Two responses ... two emoticons.

If you're trying to express how deep and sophisticated your soul is ... I'm not sure this is the way to do it.

For those interested in debating the actual situation in Ukraine.

Russia has just announced a partial mobilisation, calling up 300 000 reserves as reported by the BBC:

Mobilisation essentially means assembling and preparing troops for active service.

According to Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, this will apply to just 1% of the country's total mobilisation resource.

Russia's estimated to have around 2 million reservists. These are people who have done their military service - it's compulsory in Russia.

The 300,000 reservists being called at this point are soldiers with military experience - although it is not clear what that means and who that refers to.

Shoigu did say that students won't be called up. — What does Putin mean by partial mobilisation?

Of course, Ukraine has been in total war, banning military age males leaving the country, and forcibly conscripting.

Why mobilise now and not before I think has a bunch of explanations. First, had Russia mobilised before the war then Ukraine would have mobilised and this was not necessarily an advantage to start the war. Why not mobilise after can be explained either because the Kremlin believed a negotiated settlement was possible or then for political and economic consequences of mobilisation outweighed the benefits. Definitely, mobilising during the first phase of the sanctions could have been economically disastrous.

Additionally, Russia has been holding off annexing new territories. Again, this could be explained due to a desire to negotiate or then for purely tactical reasons of either first wanting to conquer the territories concerned or then fearing a Ukrainian offensive during the annexation process. The timing now can be interpreted as either retaliation for the recent offensive or then simply it is now safe to conduct the votes if the offensives have stalled and it will take time for Ukraine to organise a new one.

Whatever the reasons, annexing the territories is the pathway of mobilisation to then defend Russian territory.

It is repeated on reddit a lot that Russian reservists and conscripts will be super low quality soldiers. This is debatable (especially in quality comparisons of Ukrainian reservists and conscripts), but likely calling up reservists allows more rotations of the professional army corp for offensive manoeuvres.

Of course, how this plays out politically, economically and militarily is not certain, but mobilisation is certainly a military advantage and the question would be to what extent along with the political and economic costs.

You are imagining you are talking to some unsophisticated soul. — apokrisis

This is definitely how I imagine things to be. Yes, we agree on this description of the situation.

I’ve no illusions about how the world really works. I’ve seen how it works up close. I’ve written about it professionally. — apokrisis

Please, prey tell. How does the world really work?

Or instead, the FSB’s expensive network of political stooges were meant to ensure a swift and easy win. — apokrisis

You do realise this is a Zelensky and co. complaint, that Russia took over Kherson and South-West Ukraine with hardly any resistance due to Ukrainian traitors taking bribes.

↪boethius What a dull and confused reply. Nothing to see here. :yawn: — apokrisis

I get it, the rest of Western social media is just repeating whatever Ukrainian "officials" say unquestioningly, asking zero questions that might be critical of NATO or Ukrainian government policies, and taking some unimportant ground around Kharkiv is supposed to be some cathartic moment that means full victory and the war essentially over already, Russian lines disintegrating as we speak, Putin about to be assassinated etc.

It's a comfortable propaganda bubble for Zelenskyites to live in and it's necessary to guard this delusional state to simply repeat the propaganda here and believe that doing so makes it more credible, being posted to a "philosophy" debate forum and all ... rather than actually debate on a debate forum.

most of times your line is slavishly following your masters' propaganda. — Olivier5

What propaganda?

Can you cite a single sentence of mine that is "propaganda" and not either plausible facts and premises or then reasoned argument from those plausible facts and premises.

For example, I stated a Ukrainian offensive or counter-offensive would not be possible with only small arms such as shoulder launched missiles, and these recent offensives utilised many armoured vehicles. A plausible assertion that proved true.

Another example, I've asserted there is no end to the war other than a negotiated peace that will require compromise, as there's no way Ukraine can defeat Russia and force a Russian surrender (Ukraine could win every battle in Ukraine and that is still not winning a war with Russia). No alternative to this view has even been presented.

I've even elaborated how NATO could have, before the war or even during the war, sent in ground troops and created a Cuban missile crisis style standoff and then negotiate a rapid resolution to the conflict (again, would require compromise), and made clear I would support NATO making such a move (if it worked) as that would have prevented the war and could have, and still could, end the war rapidly at any moment preventing further child suffering, death and trauma (my "constituency" in this fight).

That NATO has not provided Ukraine sufficient armament and training to defeat Russia in Ukraine, much less in Russia itself, is just obvious fact, with each weapons system drip-fed and provided only when previous weapons systems prove insufficient (after thousands of Ukrainian KIA and casualties demonstrate that empirically).

One can argue that the US should do this policy to "fight them there rather than here!" but that's obviously not a policy with Ukrainian interest in mind, but is to use Ukrainians to bleed the Russians.

As for the geopolitical realm of things: Russia has not collapsed, has not been abandoned by key allies, and economic hardship from the sanctions are changing governments in Europe and not Russia. These are facts.

Since my position is to support a diplomatic resolution of the war, and I've explained how this is done (minimum understanding of the Russian perspective in order to negotiate in the first place and then minimum compromise to reach a deal), I am not so interested in "just war arguments" (it could be Ukrainian cause is just ... just that they can't defeat Russia so it's relevant in terms of resolving the conflict now). However, I've also made clear I'm willing to debate who has just cause or then "more just cause", and I've asked questions that would start such a debate: such as how many Nazi's would be too many Nazi's (in order to evaluate that Ukraine does not reach this threshold of Naziness) and also a political theory in which US invading Iraq on pretext of bioweapons that weren't there was not-a-war-crime but Russia invading Ukraine and actually finding military bio-labs is a war-crime (or then make clear both are war crimes and doesn't matter if Iraq actually had WMD's or Ukraine actually has bio-weapons labs or not); i.e. is there a theory that US has just cause in its various wars but Russia does not have just cause for the exact same reasons? Of course, neither has just cause is also an acceptable position, but proponents to a moral theory about Russia should demonstrate how it applies to other cases, is the main point.

You're position basically boils down to the idea that pointing out Ukraine cannot defeat Russia (a critical factor in evaluating what to do; only a force destined to win need no diplomacy, such as the Russian defeat of the Nazi's the first time), but if you cannot force a capitulation then the options are diplomatic resolution or then no-end to the conflict ... or being eventually defeated yourself.

Of course, if the only practical option to end the war is diplomacy, and compromise will be needed for that, then every day Ukrainians fight on to support an uncompromising position is lives lost for nothing, for they are, under such conditions, not actually fighting to anywhere but merely "for Western values" -- aka. a symbolic gesture -- as Zelensky himself notes.

The idea the Russians have poor performance, no plan, irrational, etc. is just completely dumb propaganda.
— boethius

So the truth is that Putin is doing a good job executing a rational plan. Sounds legit. :lol: — apokrisis

You literally cite me right above your sentence, where I use the words "irrational", "no plan" and "poor performance" (discussing the Russian military) and you then paraphrase that as talking about Putin doing a good job. I.e. you literally respond to my comment pointing out propaganda with the propaganda of wildly misrepresenting my statement and throwing Putin in there when I wasn't talking about Putin.

The discussion was about Russian military planning and performance (responding to @Wolfman assertion that Russian infantry run around like headless chickens), which has nothing to do with Putin or civilian leadership in general: a competent military managed by people who can think, can be sent to fight an unjust and foolish war ... cough, cough, Iraq, Afghanistan, cough, Vietnam, cough, cough, cough.

And evaluating Putin's job performance (or the political decisions in general, such as going to war in the first place) is a completely different matter, that will be mostly about value judgements, international relations and economic consequences, and not so much military strategy and tactics. Discussion that would certainly be fruitful.

I'm an anarchist and so don't like authoritarians, but I do not view authoritarianism as irrational and certainly for people that do just want a strong man then Putin's actions are very rational.

