For serious discussion - like your thoughts beyond simple “Russians go home” platitudes. What even is a russian theory of victory at this point?
First off - this STILL seems to be a war where their only goal is conquest and capitulation of the Ukrainian government to a Russian puppet one. But - how do they intend realize that?
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Terroristic bombings against civilian targets from standoff distance has never, ever been successful at defeating an industrial society. It’s way, way way too expensive to maintain and doesn’t hold ground.
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Russia’s mechanized forces in mass have largely been wiped out and is cost-ineffective compared to Ukraine’s ability to stop them with drones.
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Russia’s infantry tactics is literally sending in small infiltration teams into forward areas, where they are eventually either droned, sniped, mined, shelled or outright counter attacked and killed.
Ukraine seems capable of increasingly automating their defense AND assualt forces to be less manpower intensive, and able to trade a little bit of land temporarily until they can kill the infiltration teams that bum rush positions in cars, motorbikes or on foot. The latter is NOT a serious or effective strategy for occupying and pacifying conquered land.
In the big picture - Russia seems to just be prolonging the slaughter and hoping to be given something in return to make it stop. But - that doesn’t seem likely to work. No serious minded thinkers expect Russia to honor any agreement, so why WOULDN’T Ukraine logically look at the stiatuion and conclude that the ONLY way to stop future russian aggression is to bleed out their army until there is fundamental change in Russian political leadership.
How does Russia ‘win’ this war? It’s hard to see. Things feel very endgame, but also stagnant since life of their soldiers means absolutely nothing to the Kremlin, when they probably know the alternative is that stopping the war leads quickly and directly to total domestic collapse.
Your thoughts please.
My thoughts are that prolonging the war is preferable to securing a poor peace on the home front. As long as the war is going on, they can claim they are advancing and beating back huge offensives. When a peace is achieved, they will have to live with a lot less than they said they would achieve, plus a huge amount of ptsd ridden soldiers and former convicts are released back into a society with a very strained economy.
I doubt there is a planned end-state at the kreml
plus the many 1million+ russian men that fled russia adds into the strain of the economic loss.
The russian plan for victory has always been at some level to shunt the collapsing neoliberal governments that would oppose them in the Ukraine War out of the picture by stoking their rightwing parties so that they became neutral to the conflict.
This strategy worked pretty damn well in many respects, at the very least it was an astute observation of where neoliberal governments like the US and UK were heading and what kind of opportunities that provided, but the somewhat absurd reality is that all of that fragile political maneuvering that took enormous amounts of effort to orchestrate doesn’t amount to anything if the Ukrainian military refuses to give up.
If you are better at war than the person who launched a war against you in a context of political theater that already condemned you to losing, you don’t actually lose. War is NOT like politics in that respect, the frontline is a series of inherently individual events that culminate together into one of two opposing futures, you cannot foreclose which way those individual events will go in a broad brush stroke of collusion and corruption, war doesn’t care.
Trump has tried his hardest to sabotage Ukraine’s war effort and even with a huge amount of political momentum he still hasn’t been able to fully stop US aid to Ukraine… and even when he does finally manage to do so it won’t be enough to swing things back in russia’s favor.
Ukraine was never supposed to win this war, even many of Ukraine’s “allies” were secretly ok with Ukraine losing after a sufficient cost was extracted from russia to beat them down a bit. Ukraine made this calculus irrelevant however by demonstrating russia could not quickly and decisively win and in response the military industrial might of the world has acquiesced and consolidated behind supporting Ukraine in the long term. The simple truth this establishes is that there is now no actual feasible theory of victory for russia.
The only viable theory of victory for russia now is indulging in denial, and I think they know that even if they can’t admit it.
I’m taking what you’re saying 1-step further:
Russia’s idea of victory, now, is the fascist-highjacking of as much of the West as possible,
& then the fascists/feudalists align, together, against civilrights, for the final beat-down, enforcing their oligarchic totalitarianism.
Total war against civilrights.
Both by communists ( what the CCP did to Tibet & to the Uyghurs was exactly imperialism’s eradication ) & by the right: the goal’s the same, exclusive factional-supremacism.
So, right now, the question pertinent is how long before Trump & Putin set-aside their differences, & both openly war against the autonomy & lives of the woke: Canada, Civil-War Part2, & the rest of the Americas, for the coming Trump dictatorship, & after China “backs”/supplants “Russia” within “Russia”, then Putin, or “Putin” or some replacement/quivalent will be rampaging on Europe…
That’s the “mass shooting” “win” they’re wanting: to destroy that anybody else could ever be “great”, so they get to be the final “important” ones.
