There seems to be an emerging consensus among the YouTube commentators who are particularly inflential in shaping US/advanced economy perceptions among anti-globalists and other US hegemony skeptics and oppents. Many are coming to the position articulated early by Mark Sleboda, who has been the most accurate in forecasting the pace of the conflict, that Russia would have to take all of Ukraine, if nothing else because NATO officials and key EU political leaders have regularly and rabidly maintained that they will arm/rearm Ukraine even in the event of an apparent defeat. So the only secure and durable remedy to that, from the Russian side, is to make sure no US/NATO/EU-aligned Ukraine survives the war. That in turn would seem to require that Russia secures all of Ukraine’s current territory, by some combination of winning referenda in the Russia-receptive oblasts so they join Russia plus occupation or installation of a friendly regime in rump Ukraine. While I am in no position to observe directly, polls and the tone of commentary support the idea that Russian citizens more and more favor aggressive prosecution of the conflict, and subduing/controlling all of Ukraine and thus have been frustrated with Putin’s dalliances with Trump.
Even though occupying or otherwise dominatinng the entirety of Ukraine would entail more costs than other solutions, it is arguably the least bad result for Russia. But even so, Sleboda has warned that that outcome might not be unwelcome form of Russia victory to the West: “We’ll make you choke on it.”
But even in this “subjugate all of Ukraine” assumption, there are a lot of ways to skin that cat. John Mearsheimer has long argued that what Russia wants as an end-state is a dysfunctional rump Ukraine. That presumably includes Russia taking historically Russia-leaning Odessa1 to render what is left of Ukraine landlocked.
John Helmer has so far provided the most insight, due to his contacts in the General Staff, as to what the end game might look like. Helmer has suggested that the General Staff in particular has been frustrated with Putin apparently requiring a particularly slow grind on the ground, and holding back (until recently) on muscular prosecution of the electricity war. Admittedly that has become an easier task with Ukraine now almost entirely bereft of air defenses even as Russia has increased its stocks of missiles and drones.
Helmer early on described how one element of the Russian strategy was to push determined Ukraine nationalists out of the county. Rolling westward deliberately rather than rapidly would help with that aim, particularly given that the population might still accept the Ukraine rather than the Russian view of how well Ukraine was holding out, plus people understandably are very reluctant to abandon their homes and communities. Note that that aim has already been achieved to some degree, via emigration as well as war deaths. I saw estimates about a year ago of Ukraine’s population having fallen to as low as 20 million versus a pre-war level of ~43 million. Admittedly that factors in the loss of the Donbass. I can’t imagine that the true total is better now.
Not only does driving the neo-Nazis out in theory reduce the size of a terrorist rearguard, but on a more mundane level, it will result in more of the remaining population being Russia-tolerant and thus legitimately voting to join Russia. This would presumably result in more oblasts joining Russia than earlier voting maps of which areas favored Russia-friendly candidates would suggest.
In addition, Helmer pointed out that the General Staff expected that an aggressive prosecution electricity war (as in turning out the lights, which would also result in no heat and destruction of infrastructure via burst pipes; key parts of the municipal waterworks depend on electric controls and heating) would produce a humanitarian crisis and mass flight westward. Helmer did make clear that the General Staff saw overloading border states with refugees as a plus, but Putin presumably does not like the optics of punishing civilians. One solution to that apparent dilemma might be for Russia to create intermittent but somewhat lengthy outages (a guesstimate is 12 to 72 hours) to give the citizenry a taste of what is in store and give them time to leave in a more orderly manner.
However, I have not seen much consideration of what measures Russia can take to reduce the incidence of terrorism in rump Ukraine and the Russian Federation, not just the newly-integrated oblasts but pre-war Russia. MI6 lives for this sort of operation. Scott Ritter has claimed that Russia House, the CIA unit tasked to messing with Russia, is effectively a rogue operation. Even the formidable torture enthusiast Gina Haspel was unable to get it back under control. So even if the US officially retreats to sulk and lick its wounds after a Ukraine defeat, it seems a certainty that UK and US intelligence operatives will instigate violence.
A final point that seems overlooked in a lot of commentary on the future of Ukraine is that, given foreign pot-stirrers, it isn’t necessary to have much if any die-hard Banderites to man these operations. John Kirakou, formerly the CIA’s Chief of Counterterrorist Operations in Pakistan, has repeatedly described his findings from interviews of Al-Quaeda members the US had captured. Without exception, they were not ideologues. They were desperately poor and the Al-Quaeda pay and death benefits to families were generous. Russia surely must have taken note of this risk after Turkiye/Western aligned forces were able to buy off desititute members of the Syrian army, leading to a very speedy collapse when invaders rolled in.
Thus the John Mearsheimer notion that Russia wants to make rump Ukraine into a failed state would seem to play into schemes to foment terrorism unless “failed state” means “very seriously depopulated”. Recall we have suggested that Russia could de-electrify Western Ukraine ex Kiev and say Lvov, and reduce it to the level of the Unorganized Territory of Maine. That region has extremely low population density. Its denizens are hardy survivalists often described by Mainers as “men with beards.” But that part of Ukraine also has rich agricultural land, which would argue against letting it go wild.
So it would seem that Russia either needs to largely vacate the sections of Ukraine that will not have a Russia-friendly post-war population, or assure that it is sufficiently prosperous so as not to serve as a fertile area for hiring terrorists.
Perhaps there is an active debate in Russian circles on this issue, but Helmer’s latest post suggests that the General Staff is not alive to this risk. From his The Three Stages of the Trump War Begin with the Fifth Column:
A source in a position to know says: “The rate of east-to-west Ukrainian migration will accelerate and there will be disintegration of the frontline with a breakthrough on any one of the critical axes that will undermine the entire Ukrainian defence east of the Dnieper. Ouster of [Vladimir] Zelensky and [Andrei] Yermak will follow when the Ukrainian commanders cannot order their forces to continue fighting, holding their ground. There will be Russian satisfaction with the new regional lines and the depth of the demilitarized zone westward to Kiev. Of course, Banderite terrorism will continue, but so will the electric war strikes, as well as assassinations from the Russian side in reply. The rump Ukraine will be dysfunctional to the point where day-to-day survival will trump warfighting in terms of allocation of resources.”
That’s small “t” trump meaning defeat. “There’s no need for the Russians to declare that they are done fighting – the situation speaks for itself. The declaration that matters is that the winner is confident the opponent will never get up again.”
Admittedly this is one source, who is repeated a vision of the future that Helmer set forth from his General Staff sources early in the electircity war, of a very wide de-militarized zone (the width determined by the longest-range Western missiles that had or could operate in theater, now presumably the Taurus at 500 kilometers). Note this source sees Russia as not taking control of Kiev.
But what this contact sets forth is essentially an unending low-level war against rump Ukraine, with at least occasional electric grid strikes.
One would assume that the shape of post-war Ukraine is coming increasingly into focus in political and military circles, as well as in the pundit classes that can influence their views. And there is still likely some path dependency in what comes next. For instance, it may make a difference if Zelensky and others in his inner circle decamp to form a government in exile, as opposed to being expelled from office or executed.
As we’ve indicated above, doing what Russia can to minimize long-term terrorism risks would seem to be an important objective. My reading of what is admittedly one view (and that view may represent only one faction in the General Staff) says that risk is not given enough credence, unless the plan is to continue low-level operations in rump Ukraine on an open-ended basis.