If Putin was a peacenik good vibes loving hippy with dreadlocks living in a tent on the Kremlin commune lawn and smoking the herb all day talking about oneness and shit, then suddenly launched this war; ok, sounds irrational. However, Putin isn't a peacenik good vibes loving hippy.

Given Putin's state of beliefs (which are entirely typical for nation-state leaders both now and since thousands of years), the war in Ukraine and broader global economic conflict was and is certainly a big gamble. That it has "worked" so far (Russia hasn't collapsed economically or politically, hasn't been isolated in international relations, and the land bridge to Crimea and Kherson is occupied) should be evidence enough that the plan has been well thought out and, indeed, executed competently by Russian military and civilian leaders.

That does not mean the plan will ultimately work, maybe the Russian government will collapse tomorrow, but the Russian successes so far and things being so "on edge" militarily and politically, is really abundant evidence that it was a rational gamble to make (if you have the kind of goals Putin has).

Ziehan's analysis – that the real ambition is to push all Russia's boundaries back to defensible mountain passes before demographic collapse leaves its armies starved of recruits – is always going to be more plausible. — apokrisis

This idea seems just completely unsupported. Russia simply doesn't have the military manpower to push all the way into Poland and Romania anytime before these demographic changes happen anyways. Zeihan also doesn't explain how Russia would plan to deal with NATO and why nuclear weapons are not a better deterrent that preserves what younger generation you have ... which killing most of them in a war with NATO would be counter-productive to fixing demographic problems.

If the special operation achieved these limited aims in weeks, then onwards and upwards. The geopolitical logic was still the old Russian dream of control of the steppes all the way to defensible borders. That means Poland to the edge of Warsaw, the Baltic States, etc. — apokrisis

As has been discussed several times, Russia did not assemble a force remotely capable of occupying all of Ukraine and, from even before the war, offered extremely minimal peace terms compared to occupying all of Ukraine. Without occupying all of Ukraine there no way to go "onwards and upwards" in a military conquest of Eastern Europe.

So where would you argue halting Putin's ambitions? You would let him eat your hand, but not your arm? — apokrisis

This is just annoying. You start your post disputing my statement the Russian military has competent performance and planning given its achievements so far, but then seamlessly transition to Russia as the great bogeyman of Geopolitics capable of conquering nearly all of Eastern Europe.

You can't have it both ways, on the one hand ridiculing the Russian military capabilities and Putin's political acumen, but on the other presenting Russia as the doom of mankind that, if not stopped, will devour the whole world (or then at least Eastern Europe) somehow.

↪apokrisis This reads like fiction. — Benkei

This is what's so interesting about Zeihan, is that he brings up all sorts of interesting facts and history ... and somehow manages to weave a tale that reads like fiction.

To be fair again, Russia has been better with logistics since that time, but their overall performance on all but one of the Ukrainian fronts has been lackluster thus far. — Wolfman

The "all but one front" that actually mattered.

If you followed this issue before the war broke out, the "limited war goals" military analysts would talk about was "land bridge to Crimea" (and likely the maximum ambition given the forces assembled); this is what military analysts talked about as a difficult goal to achieve.

Russians achieve it in less than a week:



The idea the Russians have poor performance, no plan, irrational, etc. is just completely dumb propaganda.

Now, if the maximum goal with 200 000 troops was land bridge to Crimea, then the best commanders and forces will be committed to conquering and securing said land bridge. Second tier commanders and troops will be committed to a fixing operation to pressure Kiev and their orders will be largely to advance until resistance is met and to then entrench and wait for artillery, which is what we saw. Of course, supply lines are still vulnerable to ambush and less experienced commanders will still "try some shit" that then maybe fails, but if the goal is to fix Ukrainian troops in the North then it doesn't really matter what areas are conquered or not; i.e. there's no actual military objective in terms of a point on a map, just to keep the pressure on.

Furthermore, yes Russians suffered a lot of casualties, but so too Ukrainians, so to judge the North operation even of itself it would only be a failure if casualties were a lot higher for Russians.

Of course, that brings up the question of why not withdraw sooner if it was a fixing operation. The answer is that they withdrew at the logical time for a fixing operation.

Russian generals main fear after the first week would be if the siege of Mariupol was broken, so the fixing operation needs to stay in place until then.

the siege, which was part of the Russian eastern Ukraine offensive and southern Ukraine offensive, started on 24 February 2022 and concluded on 20 May 2022, when Russia announced the remaining Ukrainian forces in Mariupol surrendered[47] after they were ordered to cease fighting. — Siege of Mariupol

The battle of Kyiv was part of the Kyiv offensive in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine for control of Kyiv, the capital city of Ukraine, and surrounding districts. The combatants were elements of the Russian Armed Forces and Ukrainian Ground Forces. The battle lasted from 25 February 2022 to 2 April 2022 and ended with the withdrawal of Russian forces. — Battle of Kyiv (2022)

Yes, Russians suffer losses in the North but if their strategic priority is Mariupol, it is far better to suffer losses in the North than a offensive in south Ukraine that may relieve the siege of Mariupol. Had Russians not pressured Kiev in the North, the only thing for Ukrainians to do would be try to fight a salient to Mariupol, which would be intensely motivating to save their "Azov heroes" and massive propaganda victory and real, tangible and irreversible embarrassment to Russia that could not be "spun": they had the Azov Nazi's surrounded but their superior "brethren" fought all the way to break the siege; it would be truly a battle worthy for song.

Being pushed back from Kharkiv is, to contrast, not a comparable embarrassment and is reversible by simply regaining that terrain or then victories elsewhere.

And the roughly 2 weeks between the final surrender of Mariupol is not an unusual timing. First, the decision would need to be made that there are no further key objectives which the operation in the North would serve (Russians also want Donbas but do not decide on a major offensive there, but instead withdraw from the North and switch to incrementalist tactics), and second the complete withdrawal would need to be planned and orders delivered to all the key officers and again they may require some days to prepare to withdraw. So, that all that would take about 2 weeks after the Mariupol surrender is entirely reasonable time frame, and without such a hypothesis there's really no alternative to why Russia went to Kiev and why they withdrew when they did (occupation of all of Ukraine was clearly not feasible; the plan was not to conquer all of Ukraine and then they "settled" for South Ukraine, but obviously the plan was the land bridge to Crimea and securing the canal the supplies Crimea with water, and that was achieved).

And yes, Ukrainians in majority think that it is worthwhile to chase the Russians from Ukraine. You are welcome to disagree, but your opinion is not really important here. You're not fighting this war. — Olivier5

This is obviously untrue in itself and your opinion on @Benkeis opinion or anything Ukraine would likewise be unimportant and you should have just been repeating that from the beginning.

However, if our if our tax dollars are being used to finance Ukraines war effort and supply arms and also government implementing sanctions to harm Russia ... how is that not our direct issue as European citizens?

Sure, if Ukraine was doing its thing entirely alone, under its own power and resources, it would be less relevant to non-Ukrainians.

But that's not remotely the case.

An alternative strategic view of the "Russia has already lost" narrative, is as follows:

Obviously Russia hasn't already lost, but still holds most of Donbas, Kherson, Crimea and the space in between.

Before this new offensive, even the Western narrative was shifting towards questions like "can Ukraine win?" and "is supplying arms enough?" and "time to discuss the diplomatic resolution of the war?"

So, Ukraine knows it needs a win to keep its Western backing and Russia knows it too, offensive is for sure coming before the fall and winter. The mud may figuratively freeze Ukrainian offensives (Scott Ritter posted above is quite convinced of this), and then winter may literally freeze Ukrainians on the front line where the supply line is stretched out 1000 km, easily targeted, and likely much easier in winter with IR signatures much more apparent.

It was certainly in the realm of possibility a few weeks ago that Ukraine actually break through and take Kherson, or then anywhere from there to Donbas. For example, an attack East of the Dnieper, if it were to succeed all the way to the coast would isolate the Russians on the West side of the river. These sorts of things would be major strategic blows and major embarrassment, followed by re-damming the canal that supply Crimea.

