less than we think.
The various military commenters seem to think it's actually much easier for Ukraine to take Crimea than to reclaim Donetsk (largely because of the greater ease of resupply in the east). I actually expect that to be the ultimate resolution. Ukraine will threaten Crimea which they will agree to not invade in return for Russia withdrawing from the rest of Ukraine.
That, plus the massive costs Russia has born prosecuting the war seem sufficient to enforce the norm. After all, deterrence merely requires making sure it's clear the expected gain is negative.
But Russia needs to be willing to either give up it's holdings in mainland Ukraine or to accept NATO troops in Ukraine since Ukraine can't trust that Russia won't just rebuild it's forces and reprosecute the war.
What news are you reading? Ukraine is so heavily disadvantaged that there is no conceivable way that this war will end with anything other than a total and complete capitulation of Ukraine and the West.
Finally, a falsifiable claim!
We will know whether this was true or not within about 24 months, so let’s see!
Well not quite. I think we both agree that Crimea isn't on the table yet. If Ukraine can't manage to cut the land bridge it probably never will so if that doesn't happen we can't be sure if Crimea was more vulnerable than the parts of Donetsk and Luhansk seized in 2014. But it's at least hopefully testable.
I’m pretty sure we’ll know beyond any semblance of a doubt whether Russia can force a total surrender from Ukraine well within that timeframe. What might not be clear is whether Ukraine and it’s foreign backers can prosecute a war through to restoring her borders as of 2013.
I personally doubt it, but we’ll see. No point in committing to an endgame until the Ukrainians have had a chance to show what they can achieve.
The poster to whom I was responding seems to think that Russia is imminently going to break through in Bakhmut and will then be able to exploit to regain everything they’ve lost in the last several months, the latter of which is obviously a fantasy.
Well I believe that one comes from the various ex-nato/us officers that get interviewed on EU news programs all the time (but I could be misremembering).
Basically, the argument is that Crimea is very hard to resupply. If Ukraine can break through to the sea (e.g. recover Mariupol...which is to the west of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that Russia has had 8 years to fortify) then they've cut off any resupply via the land bridge and will be close enough to destroy the Kerch bridge. At that point Russia could only resupply their troops in the area with either ships (many of the big ports on the east can also be threatened from Mariupol) or by air (expensive and likely subject to AA defenses).
OTOH the parts of Luhansk and Donetsk which broke away in 2014 have borders with Russia so can't plausibly be deprived of Russian resupply.
Of course this all becomes academic if Ukraine can't cut the land bridge. I think we'll have to see what happens this winter. Ukraine, with it's fancy NATO cold weather gear and support from the population, is probably in it's most advantageous position as Russia hasn't yet had time to train or properly equip it's new conscripts. So if they don't make either large territorial gains or substantially reduce Russian capacity over the winter their chances go down considerably.
...the author suggests "overestimating the competence and capabilities of the Russian military."
rather than overestimating competence you underestimate care
there was nothing to stop Putin leveling Kiev and still he could at will
however he took care to limit civilian casualty to near zero
we should all be greatful
The Russian military has not entered Ukraine in any significant form to date
The question is why has not the west settled ?
What horror will Putin have to bring before the West comes to their senses
and stops understimating the horror Putin could bring if and when he so desires.
Not pro Russian, Not anti US EU but anti war and suffering of civilians
It's nice when powerful friends who support freedom, democracy and all that take an interest in your trials, but what seems to be missing in this discussion is a recognition that the war in Ukraine is not really about the USA. Putin may say that it is, but that's not the country he has decided to invade. This is about Ukraine, and Russia, and what is best for Ukraine, I would expect the people of Ukraine to have the clearest view of.
Now it may be that Ukraine giving up territory and not joining NATO would satisfy Russia, but they tried that in 2014 and it didn't. You can understand the belief that concessions will make Russia worse not better.