I am hampered by not being able to read Russian sources or even the Russian press on a regular basis. Readers who keep on top of the Russian media, Telegram, and think tank output are very much encouraged to speak up.
_____
1 This idea is not as popular in Russia as one might assume, despite the role of Odessa in Russian history. It’s seen as fabulously corrupt and crime ridden, even by Ukrainian standards.
Bunch of typos in there, “creedence”, “readinng”, “officailly”, “formidabe”, “Al-Quaeda”.
Nobody likes a grammer natzee:)
You mean like this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmVnr7rsWrE (2:15 mins)
Good one! Pythonesque humor, laughs all round!
The comments policy explicitly asks the commenters to help correct typos. I was just following orders ̄\_ (ツ)_/ ̄
Mearshimer
(Getting someone’s name wrong, even as an innocent typo, is, to me, never a good thing.)
Spell check does not work in Orion, which I prefer to Safari since Orion does not track browsing or, when you use Kagi, search histories. Will fix and I guess reluctantly have to go back to Safari. And in respponse to JW, I specifically have name dyslexia and have mangled some names worse than that.
As for Al-Quaeda specifically, that is an accepted spelling. A search shows Rand, BBC and PBS as having used it.
Yes, an Orion convert! I have it locally as well.
I suggest the best strategy is to let commenters here call out needed corrections. Then Yves can carry on with the program she’s finds best suited for her needs and the spell checking will be accomplished by the dedicated commentariat. There’s no shame in this, it’s called a community.
Also, sometimes the errors in the writing done here make it difficult to understand what was intended, so they’re important to clear up. It also is important when we want to share some article written here with people that are unfamiliar with the site and may decide to mock the grammar rather than the ideas. Let’s not give them that option, force them to the ideas!
And finally, let’s not forget that this blog is being recorded in the US national libraries for prosperity, so even errors that we can easily distinguish given our familiarity with this timeline, could become unassailable in a future trying to figure out what was actually going on in these last years.
And what people thought of it in the moment, what information was available at the time the decisions were being made.
Such a future would have very few sources comparable to Naked Capitalism for the True Naked Skinny.
By the way, The True Naked Skinny would make a great handle. I am sorely tempted
Yves has plenty of company in much much bigger budget and higher prestige publications, starting with the Gray Lady. There is a Twitter account devoted solely to Typos of the New York Times: https://x.com/nyttypos
I may be a minority of one on this, and with all due respect to others commenting here, but I have never given a crap about spelling mistakes in written material as long as the frequency doesn’t prove so distracting I can’t maintain a focus on the thoughts. That level of errors is extremely rare among people who can write. It’s invariably clear what the person was trying to spell.
I would rather see the efforts of the writer go into more and better writing than policing what they have already written (that’s not to say spell checkers aren’t a worthwhile thing!). Many commercial media have over the years grown a prideful fetish about catching these kind of mistakes and having a zero tolerance policy for them, but IMO that’s a lot easier to maintain if you have a lot of money, a big editorial staff, and nothing else you can take pride in.
“That’s a lot easier to maintain if you have a lot of money, a big editorial staff, and nothing else you can take pride in.”
Indeed. Apologies for the lunchtime interruption…So far as I know, everyone here, including and especially the commentariat nonpareil, is researcher/writer/editor/copy editor/compositor plus paste-up person and backstage producer. I have looked and have found less than a handful of places on the internet where comments are civilized and therefore instructive, especially when disagreement leads to deeper understanding. I thought this was true at Crooked Timber (the shade of Isaiah Berlin is probably not amused) but got flamed to a crisp, in her cramped inward-looking mind, by one of their regulars when I pointed out during Trump 1.0 that Donald Trump is consequence, not cause.
I don’t think Russia will go for all of Ukraine, for several reasons. One is that it would again have NATO on its border, which was one of the reasons they started the SMO.
Another is that Russia would/could be seen as a colonizer by the ‘Global South’, and hence falling as low as the West. Optics count, and I think that reason precludes also the taking of Odessa or any other oblast.
And a last reason is that such ‘occupation’ would be costly in manpower, local terrorism acts … for no real benefits.
There is an old clip of John Mearsheimer explaining the ‘old’ situation where Poland and Ukraine were seen as buffer states protecting the West from Russia and vice-versa. I’d say Russia is aiming for a demilitarized rump Ukraine, as John Helmer has pictured.
That rump Ukraine includes parts & people that Romania, Hungary, Poland claim as theirs.
Now watch while Europe slides down in an economic black hole, and different countries try different strategies.
So one possibility might be that Russia creates a big demilitarized, neutral rump Ukraine, where the haggling European dwarfs block each other in creating mayhem while trying to survive.
And that implies that this war will drag on until NATO implodes.
Isn’t there a big difference between Ukraine and the next countries over? The country’s name itself means the border lands and it was heavily fortified by the Soviets as such. I’m only theorizing here, but I don’t think there’s another Ukraine to be built up by NATO forces. And let’s not forget the lack of weapons manufacturing capability in the West.
To be fair Marcel, I think you recognize some of this yourself in your last paragraph. Great insight regarding the infighting of European powers hampering the dividing up of rump Ukraine included in that last paragraph as well!
so not long then?
“John Helmer has so far provided the most insight, due to his contacts in the General Staff”
With all due respect, I want to say that Helmer cannot have any contacts in the Russian General Staff. It’s fantastic. None of the Russian military will be in unofficial contact with him. Helmer simply interprets Russian news and conversations and presents his conclusions in this way.
Helmer has said he has contacts in the General Staff. Are you calling him a liar? Helmer described the logic of the electricity war very early on, in stark contrast to any other reporter/commentator writing in English, a large proportion of which read the Russia press and Telegram. Pray tell, how was Helmer alone in having that critical information?
I’m explaining. When he talks this way, he’s just hiding his sources. He’ll never say who told him that. But it certainly wasn’t the military from the General Staff. And what to call it, you can decide for yourself. But I always read it with great interest.
You have now defamed Helmer a second time with no evidence whatsoever. For Helmer to say the General Staff was a source when it wasn’t, as you assert, would be fabrication and a very very serious breach of journalistic ethics.
Since we moderate comments, we are liable for defamatory statements that appear here.
And let’s now look at what a crock your claim is. Has it never occurred to you that government, including militaries, plant or leak information when it serves them? And that there might be internal disagreements about how much if any of that sort of thing to do?
Nothing that Helmer published about the electricity war would help Ukraine or the US/NATO. His big tidbit was that Russia was deliberately doing only limited damage (the sort that could be repaired in hours or at most a day) so as to get a better understanding of how the grid work (for more efficient later large scale destruction should that prove necessary/desirable) and to deplete Ukraine’s air defense missiles.
As for Russia making clear is was deliberately doing only limited, short-term damage, that was helpful to Russia in:
1. Reaffirming to Russia’s critical allies, who did not like the fact of the war, that Russia was not in the businss of harming civilians or irreperably destroying critical infrastructure.
2. Letting Russians know that the limited damage was not incompetence but design
3. Also informing the UE/NATO of #2
I do not recall exactly when Helmer made the “exhausting air defense” point, but having Ukraine know that would not change their response. Ukraine had to shoot down incoming missiles, both from a political perspective (so as not to look wide open to attack) and to interdict them in case the targets were of high military priority (and some were).