The retreat from Kharkiv regions is certainly some embarrassment, but no-where near anything the embarrassment and actual strategic problem of the fall of Kherson, or punching through the "land bridge" all the way to the coast at any point.

It's said Russians repositioned significant forces from Kharkiv region to reinforce other places on the front. The logic certainly is that they don't intend to defend Kharkiv if the offensive comes there.

So, the situation is now that Ukraine has certainly a propaganda win, that they critically needed; however, battle field conditions are not clear and momentum of the offensive seems to have stalled back to incremental gains on both sides. There's certainly no collapse of the Russian lines and critical strategic locations are being overrun. The territories exchanged are at the moment highly debatable in military significance.

What's next?

Russian strategy since the withdrawal of Kiev offensive, has been clearly to stop armoured offensives and advance with significant artillery bombardment (basically bombard a place until Ukrainians leave it), minimising casualties, and making "geopolitical moves" until Winter.

Russia has successfully navigated the sanctions and their partnerships with China, India, basically the entire rest of the world outside the West, as well as just closed various deals in the SCO meeting, including Iran. Time will tell what significant this all has, but seems in the positive direction for Russia. There's a theory that sanctions are "eroding" Russia economy, but I find that implausible given the economic links with China and positive revenue flows. This is in no way comparable to North Korea or Venezuela, of which sanctions didn't "work" in those far more favourable conditions. I find it far more plausible that any direct infrastructure problems happened in the initial sanctions shock and alternative components worked out since. True, some Western equipment may simply be impossible to repair, but if you have money you can just purchase an entire substitute from China, maybe a bit less efficient but economies don't entirely collapse due to efficiency drops in various capital equipment. Likewise, for normal people's lives, there been plenty of time now to adjust to new jobs and habits.

Unless Ukraine does succeed in some catastrophic breakthrough, the next phase in the war is slowing either retaliation or then genuine need to slow Ukraine down by hitting infrastructure and then seeing how the gas situation plays out in winter.

If everything on the front line is stabilised again by winter, nothing much happening for the months between now and February, when the gas shortages and prices really start to hit home, talk of negotiated settlement with Russia may build back momentum again.

Moods change, today people cheer on the Ukrainians because they're told they're "winning", and people like winners, but if that narrative flips again, mood can easily change to "time to end the war" and "it's gone on long enough" and "it's better to make peace with Russia", obviously fuelled by gas pains.

Diplomatically, the whole thing could be wrapped up by the EU in about a week, by coming up with a resolution Russia can accept and more-or-less forcing Ukraine to accept it whether the like it or not. EU leaders simply choose not to try to resolve the conflict, but at some point real economic domestic pressures may simply overwhelm any churchillian fantasies or just distaste at losing face to Russia, and the leaders that spearhead peaceful resolution will get the credit for doing "what needs to be done" and being on the side of peace and so on, and putting things behind us; if gas prices go down, it will be a political win.

It's only a (highly debatable) political win today insofar as the full consequences of the war aren't felt by people. At some point Europeans aren't going to care much about some strange idealistic fight that has no clear end point in Ukraine, and will want their leaders to fix economic problems (that are far easier to fix with cheaper gas and oil).

My prediction is the main European leaders will push for a peaceful resolution the moment all the smaller European countries start to essentially capitulate diplomatically for the gas. If there's no prospect to the end of the war with more fighting, and an essentially pro-Russian factions starts to grow bigger within the EU itself, the more powerful European leaders will have no other choice than to attempt to make peace and put things back "to normal".

This my best guess to the basic thoughts of the Kremlin at the moment: everyone comes crawling back for the gas, sooner or later.

Not to say this strategy will succeed, but I think this is in broad strokes what the Russians are trying to accomplish.

On the subject of Ziehan.

I do think he's a good faith actor genuinely believing what he says, and has lot's of interesting facts and I think generally is at least discussing the relevant topics, just with extreme US bias (which is good perspective to have for the sake of argument in any case).

However, sometimes his analysis is basically "what the hell are you smoking?"



He feels using tactical nuclear weapons wouldn't be effective (wrong, they are very effective at blowing stuff up) and Russia won't use them (very likely, it's obviously a massive line to cross that Russia would have crossed already if that was the plan).

... but then goes onto casually state Russia may flatten European cities with Nukes?

But also Russia, even Putin, doesn't want to end the human condition and have all out WWIII. I'm honestly unable to follow the reasoning: "tactical Nukes ... nah, but sure let's nuke entire cities?"

And the reason not to use tactical nukes is because that will frustrate the ultimate goal of taking key strategic locations Poland and Romania ... but also Ukraine will defeat Russia.

Russians merely tactically retreat form Kharkiv or was it an actual gain? — Benkei

There's been a lot of internet debate on "tactical retreat" vs. "just retreat", which I think is worth clarifying to said internet denizens.

The mini controversy seems to take place under the erroneous conception that tactical retreat is synonymous with "brilliant military manoeuvre" and that you "actually wanted to retreat all along".

This is of course not true.

Tactical retreat can refer to a re-positioning, a deceptive pre-planned trap, or just then retreating under pressure as a tactic, and in all cases is not by definition the best move.

It's "tactical" when it is used as a manoeuvre to reposition and inflict casualties on the advancing forces, which may or may not be successful. It's "successful" if the pros outweigh the cons, obviously.

Which definitely, as you note, we cannot easily evaluate. We don't know the cost to Ukraine in pushing the Russians out of Kharkiv and we don't know what Russia plans on doing next.

Russians merely tactically retreat form Kharkiv or was it an actual gain? Are the Russians having problems with their supply lines or are these news items exagerrated? Is Western material support sufficient or not? I can't tell and I don't think anyone on this site can accurately gage it. — Benkei

I think it's safe to assume everything is exaggerated in Western media.

However, NATO could definitely pour far more arms into Ukraine than it currently has. Could have provided Himars and satellite targeting of those from day 1 of the war, likewise flood Ukraine with AA systems, along with NATO tanks and far more artillery.

NATO has not. So what one needs to ask to understand the situation is "what's the evaluation criteria of what to send and not send". Why only 16 Himars trucks when the US has over hundred such systems.

Of course, NATO mostly simply doesn't explain the criteria, Ukraine must be happy with what it gets, but on occasion claims their criteria is they send as much support as they can ... until their own defence is compromised.

Well, that's really not plausibly true at all, as if that was the criteria Ukraine would at least get a bit of everything already. If the current US stockpile of shorter range Himars missiles really was running "dangerously low" then they'd have already supplied some of the longer range missiles that are at full stock.

Other weapons systems that Ukraine doesn't get at all, like F16's (not to mention F-35's), obviously US could spare at least some (especially aircraft that's being phased out of the US air fleet). Would require training ... but Ukrainians have be doing training for months in UK and other NATO nations (and non-NATO nations like Finland too). It can't take that long to train a fighter pilot on a new aircraft, and even if it did the war may go on for years so better to get started.

What can we deduce from NATO arms supply policy is that the criteria is not support Ukraine up until some imaginary standard of compromising own security (which doesn't really hold water in itself ... should everyone be willing to take some risks for this holy war?).

Rather, quite obviously, the policy is to supply arms and training enough to Ukraine to not suffer embarrassing defeat but not risk actually winning on the battlefield either.

US and NATO do not care about the Donbas and whether Ukraine has it or Russia has it.

The policies that actually matter: new cold war and arms sales bonanza and securing a hard-power future where US is top dog in it's little club, while also undermining European security with a flood of advanced weaponry on the black market. These policies are achieved by a prolonged war where Ukraine support is calibrated to neither win nor lose.

Russia may also want exactly the same thing: cutoff from the West, alternative financial system booted up, alternative component supply lines worked out, permanent justification for the war economy, increased arms sales to non-NATO partners, increasing uncertainty and price of everything it sells.