Competitive-nihilism.
( & it’d be a win-win for China: grind-down the West, without spilling Chinese blood, & China can concentrate on the Asian war-of-consolidation for the same next-7-years,
AND since I expect both Netanyahu & the Saudi king to die soon, that’ll leave the Middle-East to MBS, & he’ll take Africa once he’s got Iran & the rest sorted. )
Phase-change for the world, iow, same as WW1 was a phase-change.
Completely-different-footing.
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It isn’t working though and the reason is that fascists suck at war.
The people you are speaking of convinced themselves that drones and AI could replace human expertise in warfare and thus a new age of feudalism determined by “might makes right” had been ushered in.
They were wrong, what Ukraine has proven is that drones are an integral part of infantry and the expertise at flying drones as a human operator is even more valuable than just being able to point and shoot a gun. Dumb mass waves of shaheds have proven to be aerial target training for adaptive air defense networks and warfare has shown once again that powerful people cannot foreclose which way the tides will turn behind closed doors, what happens in war is what happens.
To put it another way, techbros and rightwing authoritarians have succumbed to the brainworms around AI and drones doing to warfare what the industrial revolution did to individual artisan labor, and it is delusional scifi slop thinking. That future has not and will not come into fruition any time soon and believing in its imminent arrival or worse that this future has already arrived is absurdist. This isn’t however to say these technologies don’t radically change warfare.
Unfortunately for us, both the ruling class of russia and of countries like the US are completely convinced of this delusion to the point that it has lobotomized their empathy. This is how waves of fascism grow.
The way waves of fascism crash is again, fascists are horrifically bad at warfare. This is because fascists are obsessed with the aesthetics of violence, warfare and domination and not the actual techniques, mental adaption, practice and knowledge that warfare requires. In other words fascists really only want to roleplay being warriors, they aren’t interested in all the annoying parts of learning how to actually be good at it and adjusting to new developing realities that make old tactics irrelevant.
At this point? Wait it out and hope the endless conflict becomes normalized enough. There is no “winning” condition left for the russians now, just degrees of losing. They (russian leadership) clearly only care about the perception of russian power and the perception of victory, so they will never stop unless forced since stopping will be admitting defeat.
- They have no hope of gaining ground at anything that would reasonably end the war in the next 15 years.
- They have no hope of convincing the world they are still a major power that needs to be placated and therefore push Ukraine into a bad deal and claim victory (the us has tried to and as we can see nothing really came out of it)
- They have no hope of grinding down Ukraine in the near term as more and more fighting is automated on the Ukrainian side, while also having several times the losses as Ukraine.
- They have no hope of developing their way into a victory with wunderweapons as they have lost a large amount of their best in ether the trenches or one of the largest brain drains in history (something that is not getting alot of coverage).
- They have no hope of getting any more allies in the conflict to change the tide (North Korea being the last one to “help” does not really encourage nations)
At the end of the day, year, decade of war the russian strategy is just to not “give up”. That is it, nothing more. They might have hopes but it is hard to see any coming to life.
and even thier funding on far right parties in the west is at jeopardy
I think that might be the only operation they have done that worked. But yeah, not a lot to throw around anymore.
That seems to be what is happening. But how long do they really think it can last? Financially, they are already digging into their reserves to keep the war going. And they are going to run out of soldiers sooner or later, either via desertion or straight death. And as they have fewer soldiers to hold the line and less money to support them, they will be pushed back further and further until they are right back at their previous border or worse.
I think that is one possible way this ends, but you might not like just how long they can keep feeding the meat grinder. I do think that if Ukraine can start taking russian land past the border you will start to see a change. The conscripts that as of now get to stay out of the trenches would be put in hard fighting (that the russians have shown they are not good at without taking massive casualties) and that would likely be the final part to russias internal collapse. Ether that happens due to them running out of prisoners/volunteers/poor people or russia itself being attacked.
Ukraine has been on the brink of collapsing several times and only heroic efforts on their part and the persistence of their allies have staved off the worst.
My sense is that Putin is hoping that another crisis will open up in the future, and that it will finally bring about Ukraine’s surrender. Of course, Ukraine and Europe (not sure about the USA at this point) are hoping that the same happens to Russia: that it collapses under the weight of sanctions and internal discontent.
Just think of how giddy Putin must have been when Trump was elected, or when Trump started the war in Iran and made oil expensive. How he must have thought Orbán was going to block EU support forever. Why does everything have to go wrong for Vladimir?
Putin still has minions in the EU post-Orban, but no doubt the Russian position keeps getting worse and worse.