So I think the issue is somewhat different. Why was the information Helmer got not publicized more widely? The most logical explanation is someone simply threw him a bone of what they regarded as (properly parsed) strategically and tactically unimportant nuggests that were Russia positive?
Good. As you wish. This means that John Helmer is lying and has violated all ethical standards. He cannot have sources in the Russian General Staff. It seems that in the West, all experts are completely confused and can no longer distinguish truth from fiction. No Russian general would ever have come into contact with a Western journalist during the war. This is only possible if the Russian general began writing his memoirs many years after the events. Is that difficult for you to understand? So, for you, Russia is a banana republic, and you don’t understand what’s going on.
I’ve finished my report.
I don’t recall Helmer saying recently that he has contacts in the Russian top brass. There’s some confusion as to his location, with various writers saying he’s still based in Moscow. As far as I know that isn’t so. I’ve corresponded with him (he responds to comments left on his site) and sent him a couple of books: both went to his home in the eastern US.
But he was certainly based in Russia for a good while; speaks the language; and no doubt retains good contacts there.
Interresting info. Does not prove in itself that he’s based in the US though.
Since the debate pertains to Helmer’s veracity, his bio states right now “He first set up his bureau in 1989, making him today the doyen of the foreign press corps in Russia.”
He’s mentionned a few times trying to visit his wife’s grave outside Moscow but not being able to exit the city due to administrative obstruction.
It virtually does. Helmer reported that he was exiled from Russia in 2010: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/05/exile.html. There was a contemporaneous account in the Moscoe Times
Helmer has written to me (this may also have been reported by third parties) that he was not allowed to return to Russia for his wife’s funeral.
He is a US citizen. He was born in Australia so he might be a dual citizen. But it would be easiest for him to live here or there, or shuttle between them.
This I don’t understand about Russia they allow western Mainstream news freely in Russia but people like Helmer is not allow in Russia.It don’t make sense
They know that no one believes what MSM says. ;)
Actually, it makes sense when you factor in the contacts that Helmer has. The same contacts that are being disputed here. Ones that no foreign journalists would have. So the fact that Helmer is not allowed into Russia could argue for the idea that he has important contacts
Thank you for the answer and additional details.
Wall:
Fully agree. For extraordinary claims, by Helmer, that he has “contacts with the General Staff ” where is the extraordinary proof? He cannot nor would he be able to provide that proof.
The likelihood is he knows someone far removed from the General Staff or he is piecing stuff together from the other sources.
Helmer would never make stuff up. Never.
What planet are you from? Journalists do not prove who their sources are; in fact, in most jurisdictions, they are protected from revelaing their identity even in a judical proceeding (as in court orders cannot force the disclosure of source names).
We have many commentators whinging about the MSM and others relying on anonymous sources. So Helmer is a tad more specific and you tear him apart?
It would be surprising if senior Russian military officers were casually expressing their dissatisfaction with the commander-in-chief to foreigners.
Ahem, all of the string above of comments are straw men. Suddenly “General Staff” is equated with its most senior leadership.
Wkipedia does not give a number but shows it occupies at least on VERY large building and as of 2015, had an org structure consisting of:
Main Directorate of Communications[8]
Main Operational Directorate[8]
Main Intelligence Directorate – GRU (G.U.)[8]
Main Organizational and Mobilization Directorate[8]
Main Command – Ground Forces[8]
Main Command – Navy[8]
Main Command – Air Forces[8]
Aerospace Defense Command – Space Forces and Air and Missile Defense Forces[8]
Strategic Rocket Forces Command[8]
Directorate of the Chief of Electronic Warfare Troops[8]
Main Missile and Artillery Directorate – GRAU
Military Topographical Directorate[8]
Main Computation Centre of the General Staff[9]
Airborne Forces Command[8]
Special Operations Forces Command (Russian: командование сил специальных операций, abbr. KCCO, romanized: Komandovanie sil spetsial’nykh operatsii) – KSSO (2012 – present)[10]
National Defense Management Center[8]
Operational Training Directorate[8]
8th Directorate[8]
Troop service and safety of military service Directorate[8]
Directorate of the Chief of the Construction and Development of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle systems[8]
Directorate of the Chief of the Radiation, Chemical, and Biological Defense Troops[8]
Directorate of the Chief of Engineering Troops[8]
Main Directorate for Deep Sea Research[8]
Central Command Post[8]
Hydrometeorological Service[8]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Staff_of_the_Armed_Forces_of_the_Russian_Federation
Second, huge swathes of Russian Telegram (which Russia has not shut down), the Russian communist party, and even on many days Medvedev express bloody minded views that are at odds with Putin. Putin also runs his bureaucracy by consensus and tolerates a certain level of internal dissent as conducive to arriving at the best decisions as long as there are no challenges to his ultimate authority (Prigozhin was a big object lesson). So a certain amount of grumbling by the understandably military-fixated General Staff (as in a body that is not in the business of balancing military priorities with political, economic, and geopolitical concerns) is understandable and likely inevitable.
So please tell me again, with none of you apparently even bothering to try to ascertain what the scale of the General Staff actually is, that Helmer had no one in such a large body with insight into the electrical war that was in contact with him?
There are about 5000 people working for the Russian General Staff. Not all of them are generals. It’s divided into 8 directorates (GRU alone has 17 subdirectorates) and 2 Centers – National Defense Management Center is where the SMO is actually directed from.
So, having a “contact” in General Staff is plausible, but I also find it rather hard to believe – given the example of Surovikin – that anyone would went their frustration to a foreign journalist. Especially someone who has access to the rooms where things are decided.
Given that the general strategy is discussed in National Security Council, in which both the minister of defense and the chief of general staff have a say, one would assume it would be a better venue to express dissatisfaction.
And understanding that since 1919 Russian armed forces have been under the direct control of the political power and mostly focused on operational art that supports the national strategy of that political power rather than coming up with the strategy of it’s own, it’s equally hard to believe that General Staff would actually disagree with the national strategy.
But then, weirder things have happened.
I beg to differ on the “venting their frustration” point. This is framing the issue too narrowly, as if the General Staff ought to be in the driver’s seat and is being inappropriately curbed by Putin.
But the military is accoutnable to civilian leadership. Putin has given the General Staff freedom of operation within certain parameters, but those parameters are very firm.
There is a large and noisy community of Russia hawks. The grumbling Helmer has reported is very weak tea compared to that. Even Russian TV has more forceful criticism on its political debate shows.
A reason for passing on detail about the electrical grid plans is that it is actually very Russia positive.
1. The campaign at its outset set out to only knock out parts of the grid for a short-term basis. The logic included not unduly harming civilians (a big imperative for keeping the support of Russia’s economic allies), probing how the grid functioned for the purpose of more efficient later crippling should that come to be necessary/desirable, depleting stores of key and hard to replace once exhuasted spares, above all transformers (the Russian grid runs on different standards so Western kit will not work), and IIRC disclosed later, depleting Ukraine air defenses.
In other words, the General Staff frustration was the result of Russia pulling its punches on the electrical grid war.
2. But this is a very positive spin in terms of Russia’s bigger priorities, in that Putin was putting the choke chain on the General Staff so as to minimize harm to civilians and show by action to Russia’s economic partners that Russia was not interested in conquest but in its security, but was also positioing itself to go the distance if the West did not accommodate Russia’s legitimate security concerns.