Of course, the key partner to do all that is China, but that maybe why the invasion was launched after a long meeting between Xi and Putin.

And the Western idea that China is unhappy about Russia's "anti-Western-liberal-order" moves in Ukraine, is just stupid.

True, China has economic leverage over Russia, but Russia has commodity leverage over China. and as we've just seen with the EU, it's pretty big leverage. Russia actually has more leverage over China than the EU because the EU is at least food self sufficient whereas China has major problems there and is facing much harsher climate change impacts.

So, true, we cannot evaluate the conditions on the ground, exact casualty statistics, but we can evaluate what is and isn't sent to Ukraine and infer the actual criteria is not-win but not-completely-lose. And if that's the criteria than what we see fits that hypothesis: Ukraine is unable to take Kherson (a strategically vital position for the Russians) but can take a bunch of more-or-less buffer space around Kharkiv. Ukraine asks for more arms and longer range missiles to continue the momentum ... US hums-and-haws and warns Russia about using tactical nuclear weapons (which would provide easy victory in military terms ... some on the internet, like Zeihan, are claiming tactical nukes aren't effective, but that's really dumb).

boethius means winning as a surrender, much the same way the Dutch and French surrendered to the Germans and the Germans surrendered to the Allies and the Russians. Winning like that is nigh impossible. I think that's a bit of a semantic trick though. — Benkei

Yes, in the context of "we will not negotiate!" then winning is the surrender of the opposing side.

Then there's winning meaning reclaiming the above and Crimea. That's exceedingly difficult and to me it's pretty obvious that that should not be attempted from a cost-benefit analysis (costs in human lives). At least as things stand now and appear to continue for the foreseeable future. — Benkei

Winning meaning reclaiming Donetsk and Luhansk and the southern occupied territories is already much more difficult. Not impossible but I think that also depends on what of the stories are true. Did the Russians merely tactically retreat form Kharkiv or was it an actual gain? Are the Russians having problems with their supply lines or are these news items exagerrated? Is Western material support sufficient or not? I can't tell and I don't think anyone on this site can accurately gage it. Along with those uncertainties, the question also becomes one of whether the costs (eg. Ukrainian deaths first and foremost but also Russian deaths which are mostly men like you and me forced to fight). My personal feeling about that, is that territory is much less important than people. But then I've never been a nationalistic or patriotic type so I might misunderstand the psyche of Ukrainians in that respect. — Benkei

None of these scenarios are "winning the war". This is the key point that Zelenskyites refuse to address.

Take back Donbas, take back Crimea ... the war would still be on.

Not only would the human and material cost be very high to retake all Donbas and even higher Crimea, Russia can re-enter Ukraine at any point along the 2000 km border with Ukraine at any time (and, presumably also the 1000 km border with Belarus).

The "front line" discussed today is only a small part of the actual front line that stretches some 4000-5000 km.

Even if the the above scenarios were to play out, there would still be a state of war with a lot of border to defend.

Winning meaning locking up Russian forces in a stalemate which will lead them to eventually accept some type of truce or even peace deal, I think is highly probable. And I'd rather see that sooner than later. — Benkei

I also agree that a negotiated peace is the best outcome, but definitely this is not a "win" according to Zelensky standards and it's difficult to say a war was won when 20% of territory is ceded.

You might have to tell about your point 3 above to the Ukrainians, because they don't seem to be aware of it... Some 80% of them believe they can beat the Russians. — Olivier5

Correction, 80% of Ukrainians think NATO can defeat Russia using Ukrainians as proxy soldiers. No one believes "Ukraine", as such, can defeat Russia.

If NATO wanted to "standup" to Russia it would have done so before the war broke out.

NATO doesn't want to, it's quite content selling some arms, creating the new cold war, and not "defeating" Russia, which would just complicate everyone in NATO's life (everyone that matters anyways).

Indeed. but you are not asking about what the truth is, but what the plan is. The plan is to win - the truth is everyone loses. — unenlightened

No qualms from me on this.

That seems unarguable. But it is in general the case that wars are prosecuted on the basis that: — unenlightened

Not really at all.

Most wars are resolved in surrender of one side (or the negotiated resolution to preempt complete surrender while there is still some leverage) ... the exact opposite of "we shall never surrender".

War is always 'to the death'. There is no other plan. The welfare plan involves health and safety officers and hospitals, not tanks and bombs. — unenlightened

Again, completely untrue. Most wars throughout history are not fought to the death but one side capitulates.

In hunter gatherer times, when one side clearly lost they would withdraw and go elsewhere (wars being generally over territory).

In Imperial times, the losing side is absorbed into the winning empire administrative system as a vassal state or direct administration.

In nation-state times, the losing side accepts the economic and diplomatic policies of the winning side, with occasional changes in territory.

Indeed, most individual battles are resolved with the surrender of the remaining enemy troops rather than fighting to the death.

Fighting to the death is quite rare in the history of warfare. Very few cultures developed such an ethos (because cultures can survive different administrative changes over centuries, but cannot, by definition, survive even one battle to the death they don't win).

Your position so far seems to be:

Step one: everyone on Western social media agree Russia is bad

Step two: everyone on Western social media agree that Ukrainians fighting and dying to kill Russians is good

Step three: ...

Another way to understand the basic criticism you are facing is we're just asking what step 3 would be, even if we did accept step 1 and 2.

Ok, Russians bad and Ukrainians good ... what's the plan even assuming that's true?

If there's no answer to step 3, then it seems to me at least Ukrainian welfare is not a consideration in this position and the moralising of bad faith to begin with (along with no one ever answering how many Nazi's would be too many Nazi's).

People don't change perspective, most of times. Cf. any debate on TPF for evidence of that. — Olivier5

I second @Benkei in his response above, but again, even assuming you are right,

if:

1. Russia isn't going to change it's perspective
2. NATO isn't going to defeat Russia on Ukraine's behalf, following through with their Churchillian rhetoric
3. Ukraine can't defeat Russia

What is the alternative to a compromise that takes into account Russia's unchangeable perspective and that Russia may accept?

↪Benkei The Nazis had their perspective too. — Olivier5

You still fail to even get the point.

Even assuming Russia is entirely in the wrong and no one else is responsible for anything, NATO isn't going to go "defeat" Russia and Ukraine can't "defeat" Russia.

So, how does the war end?

How does more fighting improve the negotiating position or then being at war forever is somehow the best outcome for Ukrainians?

What is even the negotiating position that could plausibly bring a resolution to the war?

And, if your goal is to turn Europe into a pale reflection of the US across the pond.

The recent hundreds of billions of weapons purchase commitments is only a tiny step in that direction.

What you'd really want to do is a coordinated missile attack on European civilian aircraft.

Which will be super dramatic and super traumatic, as planes are not only blown up but planes in the air will not know where it is safe to land, people crying on TV and everything. So it will be many hours of intense anxiety and as many planes as required can easily be shot down in order to change European policy into whatever one's heart desires.

The weapons to do this are now "out there", already in Europe and it only takes a single covert organisation, of one form or another, somewhere with relatively modest funds to accomplish what will basically be EU's 9/11.

Of course, some will ask "why are our own missiles we sent to protect freedom or whatever being used to down our own planes with the obvious consequences of creating a EU security state?". Fortunately, the great thing about a security state is it doesn't have to answer.

So we'll all be able to rest easy.

Also brings up the other big irony is that the war is only a policy possibility for Russia due to climate change opening up the arctic for shipping crude oil: gas has critical economic functions (for the EU) but was not a majority of Russia's fossil revenue in any case and the threat to go without Russian gas to hit Russia's revenue was always a nonsensical and empty one (only practical purpose is to harm the EU economy).

So, European leaders create the conditions for war by immorally doing nothing much about climate change for decades, and the war will now further frustrate any effective action on climate change, which will continue to benefit Russia in relative consequence and power terms (eases energy exports and exploration while increasing food production while those things diminish globally).

