Quote (Malopox @ Feb 18 2024 03:47am)
1) Doubt Russians would be keen on NATO in Ukraine and will do everything in their power to make sure this doesn’t happen. NATO cannot accept Ukraine with territories actively at war - means they have to cede with a ceasefire agreement recognizing loss of territory - political suicide and a death sentence for anyone signing this. How far and fast they can progress we will see in 2024.
EU can well happen since there is no more FTA with Russia that derailed 2013 agreement with EU - and Russians don’t have a quarrel with Ukraine joining EU per se. They do need to implement denazification laws as Poland and Hungary will veto Ukraine’s ascension without them.
2) Fighting over major population centers like Kherson, Nikolayev, Dnipro, Kharkov will require a lot more manpower which Russians don’t have at the moment. Let’s watch out for more mobilization waves which will ascertain their strategy to push onwards.
3) I doubt ultranationalists will overthrow the govt as they will lose US / EU support and will be quickly dismantled by Russians without it. So they have to play along even though I’m sure they hate Zelensky’s guts:
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/6652We have to envision a more desperate ukraine. Its always important to avoid a recency bias and our contemporary geopolitics. Afghanistan imploding overnight, Russia invading Ukraine, the October 7th massacre- you wouldn't anticipate any of these based on trends of events years before them. There was some buildup before the invasion, there were some curveballs. Its like I've said about the 2024 election, we can't really figure what will matter in the election
now, because at this point in Trump's 2020 election we were only starting to learn about covid.
What happens to Ukraine if Russia starts advancing across the whole Donbass? If western bribe money dries up like it did in Afghanistan, and the army is fleeing. The government in Kyiv won't be secure, and the actors looking to displace them won't necessarily be rational or allied with the west. The whole history of Ukrainian nationalism has been one of opportunistic alliances, with and against the sides of wars, sometimes swapping sides midconflict, or being betrayed by their side like the lienz cossacks. Maybe there's a future where nationalists overthrow zelensky not to pursue an even more rabid anti-russian policy, but to sue for peace and make concessions or even join them willingly. You can't call it unthinkable if its pretty much what happened with the Chechens.
This doesn't necessarily require a future in which Russia crosses the Dnipro, or even taking over major population centers. If Russia starts steamrolling and is bombing population centers again, not necessarily able to occupy them but able to bomb them to rubble, the citizenry might be ready to surrender.
All that said, its just near impossible to prognosticate. Right now we know Russia is winning, Russia is picking up serious momentum in its territorial gains across multiple sectors, Ukraine is losing international support, they're running out of not just ammo but importantly troops, Russia is not. Russia weathered the sanctions without any problems and the unaligned world refused to align against them. If Biden loses in 2024 then Trump will have no reason to carry on this proxy war, and even if Biden wins in 2024 he won't have an electoral purpose in dragging out the conflict to use as a truncheon against Republicans, because its going to be festering. Lets remember the arc Obama followed in Syria, because its been such a close parallel for Ukraine. We sent weapons to Syria, the media made big sob stories out of white helmet PR ops even though they were literally ISIS / Al Qaeda members, and eventually the conflict soured so much Obama was forced to do a 180 and hand the country back to Russia by allying with the Kurds to kill the same fuckers we just armed a few years earlier. Everything looks bad for Ukraine right now and all the historical parallels are miserable at best. That should inform our best guess of how it will go, but we still can't
know