3. Helmer is not a typical Western journo. He was in Russia for 30 years. He had a Russian wife. He is also more exacting about detail than other reporters on Russia, which should give sources confidence that he won’t screw up what the tell him.
For instance, he seems to be the only journo who reads Trump’s daily schedule (published on Roll Call) and has ascertained that Trump gets no, and I mean NO intelligence briefings. Vance takes those meetings and presumably reports them in a weekly lunch with Trump. Despite Helmer repeatedly pointing out this big change in practice on Nima (and I think others), I have yet to see another YouTuber acknowledge this issue. They repeatedly and incorrectly depict Trump as receiving the traditional daily intelligence briefing.
What difference does it make how long Helmer lived in Russia? In Russia, he would still be automatically considered a spy by all military personnel upon contact. All military personnel from private to marshal. And they would not be far from the truth. A favorite Western technique is to pretend to be a friend of Russia and live in the country, actually acting as an observer. You can even do nothing, but just write travel notes. Everyone has understood and known this for a long time. No one would have contacted him.
They would have worked with him only in one case – when it was necessary to feed him with disinformation.
Living in Russia suggests gaining an understanding of the culture.
It appears that theirs is different from ours in the US.
Are you saying that Russian journalists live peacefully in the United States and have sources in the Pentagon? At the same time, they calmly write how the generals in the Pentagon scold Trump and are unhappy with his actions? Lol
Well, this is speculative terrain. In the same speculative vein is a post by Marat Khairulin titled AFU Against AFU; Who Will Take Revenge on the Nazis? which makes a point that may have some validity or not. For me one thing is clear. One way or the other we are, including Mark Sleboda, highly influenced by Western narratives which paint a picture very much at odds with realities in Russia, Ukraine and even the Collective West. The state of moral corruption or collapse in the CW has been noted by many commentators. Big Serges latest for instance comes to mind when he states.
Note German politicians urging Ukraine to keep it’s youngsters to fight in Ukraine. Note full moral collapse on Gaza. Note the leaderships increasingly detached from the populaces to push their… ego? in forever wars. There is no ideology, belief, religion, “value”, cultural stuff to preserve behind this push. Even Ukrainian ultranationalist morons might one day realise.
So well, the Russians might lose the peace but the same can be said about the CW. The CW insisting on making of Ukraine a pain in the neck for Russia can backfire in many ways and we are already seeing much of it. I have said this before but, for me, it matters much more how Europe is not only loosing the war but poised to loose any peace, unable to come to any kind of settlement, admitting defeat, and understanding the realities on the ground.
Insightful comments. Pertinent to the truism that war is bad–and not just for the losers. Yes, the collective West seems certain to lose the peace, and their “best” remaining play seems to be to work to ensure that Russia loses the peace along with them.
Insofar as Russians are Clausewitzean (or vice versa), the West is in a position (short of outright war with / by NATO) to deny Russia a satisfactory political solution, even if at the cost of bankrupting themselves.
Compare macro trends in Russia and the West: economy, debt, social cohesion, political legitimacy, strategic control of production, international relations, cost of weapons, strength of fighting forces, etc. Maintaining the conflict at a lower level of intensity for years may well be acceptable outcome for Russia given how those trends are likely to play out for the two areas relative to each other.
And under such stress, for how long will the West remain Collective?
Don ‘t think the Russians have any hard and fast political ideas. Most expect an end like WW2, enemy forces to disarm, disband and go into captivity for processing. I am sure the instrument of surrender is already drawn up. Those that hold out will be treated according to the rules of war.
Keitel and Jodl tried to hedge as well but it got them nowhere. The last couple of days the 750 kV substations have finally been hit so decisions have been made at last. Even Russia will find it hard to rebuild Ukraine quickly now so farming is the future for them for a while although Chinese construction is eye opening quick.
They will play the politics by ear, as Stalin said, how many divisions does NATO field ? Plenty of budding Gauletiers and PMC’s to pacify the populations, both sides can play that game.
WW2 continued in Western Ukraine until 1950, when the last UPA forces surrendered to NKVD and Border Guards.
FSB and Rosgvardya have almost monthly operations in Kherson, Zaporozhe and Donbass to find “divergents” and weapon stashes. They stop and search thousands of people and vehicles and always detain half a dozen or so.
It’s not like this a totally new game for Russia, they’ve been doing this since 16th century.
Might the ending of insurgency in the Caucasuses (Chechnya, Ingushetia) be a template for the endgame in Ukraine?
This is one of Khairullin’s speculations. The Russians seem to be trying and that might be seen as an indicator of events accelerating in Ukraine.
Not inconsistent with Yves:
> Recall we have suggested that Russia could de-electrify Western Ukraine ex Kiev and say Lvov, and reduce it to the level of the Unorganized Territory of Maine.
Kiev: 2003 sociological survey, when the question “What language do you use in everyday life?” was asked, 52% said “mostly Russian”, 32% “both Russian and Ukrainian in equal measure”, 14% “mostly Ukrainian”, and 4.3% “exclusively Ukrainian”.
Lvov: Results of the 2001 census: Ukrainian 88.48%; Russian 9.95%
So maybe not much love for Lvov. Shoving disgruntled migrants into the EU is a reasonable strategy. And speculating, is there money to be made from kicking the legs out from under the Euro? Are we there yet?
Would Poland abide by a treaty with Russia to take over western Ukraine as a DMZ to repatriate evacuees, or would it use that like the Minsk Accords to remilitarize and extend NATO to the Dniepr? Presumably that would become a banderite enclave financed by USUK secret agencies to make trouble for profit.
There are a few facts, imo, worth considering. Project Ukraine has its origins in the 1990s with the original plans to expand NATO. In 2008, it was agreed Ukraine would be offered NATO membership, and EU membership was likely. In 2014, the US orchestrated a coop in Ukraine.
I think it’s important to understand that at the time of the 2014 coup, the US, Europe, and the West, generally looked extremely attractive to anyone, but especially Ukrainians.
Meanwhile, as Bob Dylan wrote, “I used to care but things have changed.” Russia is no longer the dysfunctional state it was in the 1990s and early 2000s. Together with China and India we are now a multi-polar world, the recent decade has produced dramatic change, and the future looks much brighter when you look East rather than West.
Furthermore, it doesn’t take much to see what the US has become with its support for genocide in Palestine, crackdown on free speech, split between the US and Europe including degrading Europe’s industry. The US and the West have lost much of their shine and, above all, Trump wants to abandon Ukraine.
I think a Russian defeat and occupation of Ukraine, if handled properly, would not be nearly as difficult as it would have been back in say 2015 because in 2025, it should be obvious, Russia and the East have much to offer Ukrainians.
Yes and note that while in 2022 Russia had to take care about opinions in the Global South this is, IMO, no longer the case, so they feel freer to conduct whatever operations they consider necessary. Appearances are not longer a burden if you know what i mean.
This said if Tomahawks were one day to be deployed in Ukraine such a mistake would be the nail in the coffin for a rump Ukraine.
I think it more accurate to say that project Ukraine began at the end of WW2 when MI6 and CIA began cultivating anti-Soviet assets in Ukraine. Given that, I think no lasting solution in Ukraine is possible without the continued demilitarization of Nato and the UK in particular. The conflict has never been Ukraine vs. Russia, it is broader.