European NATO leaders (all of them) do not veto US expansion into Ukraine, tolerate supporting literal Nazi's, despite many calling it a bad idea that can only lead to war.

War comes and European leaders are all Pikachu face and still do absolutely nothing in terms of soft power to try to end the conflict, rather just supply some arms (obviously not enough to win, just cause more bloodshed), and buy into the kindergarten framework of international relations that their decision making and state policies must be deferred to Zelensky ... he was on the cover of vogue and a social media god after all.

They are not morons, they just serve a different master than any EU constituency, even their own domestic elites, for the most part, the others simply begin and end their political analysis based on what's trending on social media today.

The greatest tragedy of course is there will be no further potential to even pretend to agree on climate change and environmental policies.

Again, something only EU was advocating for, and US, Chinese and certainly Russian elites sort-of-kind-of-wanting business as usual to continue, certainly don't not-want it to continue.

Its international relations 101 that peace would be required for international collaboration on climate change, European prosperity to bank it, and that obviously peace requires compromise.

How to explain EU leadership policies?

Bitches. Bitches all the way down.

I think it's also worth pointing out the great irony of the geopolitical situation for Europe, is that cheerleaders for the war are "liberals" but the outcome of the war and it's disastrous consequences will be right wing and anti-liberal governments across Europe.

Indeed, training ten's of thousands of Nazi's in Ukraine will directly lead to more literal Nazi government takeovers or "influence" as some people here like to refer to it; the formula worked out in Ukraine is not really useful in "defeating" Russia and as soon as that becomes clear and the conflict is resolved or frozen, the focus of these Nazi organisations will branch out to neighbouring countries to expand said "influence".

Economic hardship has as a consequence both rallying behind "strong men" to "fight the scapegoats" as well as the weakening of neoliberal welfare state parties that require economic prosperity to be able to promise and deliver welfare state policies.

Of course, authoritarians (in today's political context; not some logical necessity) are generally right wing with elite backers who want to lower taxes, anti-environment protections, sell state assets and unwind welfare state policies in parallel to the fighting of scapegoats.

In the "name of the liberal oder" that the EU is conducting warfare in Ukraine, will lead to the direct collapse of liberalism in the EU. And not "in the distance", recent elections in Sweden are the first example of this.

Again, EU society unravelling into a fascism is good for US investors and corporations.

Everything turns up roses from the US Imperial perspective. Of course, without the EU economic stability there is no counter-weight to Chinese and Russian economic policies on the world stage, but they are no real threat to the US and are more freinemies that mutually justify each other's totalitarian war economies.

How many F-35's and other war equipment just got sold again?

Indeed, the whole affair is basically a Christmas miracle for the US military industrial complex, going from losers that fucked up Afghanistan to true heroes and defenders of "freedom" in a few months.

A failure to try to understand either, means parties cannot reach a diplomatic solution — Benkei

Not only this, but also leads to faulty analysis of the military situation.

For, the premise that Russian soldiers are low morale and will collapse ... any day now and Russians will overthrow Putin ... any day now, which was the only justification of both total war and the sanctions at the start (that this would somehow "defeat" Russia via low morale), is based on the idea that Russians have no alternative perspective to Western propaganda. If Western propaganda announces expansion to Ukraine was not a threat to Russia, then Russians too believe that and therefore don't see any possible legitimate point to any of the fighting in Ukraine, and morale will collapse months ago.

And if you think victory will be delivered through the magical thinking operation of other people you don't know all feeling the same as you, then there is no reason not to fight and there is also no reason to have a rational plan for your fighting ... just keep fighting, Russian morale will deliver ... any day now.

I have not been following all the interchanges here, but I am curious where the taking of Kiev 'free of cost' idea refers to. Who spoke the quote marks, "for free."? — Paine

@Olivier5 argued that if Ukraine didn't fight back and Russia simply marched into Kiev unopposed that would mean the feint (though I think "fixing" is more appropriate for this context) operation would have failed.

Obviously, if your battle plan goes unopposed that's not a failure, and every manoeuvre simply conquers territory whether it was meant as reconnaissance, feint, fixing or the main battle.

Of course, even if Ukrainians offered no resistance, Russians may not have entered Kiev anyways fearing Guerrilla warfare or simply the administrative burden of a large capital. @Tzeentch has pointed out that obviously that didn't happen so discussing what the Russians would have done in the case of zero resistance is pretty irrelevant.

However, if you haven't been following, what is more interesting is the main debate, which is proponents of Zelensky's policies (whatever they are at the moment), which usually boils down to military victory, versus neutral analysis of the war (in the case of @Tzeentch) and proponents of diplomatic resolution (@Isaac, myself and on occasion @Benkei).

The pro-Zelensky interpret all other points of view as "pro-Russian", so the debate simply goes in unfruitful loops.

Pro-Zelensky want military victory and basically Russian surrender, but there's simply no military way to achieve that.

Whenever Zelensky declares he will not negotiate or then makes unrealistic demands, pro-Zelensky faction will basically yell approbation and that Russian's can't be trusted anyways and shouldn't be negotiated with etc.

Whenever there is rapprochement and diplomatic advancement (which has happened several times) it's failure is squarely on the Russians for not accepting whatever Zelensky wanted. At no point is Zelensky's diplomatic strategy a legitimate subject of criticism.

The whole debate is profoundly confusing to pro-Zelenskyites, because their basic argument is simply moral condemnation of Russia directly justifies any and all fighting against Russia.

Of course, even if their moral condemnation is correct, that does not actually in itself support a fight to the death.

For example, I may invade your home and hold you at gun-point to rob you. Barring some extenuating circumstances (such as being myself a police officer and the robbery legal, or then in a war and I'm an intelligence agent etc.) it's easy to accept the premise I am in the wrong and you are in the right.

However, simply because I am in the moral wrong for holding you at gun point, that does not justify any and all acts of violence against me, such as if they are foolish and will just get your whole family killed.

The circumstances that would justify any and all acts of violence, regardless of probability of success, is if you believe I am going to murder everyone anyways (more precisely, calculate the probability I will do so is higher than the probability my successfully defending your attack, which maybe a very high likelihood but my intention to kill you anyways even higher).

This is why the war is continuously framed as "existential" even though Russia clearly does not threaten, nor ever has, complete occupation of Ukraine, and, even if it did, that's only existential for the Ukrainian state and no necessarily Ukrainians themselves. One would have to believe Russia is intent on murdering the vast majority of Ukrainians in the event of total occupation to justify a fight to the death.

Without the fight to the death justified, the policies so far simply make no sense.

The lives lost, people maimed, children killed and traumatised (my own "side"), damages to Ukrainian economy, damages to the world economy and suffering from energy and food inflation, are not worth the demands Russia made at the outset of the war: recognition of Crimea, autonomy for Donbas region, and neutral Ukraine.

The retort is of course "well that's all Russia's fault" ... even if the offer was rational to accept diplomatically and further fighting is extremely unlikely to ever result in a better deal, and certainly no better deal that is worth the price in blood.

For the war to be "worth it" (from a purely state perspective, ignoring any human value), at this stage, Ukraine would need to resolve the conflict occupying a large areas of Russia.

Of course, the Western policy is not to defend Ukrainian interests, but to defend US interests of bleeding the Russians (which is not really what's happening, but that's a different topic), and more importantly destroying Europe as a geo-political competitor.

Only the Euro could have replaced the USD as a global competing currency, and the war in Ukraine now precludes that from happening.

The strategic options for the US was to either accept multi-polarity in a largely peaceful world where economic and diplomatic clout shifts to Europe as a fair arbiter of world economic affairs, or then break up the world into a new cold war paradigm and destroy European soft power.

US, at this stage in Imperial development, has only hard power as leverage, and Europe is the only soft-power competitor around, and the war in Ukraine guarantees a hard-power brokered world going forward in which US is "top dog" in a greatly diminished Western sphere of influence.

