Likely yeah, the problem with this plan is that it’s the west that’s likely to end up with a failed state on its border rather than the other way around. Russia will likely annex friendly and neutral territory, and then leave a dysfunctional rump state in western Ukraine for the west to deal with. This is going to become an economic black hole fore Europe because if they let it fail then there’s going to be a new immigration crisis. So the only thing Europe can do is to keep pouring resources into trying to prop it up. Meanwhile, Russia has already demonstrated how quickly they were able to reconstruct places like Mariupol where life is back to normal now.
I imagine that keeping the front static and away from major population centres may be part of the Russian strategy as well. What Russia needs to do in the long run is to collapse the Ukrainian army through attrition. And they’re well on their way towards achieving that. Once that happens, there’s going to be no need to fight over big cities like Kharkov.
For sure, US was very concerned that Europe started becoming economically integrated with Russia and China. If this was allowed to go on, then US would lose control over Europe. The war served to sever the economic ties with Russia, and US is now strong arming Europe to decouple from China as well. The ideal case for US was to break Russia, and preventing Eurasian integration is the secondary objective that they’re now likely to achieve.
I know a lot of people expect these ISIS like terrorists to attack Russia, but I’m highly skeptical that this will be happening at any appreciable scale myself. It’s far more likely that Russia will be able to do the same thing in Ukraine as they did in Chechnya. There’s going to be a pro Russian government, and if living standards start improving under it, then vast majority of people will want to just get back to living their lives. There’s not going to be any support for some sort of insurgency.
Also worth noting that US sees China as the main threat, so the amount of resources that US is willing to devote to Europe is limited by that. My expectation is that the US will leave Europe holding the bag on the whole thing and start pivoting to Asia.
Likely yeah, the problem with this plan is that it’s the west that’s likely to end up with a failed state on its border rather than the other way around. Russia will likely annex friendly and neutral territory, and then leave a dysfunctional rump state in western Ukraine for the west to deal with. This is going to become an economic black hole fore Europe because if they let it fail then there’s going to be a new immigration crisis. So the only thing Europe can do is to keep pouring resources into trying to prop it up. Meanwhile, Russia has already demonstrated how quickly they were able to reconstruct places like Mariupol where life is back to normal now.
I imagine that keeping the front static and away from major population centres may be part of the Russian strategy as well. What Russia needs to do in the long run is to collapse the Ukrainian army through attrition. And they’re well on their way towards achieving that. Once that happens, there’s going to be no need to fight over big cities like Kharkov.
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For sure, US was very concerned that Europe started becoming economically integrated with Russia and China. If this was allowed to go on, then US would lose control over Europe. The war served to sever the economic ties with Russia, and US is now strong arming Europe to decouple from China as well. The ideal case for US was to break Russia, and preventing Eurasian integration is the secondary objective that they’re now likely to achieve.
I know a lot of people expect these ISIS like terrorists to attack Russia, but I’m highly skeptical that this will be happening at any appreciable scale myself. It’s far more likely that Russia will be able to do the same thing in Ukraine as they did in Chechnya. There’s going to be a pro Russian government, and if living standards start improving under it, then vast majority of people will want to just get back to living their lives. There’s not going to be any support for some sort of insurgency.
Also worth noting that US sees China as the main threat, so the amount of resources that US is willing to devote to Europe is limited by that. My expectation is that the US will leave Europe holding the bag on the whole thing and start pivoting to Asia.