NATO was created in 1949, Ukraine declared its independence in 1991, and everybody knows the war is a US led proxy war, together with EU support, against Russia. Yet, the war is lost, NATO might soon collapse, and the problem is a plan for post-war Ukraine.
My point was that the US and Europe no longer have that many cards to play compared to just a few years ago, while Russia now has significant advantages.
The Talleyrand-trickster Arestovich has said that once the war ends and Ukrainians wake up to what the West and its corrupt ultra (and ultra-corrupt) compardors have wrought upon their proxy, they will not follow Anaalina B. in an acrobatic 360 but will turn their revanchist ire 180 degrees, center body mass, toward the West. Chalmers Johnson had a word for that: blowback.
As Mercouris randomly interjects: just saying.
Also: I second the hat tip to Mark Sleboda, winner, Analyst With Best Mao Coiffure. A perceptive fellow. Equally noteworthy: Brian Berletic, who can illuminate imperial geopolitics like a locked-on radar beam, though at the occasional risk of one-notedly mistaking noise for nous.
Pushing NATO back to west of the Elbe is necessary but likely not sufficient. Demilitarize Poland (Mr&Mrs Appelbaum may object), Rumania and Bulgaria. Evict US/UK naval presence in the Black Sea!
The entity ruled out of Kiev by US and 3LA (three letter agencies/subversives) is a kluge.
Before 1917 it was Tsarist territory, in 1945 Stalin added territory which had been Hapsburg, and another sector largely Pole both populated counties with “catholics” loosely attached to Rome via Budapest/Vienna and Krakow. Those territories (US’ Knights of Columbus have councils there) house some of most “restive” people in the world.
Those sectors culturally aligned with the expanded EU should be set adrift……
To achieve this a big two conference should be held to reverse the legacy of Potsdam…..
That said pushing NATO back west of the Vistula would be ironed out there.
Security in Europe!
War of the 6th coalition solution might just be what we come to, whether anyone likes it or not.
One problem for Russia rarely mentioned is the inner Russian tensions from this war. Remember, Russia is not a nation state but an empire without a positive over arching ideology. What it offers her citizens is security and a good life and “traditional” values. Sort of like an anti-“woke” ideology. That is something that the Orthodox and Muslim religious communities can agree on and the more the West pushed Russia on this (Gender, Gays a.so.o.) so much the better for Putin.
Even though Russia’s soldiers aren’t conscripts but men who get huge piles of money (at least by Russian standards) you still need to motivate those soldiers with something more than just cold hard cash. So the Kremlin has been forced to appeal to an ethnic Russian nationalism that portrays the Ukrainians as wayward members of the same family that were either seduced by the wily West or forced into the war by bona fide Neonazis. Putin’s interview with Carlson when he lectured him on the common history of Ukrainians and Russians was typical in this regard.
The problem for the Kremlin is twofold: by appealing to Russian ethnic Nationalism they are indirectly alienating the other nationalities of which Russia is made off. And the problem is heightened greatly by the fact that a disproportionate number of Russian soldiers are not ethnically Russian. That is simply due to the fact that the “ethnic” regions are on average a lot poorer than the Russian regions and there are therefore more volunteers who need the cash.
Last year I was in one such region – in Buryatia – and there’s quite a bit of anger about the stressing of Russian ethnic nationalism. And Buryatia is one of the most loyal regions. I imagine the reaction in the Muslim regions of the Caucasus is worse.
The Ukrainian know this Russian weakness and are playing on it. The CIA and the MI5 know as well. That is why they are supporting Azov. Contrary to what you might think Azov´s ideology is not particularly Ukrainian nationalistic. In fact Azov is openly Russian speaking. It is a movement from the Russian speaking East of the country and there are quite a few Neonazis from Russia proper in it. It’s “ideology” is a mixture of Neopaganism, Nationalsocialism and white pride. Azov is countering the Russian appeal to Russian ethnic nationalism by going one better and I don´t think the problem will go away once Ukraine is defeated. In fact the more of Ukraine Russia incorporates by claiming these new territories as ethnically Russian the more she undermines her raison d’etre in the eyes of her non Russian citizens. I believe the people in the Kremlin know and understand all of that. The generals evidently not.
Fascinating, thanks.
The military victory looks like the easy part. Taking the long view, the break up of empires by World War I remains unsettled in Europe and West Asia to say nothing of the loose ends of World War II of which Ukraine is one. Good luck sorting it out. The bitterenders in Ukraine, the hysterical European leadership, the US/UK agents of chaos for the sake of chaos, capitalists lusting after Russian natural resources, the list goes on. It will be messy for years. Let us hope that disgust and despair do lead to some party saying,”Oh to hell with it and dropping the Bomb.
The slow pace that Putin is going at frustrates a lot of people, including his own military, but he may be doing a version of salami-slicing here. If he rushes it too fast it might panic a lot of western nations and make them do something outstandingly stupid – like sending in military forces into the country to occupy Ukrainian cities so that the Russians don’t. Odessa is a prime candidate here. He certainly doesn’t want Trump sending in a military force as it may end in a confrontation and that is risky in the extreme. We saw that when you had Russian tanks facing off with American tanks at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin in 1961-
https://www.dreamstime.com/picture-berlin-crisis-u-s-m-tanks-face-soviet-t-tanks-checkpoint-charlie-october-image259909194
So it may be that he does not want to see a situation like that repeated in Odessa but just to take it slow until the Ukraine collapses and by then there will be nothing that the west can do then.
Didn’t we already do the insurgency thing a few years ago?
Russia will solve the insurgency problem like it did in Chechnya, and everywhere else before that. Kill until it quiets down. For PR reasons, most probably it will be puppet government troops or peacekeepers or whatever doing that, for practicality reasons, these will probably in fact be russian troops.
For the ideas of Ukraine doing 180 and getting angry at the West… maybe, but that will not mean they will fall in love with the very Russia that just waged war upon them and destroyed their country. The same goes for all of the brotherly love and other such bullshit. That love is now forever gone. Before the war, not too many people in Ukraine cared to think about whether they were Ukrainians or Russians. By now everyone has figured it out, and there is no undo button.
We need to stop looking for a silver lining to the shit cloud, in the hopes that somehow it will all work out in the end. Or in the hopes that because we hate what the US did to make all of this happen, somehow we can find a way to have Russia be the good guy. Because our brains are binary, and will automatically find a good guy for every bad guy, and we have to be aware of that and reign it in. Sometimes there’s no good guys anywhere.
It’s all a clusterfuck any way you look at it. The only good thing that can happen is for the war to end, putting an end to most of the destruction, if not for the insurgency question. But the destruction will still have been done, and it will be a hundred years before most of the wounds have healed.
You seem to be new here. We have written Policies that you have agreed to adhere to as a condition of commenting. They are designed to promote critical thinking and include barring dishonest or logically/rhetorically invalid forms of argument.
It seems your intent was to offer a balanced vomment. However, you violated our Policies by straw manning, by inventing that the post had said Ukraine would get angry with the West, and depicting it as trying to find cheery outcome. This post depicted an end state of an ongoing low-level conflict in a rump Ukraine, were Russia to reject controlling all of Ukraine. That is not a happy outcome.