Geopolitically, what we are witnessing is the USA destroying its own allies economies in order to remain dominant over them. Of course, this means the West as a whole is abandoning a world leadership position, but all the problems that result from that are far from America's shores. Only Europe directly pays the cost for America's imperial projects within NATO, which makes those projects easy to carry out from US point of view, and the Ukraine war is the culmination of that process (so far mostly in the middle-East and North Africa) and sacrificing Europe as a piece on the geopolitical chess board, on the off chance is might become an equal partner, which it was close to achieving but its leaders sold Europeans out, basically.

How this happened is basically the anti-Russian propaganda since a solid decade precluded European leaders from saying "we're going to go make peace with the Russians and hammer out a deal, and if the Ukrainians don't accept it then they'll be left militarily alone and we won't even allow US supply to go through our territory". Peace that would have been easily achieved; Russia did not invest in Nord Stream 2 on the premise a war with Ukraine was guaranteed.

Which is why the pro-Zelenskyites basically view the war with Ukraine as a good thing and discard any diplomatic resolution at any point as a bad thing.

But that view point meets with the criticism of "then how will the war end?", which they are unable to answer and likewise unable to answer how tens of thousands of lives (other people's sons and daughter) are worthwhile to sacrifice for no rational plan but merely as a "heroic gesture" to make a moral point.

It's clear they don't even understand their own position, as it rests on a common fallacy that is typical in denial. For, in the situation that you are my hostage and you make some heroic attack that immediately gets you and your family killed, it is not really the case that your actions are immoral. I would still be in the wrong, still doing the killing, just that the result could have been avoided (by you) if I was not intent on killing you anyways. On the individual level, such actions we could categorise as unfortunate, perhaps even amoral (as you are not prepared for the situation), but clearly unwise (if it's clear I only want your television and I'll be on my way, and your attack is so surprising that I kill you and your family by accident).

However, such analogy with a individual in a difficult situation does not directly translate to nation states. A nation state is morally responsible to be prepared for a war and its conduct and making unwise decisions that get people killed is not morally neutral. For, the least we can say in the hostage situation is that you are gambling your own life, it is much different if your actions get immediately others killed, and you are fairly safe and have time to reflect, and, moreover, the decision to have others die increases your power and wealth, whereas wise decisions might save hundreds of thousands (even millions) of lives but end your political career (as a compromise never satisfies everyone).

To which they will respond that it's Russia that's bad at fault for everything and the debate goes around in a circle again.

In the background to all this is a parallel moral-logico propaganda loop that NATO is right to oppose Russia and "stand with Ukraine", but of course that means not taking any actual risk directly to NATO nor actually "standing with Ukraine" in any sense that involves actual standing with Ukrainian soldiers on the front line, and is right to limit arms shipments in a way that guarantees Russian victory on the battlefield -- that last part is easily fixed by just claiming Ukraine is winning somehow (because ... basically, Russia could be winning even harder right now, Ukraine could have capitulated, but they aren't winning as hard as is conceivable ... therefore: Ukraine is winning).

Sure, demonstrate your fanatical devotion to your preferred propaganda by proudly explaining your closed mindedness on a debate forum.

It's not a time honoured tradition to not address what your interlocutors actually say.

If you want to honour this tradition you're talking about, you should first address what's actually said and then carry on your project of speculating what unexamined assumptions there maybe.

For instance, in the Socratic method (indeed, time honoured) the way to do that is: asking questions.

Otherwise, just paraphrasing erroneously people is called: disrespectful and a waste of time.

For example, to take the text in question (and not risk erroneously paraphrasing you myself):

↪Tzeentch And you seem to assume that the Russian side never makes any mistake, and that "everything is going according to plan". So the reason you are "struggling to see where this idea comes from that Russia is losing" is simply that you assume that whatever happens is a desirable outcome for the Russians. — Olivier5

Nowhere does seem to assume never makes mistakes; the point was it that the idea of a significant Ukrainian victory (as plastered everywhere in the Western media at present) is questionable.

And those are just the facts (so far).

Kherson offensive had very little impact (so far at least).

Around Kharkiv, Russians simply withdrew (avoiding getting trapped or overrun, which could have easily happened had they not retreated, and would have been far worse).

The conclusion of the recent offensives (so far) is nothing really changed in the strategic situation and it appears a high cost in lives for Ukrainians to achieve a largely propaganda victory (which they certainly need to motivate more Western aid ... but wars are not won by propaganda alone, or Ukraine would rule the entire world by now).

In addition, Russia has demonstrated it can disable half the Ukrainian power grid.

This all could be a good setup for a diplomatic resolution, which the Europeans could easily force (if they weren't bitches ... but I think that boat has sailed a long time ago).

It's subconscious, I think. — Olivier5

If you're battling other people's subconscious, shouldn't you do that subconsciously and in silence?

And you seem to assume that the Russian side never makes any mistake, and that "everything is going according to plan". — Olivier5

I don't see anyone claiming this.

Rather, a good military plan includes what to do if certain missions fail.

Certainly plan A was Kiev accept the offered peace terms at the start of the war, obviously that plan failed.

However, there was clearly a plan B which was take the key Southern regions and liberate Donbas by force, do some denazification and so on.

In the current situation, certainly plan A is defend both Kherson and the Kharkiv region, but plan B is that if defending lines in Kharkiv fails to withdraw.

In chess the "not-best-moves" are categorised into inefficiencies, mistakes and blunders.

The ant-Russian propaganda presents the smallest of Russian setbacks as catastrophical blunders, and when it's explained that's obviously not the case then the retort is "you think the Russians don't make mistakes!"

Fact of the matter is, in purely military terms, Russians have no blundered. Being stuck in Crimea would have been a blunder, a rescue of Mariupol.

The offensive to Kiev obviously had pros and cons. Certainly involved many inefficiencies and mistakes ... but so too the Ukrainians.

When you send soldiers to war some of them are going to fuck up and die, it's just a fact. There's no evidence that Russians do more of this than the Ukrainians. To make a strategic appraisal we need to know if one side is fucking-up and dying more than the other.

And this key information we simply don't have. If the Russians killed a lot more soldiers and destroyed more vehicles, and of higher quality, than the Ukrainians in the Northern operations, then it is successful engagements of attrition, in addition to distracting Ukrainian forces from the South, it they had way higher losses then maybe it was still worth it as a fixing operation (or maybe not).

Likewise with the sanctions; could be a major blunder if the Russian economy collapses as has been predicted since the first week of the war ... but that hasn't happened yet.

The maps do not really put things in perspective.

There is a massive difference between the areas in the North previously occupied by the Russians and the areas in the South, in particular the Donbas, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia (which Kharkiv is not a part of).

The Southern Donbas to Kherson band is of obviously political and strategic importance: Donbas being the pro-Russian separatist region supported by Russia (and at least nominal cause of the whole war), Kherson controlling the canal that supplies water to Crimea and Zaporizhzhia is the region directly in front of Crimea (additional protection and connects to the other regions for supplies).

Russia conquers nearly all this additional territory in the South in about 3 days and then there is prolonged siege of the Azov battalion and other forces in Mariupol.

There is obvious political and strategic value of these regions, Russians conquer nearly all of what they currently have in a matter days, and still hold it and clearly are willing to defend it as we see in Kherson over last few days.

The Northern operation was very different. Russians simply went around towns and tried to surround Kiev.

Analysts kept on telling us it would take at least a million soldier army to occupy all of Ukraine, which the Russians didn't invade with ... well, they invaded with 200 000 soldiers and are now occupying 20% of Ukraine, so maybe the math checks out.