"But from the perspective of the interests of Ukraine itself and taking a purely materialist view, I don’t think there is any doubt that the country would have been better off surrendering a good chunk of territory and pledging not to join NATO in order to avoid a war."
How is this steelmanning? Suppose Ukraine gave up Donbas and pledged not to join NATO; a big win for Putin. Why would he not then invade the rest of the country? Regardless of whether or not his concerns over NATO expansion are heartfelt, he's made his imperial ambitions very clear.
I agree Ukraine should give up Donbas (and Crimea for that matter). These territories are dead weight: they are (or were) mostly ethnic Russians who want to be a part of Russia. However you don't give up something for nothing, especially to an imperialist. The West ought to encourage Ukraine concede these territories (plus water rights for Crimea) in exchange for peace and NATO membership. The only way for Ukraine to become a successful country will be if it has security guarantees against Russian invasion, and that means NATO.
Unfortunately Putin didn't just annex Donbas, he also publicly committed to taking Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. Hopefully he can backtrack here, because I don't see Ukraine giving these up.
I'm sure the U.S military (industry) wants endless war, but eventually voters will tire of bleeding $100B / year. Biden is nothing if not politically minded, and by the end of his term he may want to hang a 'Mission Accomplished' banner over Ukraine.
Hey, NEWS FLASH. Ukraine won't have a choice in the matter. They threw away their chance to negotiate in March. Russia is totally in the drivers seat.
So much so that it needs you to remind this in multiple comments. Big win indeed. Looking for more good will gestures!
Article makes alot of effort ignoring the most important variable in territorial stability -- people.
I don't care what stupid laws stupid politicians bloviate about as they talk of some imagined territorial sovereign. They do so because they:
1) think too much of themselves
2) don't know history
No territory will ever be stable where there are different peoples. Texas was built by Americans, that's why it was correct for USA to annex it from Mexico. Dombas and Crimea was made into what it is by Russians. These Russians still live there. That's why it should be with Russia. You can ignore this rule much like a madman would attempt to ignore gravity -- it feels good falling until an inevitable collision with reality. In case of history, this reality manifests as a mass grave, a genocide, or a bloody revolt.
Study history. It's all there.
Hey history lover, would you please remind us when and how did those Russian people first inhabited the Donetsk region? And even more interesting, who made Crimea not "what it is", господипрости, but who actually lived there for the most of history? Hint hint. Russian narrative about "people as indicator of whom should the land belong" doesn't go well with actual historical facts check.
No matter where you look at you will always find a territory and a people who previously inhabited it. There was a time when Ukraine was not; different people lived there. But Kiev, Odessa, and L'vov -- as we know this region -- is what it is because of ethnic Ukrainians. They made these territories into what they are now. Before that, these territories were something else... and an injustice done a long time ago was already done (by the Mongols). Would we add to that injustice by breaking apart these territories just so that we can return them into what Kiyev-Rus was? No.
Yes. Before Crimea and Domabs were turned into industrial sectors by ethnic Russians there were "natives" who occupied them. Crimea was occupied by Tatars and Muslims. Dombas was probably occupied by Khazarian tribes of some sort. But these were not the industrial territories which we know them as now. Only one ethnic group is primarily responsible for that -- the Russians. As such it would be injustice to force them to ether:
1) pick up and leave -- this is their home and was such for many generations or
2) demand that they change their ethnic realignment.
What is the only other option?
This post might seem embarrassing if the Russians pull off a successful winter offensive, after the ground freezes in mid-late December.
Which is almost a certainty. What can the Ukrainians do to stop a massive Russian offensive once their fortifications in Donbas are breached which seems to be rapidly approaching given the recent reports of the encirclement of Bakhmut.
"Almost a certainty" means not certain. You can't be semi-certain.
If there's one thing I've learned about this war it's this: never make a prediction. That's why I used the word "if." But I think that odds are there will be a winter offensive. And it will be horrible. My heart goes out to anyone caught in it, soldier or civilian.
Time will tell.