And in general, this site does not sell hopium. We have said more than once that if you want a happy ending, watch a Disney movie.
Any future comments that straw man posts or reader comments will not be approved.
“Doing 180 and getting angry with the West” was surely a reference to @dingusansich’s comment above? Perhaps it would have been better placed as a reply there, but it doesn’t seem like a strawman and I certainly didn’t read it as implying anything similar had appeared in the o.p.
So giving Western Ukaine (back) to Poland is out?
Doubtless Russia’s preferred outcome was thar Biden had not been elected.
Did you miss that the Banderities tortured and murdered Poles with greater enthusiasm than they did Russians?
Ah, but what will the Poles do with those Banderites? Poland has its own history of pogroms, purges, and such going way back. The Generals ruled Poland between the World Wars with not very, shall we say, civilized policies. Popular opinion concerning those Ukrainians who have fled to Poland so far seems to be hostile. A general proscription against the Banderites by the Polish Government is not out of possibility.
A second possibility, seeing Poland’s aversion to Russia, is that the Banderites in Galicia are forcibly “repatriated” into the rump Ukraine. Sowing discord and trouble for Russia would be a “win-win” situation as far as the Polish elites were concerned.
No matter what the final outcome is, Europe is facing another episode of mass population displacement similar to the end of World War II.
Stay safe.
The best outcome for Russia might be a downsized Ukraine with a Russia-friendly government. Downsized in the sense of Russia taking Odessa, Mykolaiv, and more of the eastern oblasts as a buffer of sorts, and maybe working a deal with Poland, Hungary, and Romania to take in a few of the oblasts in the extreme west. Maybe Transnistria and Gaguazia can get independence under Russian/rump-Ukrainian protection while Romania gets the rest of Moldova like the western stooges there want. Some kind of horse trade like that. And the Russians would “help” the friendly Ukrainian government hunt down and terminate the Banderistas and western NGO subversives and the oligarchs in league with them. This would require the governments in Romania and Poland to come to their senses and align more with Hungary and Slovakia in terms of willingness to be more flexible with Russia. The end result would be a Ukraine about 40% of its original size.
“while Romania gets the rest of Moldova like the western stooges there want” bollocks! This would be re-unification similar to what happen between east and west Germany or what might be with the two Koreas if the AMericans weren’t there.
The Romanian Moldovans, west of river Prut, are twice as many as their indistiguishable brethren in R of Moldova.
Between the Koreas? Impossible. Nobody wants it, even if they repeat the magic mantra still–especially if Americans aren’t there any more. If anything, the magic mantra serves to troll the Americans, for all practical purposes, and they troll Americans because that’s politically correct among roughly half of the South Koreans…mostly because that annoys the other half (ie has nothing really to do with the Americans–perhaps it’s more accurate to say that they want to be seen trolling the Americans by their enemies in Korea itself.) We’ll sooner see the second Anschluss or Franco-Dutch partition of Belgium before that happens.
My SWAG is that Ukrainians will be so exhausted by the war;s end (a feature of attrition warfare) that the Western Ukrainian population will turn in most recruited terrorists.
Will terrorism continue? Yes, until the day Russia starts supporting the same in Western countries and then negotiates for both (Russia and the West) to back off. But the victims of the terrorism will be mostly Western Ukrainians, and Russian anti-terrorism policing seems to be reasonably effective – I am sure Ukraine planned non-stop terrorism inside Russia but has only managed a handful. Here, the Donbass provides insight – terrorism reported (I semi-regularly watch RT, which dutifully reports every act that hurts Russian-speaking civilians) has greatly died down over the last years.
Key will be bringing economic possibilities to the Western Ukrainians – something Russia has done well with the new Russian oblasts through investment – see Chechnya as an example.
If I were in charge in Russia, I would already have (covertly) taken down the UK electric grid – so its good I am not in charge of anything geopolitical.
This is what I would do too. And I would keep Odessa as a bargaining chip so that the rump Ukraine will try its hardest to ensure quiet and security. And provide reconstruction jobs in Ukraine. If there is sabotage, the locals will be enraged against the Azov like and hunt them down.
I thought what you would do is annex western parts of Ukraine to Romania, or something like that. I have seen some Romanian-made maps on the Internet where Odessa oblast is taken, and some other areas.
Excellent discussion of some finer points here. Thank you.
(I’m sorry to be pedantic but, I’m a stickler for terms: I assume “globalist” and anti-globalist means imperialist and anti-imperialist or anti-war?. I first heart the term from the discredited Alex Jones many years ago.. I notice that Col. McGregor uses the term, but not Helmer, Ritter, Wilkerson, Johnson or others.
One speculation that I think most would agree on, no matter what the outcome for rump Ukraine, or Russia taking over all of Ukraine, or whatever: the US and vassals will continue the long-term policy of war on Russia. Whatever happens we can expect more “black ops” more dirty tricks, more violence against Russia.
The Russo-phobic bias in the US and UK are deep-seated, long-term, and are not only from the so-called neocons, there are Russo-phobic elements in the old Realist school of IR. (Mearsheimer and other so-called neo-Realists notwithstanding) Zbig B was one famous example. Russophobia is connected to Orientalism and has a long tradition in Europe and by extension, the US.
Many would dismiss the deceased Zbig B and his Grand Chessboard as irrelevant, but he stated in 1997 and earlier that Ukraine must be “pried away” from Russia at all costs in order to prevent Russia from regaining great power status again. In his view, the primacy of the US hinged on that. It appears that most of his prescriptions from over 30 years ago are still in play.
The war on Russia will not end until the US and vassals are unable to economically and military sustain such actions. My speculative question: given the trajectory, how long can this informal war be sustained?
This assumes either will still have the capacity to do so.
I think there is a wider interpretation of Putins strategy. He intends to bleed Nato dry in this war. One way of creating a rump/Russiaaligned Ukraine is by continual pressure until there is a domestic revolt against nationalist rule. But this is difficult when the whole of NATO is supporting the suppression of Ukrainian opposition.
But the logic applies to the whole of NATO too. As the war continues and economic pressures mount, NATO states increasingly experience domestic opposition to the war. M16 etc will have their hands as much full with trying to hold onto 500m people as to the remaining 25m in Ukraine. The capacity and capability of intelligence services to keep populations in check for so long is very much in question, even with all the techno-snooping.
I think the precipitation of a post WWI like political collapse in Europe is likely. We’ve already seen rumblings in Romania, Slovakia, Id argue France also. Sure MI6 can try and even prioritize bombing campaigns across eastern Europe, but they will have their hands full everywhere as their internal political orders succumb to the economic and ideological strains. The really ruthless officers will not seek to waste their time in Lviv and Latvia when there will be so many lucrative opportunities opening up closer to home.
The body of you comment makes clear you straw manned my remarks. It was about the US and UK, not NATO.
And terrorist operations do not require armies and navies. The UK has behind various splahy if not yet seriously damaging operatioons (the Kerch Bridge truck bombing, the drones-out-of-containers attacks on Russia’s strategic bombers) even though you could put their army in a big soccer stadium and have seats left over.
A serious mistake made in Iraq was to sack the Iraqi police and military immediately after we ‘won’ the war, which resulted in instant insurgency. I assume Russia won’t do that following the eventual surrender. Then I would expect a purge of the military of anyone with the wrong sort of tattoo plus a judicial adjustment in command.