The operation in the North was quite obviously to achieve 3 things:

1. Ideally the capitulation of the Ukrainian regime (accepting the offered peace terms) with the pressure on the capital]\.
2. Failing that, fixing Ukrainian forces in the North to be unable to defend and/or launch counter-offensive in the South (before new fortifications, supply lines setup and towns passified, there is vulnerability to counter-attack).
3. Destroy industrial capacity and various targets around Kiev, which apparently is achieved.

Now, whether doing the above was a good strategy or not is one question, but there was obviously never any even remote attempt to storm Kiev or occupy all the Norther regions the Russians pass through.

How likely the Kremlin believed in Ukrainian capitulation I don't know, but obviously there was plan B which was take in the South the desired lands and strategic locations and destroy Azov Batallion (whether the Kremlin genuinely fears/ despises these neo-Nazi's is one question, but either way it is critical for the home audience to defeat Azov Batallion in particular).

In particular, now that all pro-Ukrainian propaganda is instantly declaring the Kherson operation a fixing attack ... it's just dumb to dismiss off-hand the Kiev offensive as not possibly a fixing attack but failed occupation of the North and storming of Kiev.

As for whether it was a good idea or not, Russian generals have several nightmare scenarios at the start of the war:

A. Being stopped coming out of Crimea and the entire Southern operation falling flat.
B. Even after the South operation succeeds, successful counter attack that (for example) creates a salient to Mariupol and breaks the siege (as well as just counter offensives generally speaking).

Had A or B occurred it would have been a massive embarrassment to the Russians.

Certainly some things have gone well and other things less well for the Russians, but they have not experienced anything like an actual military debacle. Propaganda needs to spin full tilt just to present Ukraine as "in the fight", so imagine if they had just shelled to rubble the bridges out of Crimea and the Russians never got out of there, or valiantly penetrated Russian lines and fought all the way to breaking the Siege of Mariupol.

Keep also in mind, that there is not only these purely strategic elements in the South described above, but that's where Azov battalion, of which defeating is absolutely essential to the entire de-Nazification enterprise. So, failure to take this region would have been completely disastrous in terms of international and domestic image (support for the war etc.).

So, considering the stakes in the South, it is entirely logical to commit forces to threaten the capital which then must be defended at all costs (liquidating Azov battalion maybe a priority for Russia, but keeping Kiev would be the priority for Kiev; so one priority for the other).

Of course, would have been even better for the Russians if Ukraine simply collapsed, accepted peace terms etc. but a military strategy does not take into account political resolution; that for politicians to do or not, military planners will assume there is no political resolution to the conflict in elaborating their plan -- if they are told not to try to take all of Ukraine, they will then simply plan for an eventual frozen never ending conflict a la North-South Korea.

Point is, whether the plan was the best, could have been better, should not have been launched in the first place etc. are all valid criticisms, but the criticism that the plan does not make sense or has already failed is simply not supportable.

Additionally, even for the Russians to withdraw at this time, it would still be less embarrassing than being stuck in Crimea or Azov Battalion being rescued.

Russians have (even if they withdraw now) demonstrated the massive amounts of man power, equipment and money required to deal with (200 000 of) them. From purely international relations perspective its not "so bad" if Ukraine has clearly paid a heavy price for the withdrawal (that no other rational party would want to pay). One cannot draw the conclusion that the Russians are push-overs, certainly neither the Ukrainians, but this doesn't necessarily encourage anyone to seek conflict with Russia anytime soon.

However, I very much doubt the Russians will withdraw and until Kherson West of the Dnieper is reconquered by Ukraine I have a hard time believing they have the offensive capabilities to seriously threaten Russian presence East of the Dnieper.

The regions the Russians are committed to holding have now dense and integrated fortifications, concrete shelters for tanks, bunker networks etc. electronic warfare setup, and is extremely hard to assault, as the recent offensive in Kherson demonstrate.

Russian tanks emerged from newly built cement fortifications to blast infantry with large-caliber artillery, the wounded Ukrainian soldiers said. The vehicles would then shrink back beneath the concrete shelters, shielded from mortar and rocket fire.

Counter-battery radar systems automatically detected and located Ukrainians who were targeting the Russians with projectiles, unleashing a barrage of artillery fire in response.

Russian hacking tools hijacked the drones of Ukrainian operators, who saw their aircraft drift away helplessly behind enemy lines. — Wounded Ukrainian soldiers reveal steep toll of Kherson offensive

Yes, offensive in Kharkiv (not part of Donbas ... no strategic importance to Crimea) did succeed, but none of the above was put in place.

The reason to tactically retreat from a region you are not intent of occupying long term (whatever the reason: political, terrain and/or man-power) is to save as many of your own troops as possible while inflicting significant casualties on the advancing army: artillery, mines, gunships, missiles and bombs in predetermined kill-zones.

Exactly. And such is often neglected by people who think "inside the box". — Olivier5

Agree, but the point of geopolitical analysis is to try to tease out what is more or less likely to happen, rather than be satisfied with the observation that many things are possible.

So what? The point is that a better Russia could emerge from this war, IFF Russian forces lose the war. — Olivier5

Sure, yeah, that's possible.

Of course, in theory a worse Russia could also emerge from it, eg if a leader even more nationalist than Putin get to replace Putin. — Olivier5

Also possible.

Bottom line is: the future is wide open, Ukraine can win and Russia can change. — Olivier5

I don't disagree.

We've been discussing these recent military developments, but there is still all the political and economic part in which many things are possible too.

Putin's failure to invade Ukraine will probably lead to his death and/or replacement by someone else at the helm of Russia. — Olivier5

Again, this has been claimed since basically day 2 of the invasion.

Sure, maybe, but as simply a propaganda statement to keep social media spirits high ... I don't think they could be any higher at any point of this conflict; however, the conflict clearly is not won or lost on social media.

There's also one detail that's fairly puzzling in this new narrative that Kharkiv was the real prize and Kherson just a fixing operation, which is that it seems agreed Ukraine lost about 5000-6000 KIA in the this alleged Kherson fixing operation.

That seems incredibly high for a fixing operation.

But again, to really evaluate things militarily we'd actually need to know KIA, wounded and material losses on both sides (and quality of those losses, such as the KIA in Kherson being the experienced elite, NATO trained units that can do offensives), and we don't know losses on both sides.

Thousands of Ukrainian KIA might be worth the territorial gains if somehow Kharkiv region is some critical strategic thing and the offensive continues from there ... or then simply there are more KIA Russians in these operations.

The war still remains mainly of attrition at this phase, and we'd need to actually know losses to evaluate what's happening militarily.

However, the grid attacks seem more significant to me and we'll see the fallout of this in the weeks and months to come. I honestly don't see how Ukraine could maintain their grid under conditions of continuous attacks and I honestly don't see how Ukraine can deal with simply not having grid based electricity over larger areas.

Foxes and sour grapes, again. When the Russian are booted out of Ukraine, you will say that Ukraine was not strategically important! :-) — Olivier5

This seems to me completely delusional.

And again, I stated my position before these offensives: taking Kherson would be a turning point.

I have not changed my goal posts.

The pro-Ukrainians changed their goal posts as soon as the Kherson offensive failed, but for months were talking about taking Kherson, praising the brilliant Himars attacks on the bridges that would make Russia unable to defend Kherson etc.

If the Ukrainians take Kherson, then I would view that as step one.

There was zero talk of the region around Kharkiv as having any importance before this offensive, the idea it's important is entirely retroactive. Before this re-definition of things what was important was: Kherson, Donbas and also the Nuclear plant, and all talk was on those 3 important things.

Ukraine achieves nothing on those important things ... so goes and does something no one was claiming was important to do and declares a major victory.

And, it's a broken record at this point, just a couple months ago Ukraine "pushed to the border" in Kharkiv region and that was somehow a major victory.

It seems to me people are attributing a little too much to this offensive. The fact that the captured territory was defended by tripwire troops implies it was not of any importance to Russia. — Tzeentch

Agreed.

Losing Kherson would be both bad militarily (likely thousands, if not tens of thousands, stuck and captured troops) as well as intensely embarrassing.