Then I would population would be for fixing the electrical system and other infrastructure, and likely intolerant of further destruction, and I suspect that view would be echoed in the military. Germans/italians/japanese did not engage in widespread guerilla warfare, the pop accepted that they’d lost and just wanted to move on, granted the Marshall plan helped. I expect the Russians will use this model.
No doubt the west will obstruct as much as they can, and the far west region near Poland might feel a bit different, but I doubt they’ll be able to find much leverage in a country sick of a hugely destructive war that maybe lasts as long as ww2. Course, I’m an eternal optimist.
It wasn’t a (serious) mistake. Turning Iraq into a mess was intentional. It provided grounds for the creation of ISIS and the eventual destruction of Syria. In USA ruled based order, chaos is not a bug but a feature.
This “feature” would have aligned well with Israel’s desire for chaos in Syria as well (I believe Netanyahu has been quoted to this effect).
I’ve often wondered which was most important to the neocons who (seemingly in unison) turned immediately to Iraq after 9-11: Israel or oil?
What interest does the U.S. have in continued chaos in the Middle East? Could it be: oil prices (the chaos risk premium) and MIC profits? Could these interests also rationally link the Middle East and Ukraine?
Instead of Russophobia and Israel being separate theatres, could the U.S. be driven mostly by oil (and gas) geopolitics and MIC profits, which would rationally unify them?
This gets to the question of what really drives U.S. policy? Zbig G. chessboard considerations, AIPAC or Raytheon/Exxon? Or all of these?
I can’t think of any significant “pro peace” constituency in the U.S. besides certain MAGA and Left factions. The U.S. public generally are getting weary of endless wars. Trump capitalized on that to get elected, which he has seemed to have forgotten and is now zig-zagging. My guess is that now the special interests are a chorus in unison behind the scenes to keep the chaos going.
I continue to think the most likely outcome is that RU will establish facts on the ground and then agree on terms with a UKR government (not necessarily the current Z regime), leading to a neutral rump UKR which is a de facto RU satellite. This might take longer than most of us expect, as nobody seems to be in a hurry to stop the fighting. I reckon RU can maintain its current pace for many more years.
RU annexing all of UKR is unlikely, not only because of the Banderite resistance factor (RU would surely prefer that a friendly UKR regime do the dirty police work itself) but also because RU already has its hands full administering 1/7 of the world’s land surface.
De-electrifying rump UKR is militarily feasible but unlikely, because of the danger a chaotic failed state would pose to its EU neighbors (Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland). Some drones and rockets might occasionally be launched towards RU, but otherwise the border with RU will be tightly sealed. Whereas a Mad Max rump UKR would be a hotbed of criminality and armed young men with open EU borders and no visa requirements…..great fun for the CIA and MI-whatever who want to cause problems for RU, but not much fun at all for its peaceful neighbors who will tire of the spillover violent crime. A de-electrified rump UKR will be more of a threat to the EU than to RU.
The puzzle of the Ukraine War end-game needs a larger frame of analysis, given that the geo-political power struggle entangles so much of the domestic politics of other European countries. I am expecting the war of attrition to end in something like a Ukrainian military collapse. The Ukrainian Army will simply lose the capacity to hold the Russians at the line of contact. This is the moment Russia can “prove” its war aims are limited with regard to territory. Russia cannot cross the lower Dneiper to re-occupy northern Kherson against even minimally effective Ukrainian resistance. So, reoccupying Kherson would be a signal of Russian mastery of the military situation. It would also implicitly threaten Odessa. So, that is the point I would expect Russia to “pause” and “wait for developments” hoping that a settlement can be negotiated. What developments? Well, does the Zelensky regime collapse, or is Zelensky discredited in some corruption scandal and overthrown? European leadership is heavily invested in Zelensky — are there larger consequences in European politics when Zelensky goes?
I would not assume Russia wants a completely dysfunctional rump Ukraine. That does not seem desirable at the first order. Russia needs to negotiate with a Europe that also does not want a completely dysfunctional Ukraine simply to spite or burden Russia. Finding a Europe willing to negotiate in good faith may be the toughest task for Russia. I don’t know if waiting in a frozen conflict mode helps in that regard, but I would expect Russia to try and I think Russia is seeking U.S. support for an eventual armistice (but only when Russia is much closer to occupying the entirety of the four oblasts and the Ukrainian Army is seriously disabled).
When so much is unknown and unknowable it is really hard not to slip into unrealistic hope for positive outcomes and almost equally tempting to slip into making sweeping gestures on the geopolitical map. I seriously doubt Russia has the resources to occupy all of Ukraine or to govern a resentful elderly population. Not many candidates to play Quisling are apparent. Chaos that invites a European “humanitarian” intervention would seem like a risk Russia would attempt to avoid, but discrediting Zelensky and even civil war might provide opportunities. The constraints on Russian resources and capability, economic and political, make me think that beyond the horizon of a conclusion to the war of attrition, there will be a waiting for political change inside and outside Ukraine to create opportunity.
While you make some sound obervations, it seems this post (or perhaps the topic?) has elicited an outbreak of straw manning. Please read with greater care. You attribute things to it that are not present.
First, please re-read the headline. This article never claimed to be an extensive or thorough treatment, but a presentation of a few scenarios, and what they might imply in terms of one probable post-war issue, the desire and ability of the UK and US to foment terrorism.
Second, your humble blogger never said that Russia wants a dysfunctional rump Ukraine. We presented four scenarios, with one being Mearsheimer’s. He has consistently opined that Russia wants that. We opened with Mark Sleboda, who argues that Russia must take all of Ukraine, Helmer with his big DMZ (which might wind up being like Mearsheimer) and our variant of Helmer, of a largely depopulated as opposed to dysfunctional rump state. We suggested it would not be in Russia’s interest to have a failed state with at least some seriously resentful Ukro-Nazis in its territory.
A few random thoughts.
1a. Russian society has been living with low-grade domestic terrorism since the two Chechen wars. Granted, there is a lot less of it now than there used to be, and it’s usually pretty localized (though Crocus City was a definite exception). But the point is, so long as we’re talking an occasional shooting in Dagestan or bombing in Donetsk, most of society and mass media shrugs and moves on.
So from the standpoint of Russian elites, whose almost explicit political aim since around 2012 has been “placidity”, I doubt that the prospect of “Ukrainian terrorism” is something that they really focus on at the moment. As in – yes, some stuff will happen, but we’ll keep it under control.
1b. The main sort of “terrorism” the elites are actually focusing on, and you can tell from looking at not just the nightly news but the “courtly propagandists” like the various commentators (and there are many) appearing on Solov’ev’s vast media network, are the drone strikes. They may not do a lot of damage per se, but they take a lot of effort, and resources, to combat. That air defense in depth eats up a lot of manpower and equipment that could have been used elsewhere, not to mention the damage from the few drones that do get through (usually hitting private for-profit enterprises, who in turn lobby the government for compensation). [This also creates a perverse incentive for the private refinery guys to not actually invest anything into anti-drone measures like netting or whatnot, because if the government just pays you for the damage anyway, why bother.]
The only, the ONLY way in the eyes of Russian TV and Internet commentators, and again I am looking at the “power-adjacent” ones, not some rando in his mother’s basement, to stop the drone threat is to bring the entirety of Ukraine under Russian direct or indirect control. In other words, per Marat Khairullin’s old substack post, annex a third, demilitarize and militarily control a third, and keep the rest (from Kiev to L’vov, roughly) as a vassal state with a political process dominated by pro-Russian politicians and parties.
To reiterate, what’s important is not the kind of “terrorism” that we, mere mortals, worry about, but what the Russian government worries about.
2. To some extent, Ukrainian low-grade Telegram-driven terrorism has already become a habitual thing in Russia since…last year or thereabouts. Every couple of days there is another news story about yet another a) stupid young person being promised a modest payment to set something on fire; b) stupid retiree who’d given up her life savings to some conmen being promised by same to get her life savings back if she sets something on fire; or c) stupid born-in-Ukraine-now-living-in-Russia individual in some form of distress – personal, financial, whatever – being recruited to, again, set something on fire. Or place a bomb under a car. Or something. Invariably contacted through Telegram and social media, invariably meant to be a disposable asset.
I am not going to use the word “endemic”, but the arrests happen every week. Clearly, even if it’s a few hundred people a year, that’s a lot of low grade “terrorism”. And it also signifies an already pretty highly developed “Ukrainian” (read: British and American) intel network that can identify and network with these people, get them explosives and other materials via dead drops, etc.
I have no idea whether this trend can intensify to the point where the elites view it as a thing to worry about, or if it remains a weekly “granny burns down the ATM” story (actual case). But the point is, it’s already happening, to a greater or lesser extent, and the Russian elites do not seem to have been deterred from their plans thus far.
3. What I have not seen in much of official-adjacent Russian media thus far is an honest discussion as to how can the rump-vassal-postwar Ukraine be organized. As in – who will be the specific people running it. What will be the extent of Russian political and military control. How do you re-orient three decades of anti-Russian propaganda, now buttressed by hundreds of thousands of deaths. How do you finally fix the place so that money invested into, say, rebuilding the infrastructure, is actually used to rebuild the infrastructure instead of buying the next president gold-plated plumbing at his private mansion (an actual thing with Yanukovich). What do you do about financial liabilities to the West as well as western-owned assets (really a biggie in the context of future negotiations with the West about anything). What do you do if a million or two Ukrainians want to come back from the EU. Etc.
It’s almost as if – we push enough, the regime will collapse, ???, profit. Now, I’m sure that behind the scenes someone must have some idea. But if we’re talking about “terrorism” post-war, then a lot, a LOT will depend on what that rump-vassal-postwar statelet will look like. Because, quite frankly, I have no idea, i.e. about the reality vs. what’s currently in some Russian government official’s head. But on the other hand, it’s the perception in that head, not the postwar reality, that will determine how far the Russian army goes. I think.
@Safety First: Great post. Russia and Ukraine (except for Galicia) are joined at the hip. I once knew a polit- technolog who had switched between Kiev and Moscow advising politicians in both these capitals. He told me they had wondered what was the difference between Ukrainians and Russians. The only sociological difference they could find was that the murder rate was half in Ukraine.
Because they are to such an extent similar and intertwined I believe there could be all kinds of blowback in Russia proper should the Kremlin decide to take all of the country. I believe it would greatly strengthen Russian ethnic nationalism and considering that the most dangerous opposition to Putin has always been from the Right I fear it could destabilise Russia herself.
Re your point 2: the stupidity of these local UKR-financed saboteurs is really quite astonishing (there are online videos of the ATM-frying babushka). I suspect some of them are on narcotics and will do anything for one more hit.
Re your point 3: there’s some hand-waving and muddled thinking in discussions of how exactly a rump neutral UKR will be organized and governed. One model is Belarus, but western UKR is far more nationalistic than Belarus (and RU would have to find a local equivalent of Lukashenko to maintain order). Another model is post-war Chechnya, but tiny Chechnya–population 1.5m, area 17,000 sq km–was much easier to rebuild and subsidize than any rump UKR would be (splitting UKR in two implies roughly 300,000 sq km and 10m population…..a far more expensive exercise). And again, RU would have to find a local equivalent of Kadyrov to maintain order.
The biggest wild card in this discussion is the eventual role of UKR’s four EU neighbors. They won’t want a chaotic mess in the future rump UKR, but they won’t want to give RU a free hand there either. So things could get interesting.
Great piece, though I would argue that even if Russians lose the peace the West will probably lose it even harder, so to speak. Events in Ukraine is an extremely knowledgeable source about Ukrainian right-wing groups (he lived there for a while after the Maidan) and he noted in a piece a while ago that there is a lot of resentment piling up against the west for using Ukrainians like cannon fodder against the Russians. Bad blood might run even deeper in that sense; as he notes:
I suspect that even if the remnants of Ukraine give Russia trouble, they might give the West even more so. All in all not a pretty sight.
As for the scenarios presented, all or a hybrid of many are going to be in play. This is not a war between Russia and “Ukraine” and never has been.
This is a war between Russia on one side and the United States, the UK, and Germany on the other. I think that when those three collapse, the end game for “Ukrainian” territory will sort itself out — probably on the lines of Putin’s 2021 proposals with the eastern oblasts incorporated into Russia and “Ukraine” a neutral state.
Wall
I am saying that Russian culture may not be the same as US culture.
If Helmer lived in Russia we might assume he has been acculturated and knows his way around as implied by Yves.
The diminishing cost of drones and perhaps other new devices seems to change the landscape for terrorism, where the number of people and amount of funds required gets smaller and smaller. How to police such a large territory, rump or not, to prevent the likely constant barrage over the border from perhaps hundreds of small cells? It seems Russia might have to put a great deal of local effort into cleaning this up.
There is an article on German DW (https://www.dw.com/de/warum-immer-mehr-junge-ukrainer-nach-deutschland-kommen/a-74543966) according to which “Men between the ages of 18 and 22 are free to leave the country. According to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, this has led to a sharp increase in the number of Ukrainian men in this age group registering in Germany—from around 100 to almost 1,000 per week, a tenfold increase.”
William Burns was US Ambassador to Russia in 2008.
Burns issued a memo titled Nyet means Nyet.
The memo summarized Russian reactions to the US plans of expanding NATO into Ukraine.
The memo makes clear Russian leadership concerns and opposition regarding NATO expansion into Ukraine.
The memo states that Russian leaders were concerned that NATO expansion into Ukraine:
1) might split the country in two (it did)
2) might lead to violence or civil war in Ukraine (it did)
3) might force Russia to decide whether to intervene (it did)
The memo says that Russian leadership views NATO expansion into Ukraine as a direct military threat to Russia.
Given it’s importance, why is this memo ignored by Western media discussions of Ukraine?
Why did the Obama administration apparently ignore the memo in their decisions regarding Ukraine?
The memo was issued in 2008, and US media coverage of Ukraine assumes that the Universe was created on February 24, 2022.
I still think that the end game will involve Poland assuming significant authority over Galicia, which would make the rump Ukraine even rumper. (Is that a word?)
I don’t know about rumper, but I do about Romper Stomper. It’s a movie about neo-Nazis (starring Russell Crowe), so it’s not completly unrelated.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105275/
A very good movie if also hard to watch. Apparently that was the performance that got Crowe noticed in the US.
What would I do in their place?I would forcibly retire from politics everyone who took US money.