Retreating from around Kharkiv is certainly some embarrassment, but if it's not important area to hold then Russia can easily reverse the embarrassment with an important victory elsewhere.

Russia has clearly stated its main war objective is conquering the Donbas, which the Kharkiv region is not a part of. So, if Russia goes on to complete conquering all the Donbas then it can declare "winning" this key military objective.

The only goal, in my opinion, that Ukraine has achieved is that it has signalled to the West to still be capable of offensives, in the hopes to garner more aid. An army that cannot conduct offensives is broken and has in essence already lost - an impression that certainly must have crept in with Western leaders after the failed Kherson offensive. — Tzeentch

I believe this is an excellent summary of both my and @ssu debate and position on this subject. Definitely important to show at least some offensive potential.

However, it's entirely possible the withdrawal from around Kharkiv was pre-determined and also pre-determined it would be followed by attacking Ukrainian's electricity grid as militarily "logical" to both home and diplomatic audience (rather than out of the blue).

To followup my post above comparing to Isreal.

Perhaps a good diction for this sort of analysis, is defining military-diplomatic victory, which I would say Isreal definitely achieved in its various confrontations and negotiations with Arab neighbours, in contrast to purely military victory (such as defeat of Nazi Germany by the allies).

The Isreal example is a good example of what to do when you cannot simply defeat your opponents: win battles and negotiate acceptable resolutions.

Isreal did not continuously declare "we will not negotiate!" throughout all these conflicts with neighbours. Neighbours, useful to keep in mind, that had far more extreme rhetoric and really would have completely annihilated Isreal if they could, than Russia has against Ukraine.

That's called: statecraft.

Isreal did not throw temper tantrums and announce completely unrealistic demands in negotiations it rebuked as cowardly.

Isreal made consistent reasonable demands (such as the right to exist) as well as offers of compromise acceptable to opposing countries (despite anti-Isreal rhetoric 1000x more extreme than anything Putin has said about Ukraine), resulting in negotiated peace with Egypt, for example, that involved withdrawing from the Sinai (only way to make peace with Egypt).

Whether one approves or not of Isreal policies vis-a-vis the Palestinians, through force and diplomacy they have achieved key objectives, but it would be foolhardy to dismiss or minimise Israeli diplomats and statecraft in those achievements.

So, it's when people say Ukraine does not need to negotiate and can "win" militarily, which is when I point out that without diplomacy "winning" means conquering and defeating your enemy; otherwise, the war just continues forever.

Could the Russians hold Donbas and Crimea if they settled into just those regions? — jorndoe

Crimea seems truly completely unfeasible for Ukrainians to ever reconquer, without NATO supplying systems like an entire fleet of ships and hundreds of fighter aircraft.

With enough NATO support (and Ukrainian willingness to fight to the death as NATO proxies) I would guess it would be possible to push Russia out of Donbas.

However, the risk for NATO of even trying to do that is Russia resorts to tactical nuclear weapons.

NATO policy is very clearly to give enough support to Ukraine that they don't outright lose, but not enough that they can "win", even in very limited definitions of achieving some key war goals.

The situation, however, is very unstable.

However, the dream of a long war that bleeds the Russians may not survive Russia finally implementing NATO's Shock and Awe playbook of disabling the electricity infrastructure.

It was not clear to me how long Ukraine can hold out without electricity (both militarily and civilian endurance). True, people have withstood significant hardship without electricity in past wars, as @ssu points out ... but that was before electricity was a critical need to pretty much all modern social and economic activities.

No, this is only what it means for people who want to invade other people's land. But for people not bent on invading other countries, winning a war can mean something else, to be defined in each specific case. — Olivier5

Hmmm... has then Israel won any of it's wars against it's neoghbors? It still has them around and never have Israeli soldiers entered Damascus, Amman or Cairo. — ssu

Sure you can define "win" in some way that doesn't involve defeating your enemy, why for the context I'm talking about I put "winning" quotations.

The context where "winning" comes up and where I define "winning the war" as meaning defeating Russia, is addressing the idea of Ukraine not requiring a diplomatic resolution to the war but can achieve victory through military force.

For, even Ukraine pushed Russia back to the border ... that wouldn't be an end to the war, the war would still be on.

And Isreal is a good example of this; without defeating their opponents the war isn't actually over. It's only in hindsight that it makes sense to call the 6 days a war over 6 days, and a win for Isreal. Had fighting re-intensified then it would have been just the first engagement in a larger war.

For example:

Following the war, Egypt initiated clashes along the Suez Canal in what became known as the War of Attrition. — Wikipedia - Six day War

After following other Arab nations in declaring war, Mauritania remained in a declared state of war with Israel until about 1999. — Wikipedia - Six day War

Is the kind of thing that happens when a military battle or campaign is "won" without actually defeating the enemy. States of war continue and the word choice quickly becomes debatable.

6 Days War was initiated by Isreal attacking Egypt pre-emptively ... so according to the definition of repulsing an invasion is a "win", Egypt actually won that war. Obviously, Israelis may argue very differently.

Point is that military conflicts that do not end with one side being defeated are only ultimately ended diplomatically; states of war simply persist even without fighting, and it doesn't make sense to say the war is over ... but a "state of war" persists.

War refers to both military conflict as well as a diplomatic relationship between nations or groups (that may not involve fighting all the time).

Now, in the case of Mauritania's state of war with Isreal that persisted for decades, it doesn't matter all that much because Mauritania did not have practical means to invade and attempt to defeat Isreal any given day. These sorts of state of war is symbolic, but nevertheless there is still technically a war.

However, the Ukraine-Russia situation is very different; pushing back Russia to its borders would not result in a situation such as Isreal and Mauritania where the persisting state of war could be said to be symbolic and there is no real threat. Russia would still be a considerable threat to Ukraine and could re-invade at any moment, the war would not be "over" and Ukraine would not have "won".

To force Russia to accept Ukraine's terms would mean going and defeating Russia, you know: "winning".

The alternative to winning in a military sense to end a war, is a diplomatic resolution (how most wars end); a diplomatic resolution is not a surrender, and so neither side is defeated and neither side "lost the war". Of course, one side will have lost more than the other, but this will always be debatable and each side will point to some evaluation criteria that implies they won, and certainly didn't do as badly as the other side claims.

For example, I have heard Americans mention many times that they sort-of-kind-of won in Vietnam because they killed way more Vietnamese.

In the case of this war, even if Ukraine pushed Russia back to the border and then a diplomatic resolution that ended the war ... at what cost in lives, trauma and infrastructure and economic development? If the West does not rebuild Ukraine as sort-of-kind-of-promised, is that "winning"? We can debate it.

However, this would be fairly hypothetical debate of what clear "winning" would be in a diplomatic resolution after pushing the Russians out of Ukraine, as Ukraine's current stated "war goals" is re-conquering all of Ukrainian territory including Crimea, which really seems completely unfeasible.

Currently Ukraine does not have enough military potential to push Russian's out of their enclave West of the Dnieper which would be a miniature version and far easier task than pushing Russians out of Crimea. And, definitely Ukrainians would push Russians back across the Dnieper if they could; it's a major strategic pain the enemy having a large bridgehead across a water body.

Additionally, for sure Ukraine cannot defeat Russia in any of the proposed definitions of "winning" and has never been in a position to be able to.

The conflict is one between Russia and NATO with Ukraine serving as proxies using NATO weapons, NATO training and NATO intelligence.

And, as I've stated, I believe NATO can defeat Russia in a conventional conflict and can supply Ukraine sufficiently to produce some lighter form of battle field victory, even without Nukes which NATO could provide to even the playing field but obviously chooses not to (for the same entirely good political reasons that Russia doesn't nuke Ukraine).

My position is not that NATO does not have the capacity to push the Russians back to the border using Ukraine as proxy soldiers.

My position is that NATO chooses not to.