The US no longer sends any aid to Ukraine I understand, they simply are delivering equipment that EU countries have bought on behalf of Ukraine. This was a big win for Putin, but nowhere big enough. Add in EU shell manufacturing capacity growing so fast, along with just the general revitalization of EU arms manufacturing, I think the US’ support is becoming less and less critical. Given the broad support Ukraine enjoys in the US, I would expect this to reverse in a few years, so there is another clock ticking for Russia.
Honestly, putting myself in Putin’s shoes, it’s one of two things. First, he has so successfully insulated himself, he has no idea how things are going. Second, he’s just continuing to attack because to stop would mean his ouster and likely execution.
So long as Russia continues the war, Putin has an easier time of fending off potential internal enemies. Thousands of ordinary Russians will suffer and many die, but that’s a sacrifice he’s willing to make to keep holding on to power.
The longer he can hold on, the more chances subverting can change for him.
its mostly ethnic russians that are sent to die, hes avoiding st petersberg and moscow, thats where his influence and weakness is, since those are the 2 cities that are financially significant to putin.
I think this is it.
Ending the war sucks for Putin personally, and the longer it goes on the more likely it becomes for Ukraine or it’s allies to suffer an intolerable crisis and sue for peace on terms favorable to Russia.
So the war continues even if there is no realistic chance to accomplish the States goals of the Russian federation.
And it’s not like Putin is going to the front, or will be impoverished.
russia desperately had KRASNOV lift its oil sanctions, they mustve been pretty close to collapsing if he handt lifted it.
I keep thinking how giddy Xi must have been with this idiotic quid pro quo where Russia would attack Ukraine first before Xi pressed on some Taiwan reunification threat. Without losing a single soldier or piece of equipment, China has become the undisputed leader of the Axis of Authoritarian Hell Holes, taken influential control of the Central Asian republics today, will control eastern Russia tomorrow, can make any demand of Russia going forward with no chance of them saying no. They have secured all the resource materials, energy, fresh water that China will ever need, and gained naval use of the erstwhile Russian North Pacific, something they have never, ever had in 5000 years.
I think it’s a case of “guaranteed overthrow if we stop” vs “very likely overthrow if we continue”. So they (Putin et. al) continue, hoping for a miraculous reversal of fortune. Which is not impossible, unfortunately.
They’ve cornered themselves, and have no strategy beyond delaying the inevitable.
putin cant show hes weak with his supposed “show of strength” either he gets defenestrated or ousted somehow. th
Putin never had a strategy and he doesn’t have one now. He’s just trying to survive day to day. Ending the war would likely result in the overthrow of his regime so he’s going to cling on for as long as he possibly can, consequences be damned.
Hard to disagree. Others have said he’s a poker player who wants you to believe he’s a chess player. All bluff, all the time. In a strongman state, the state of that strongman is all that really matters. And my two cents is that Putin is an overpromoted gangster ghoul, and your hypothesis is correct - it wasn’t supposed to be this way. Ukraine wasn’t supposed to be capable of such resistance, Putin understood his mortality and decided that there was never going to be better conditions than now to try and go for his 20th century revenge project. That’s very, very dangerous for a guy who’s so personally invested in victory or death - you’re implying, and probably correct - that the war ONLY ends when he ends.
That is correct, but there’s a degree nobody’s thus-far said:
IF his only means of breaking the ones who’ve damaged his “importance” is nuking everybody, then he … has no reason to not-do-so.
Same with Netanyahu, in the Middle-East.
Competitive-nihilism, aka mass-shooting, is a category-of-motivation that Trump’s displaying, too.
& you may remember he tried getting the nuclear-codes, within the last week or 2…
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He may not have a reason, but he has many barriers, including the loss of support from his overlord in Beijing. And the military folks who have to execute his order have family that is going to live on this earth longer than he will. It’s less about his lack of restraint and more about the likelihood that it doesn’t actually achieve anything positive for Russia. They’re just a big, posionous bomb. Used against territory they claim as their own. It’s shitting on your own birthday cake.
The only way the war ends is with Ukraine falling or the implosion of the Russian government. Putin will not survive a loss. Ukraine just has to keep fighting until the Russian infrastructure collapses. Russia painted themselves into a corner and can’t get out of it.
China is the only real winner in this war. Their economic power is surpassing that of the EU and the United States. They are manufacturing most of the technology that Russia uses in this war.
When this war ends, China will have the most advanced military equipment, followed by the Europe with Ukraine in the lead. The U.S. will be a distant third, without allies or economic power.
They are manufacturing most of the technology that Russia uses in this war.
Also most of the technology everyone else uses. I’d be pretty surprised if there’s anything on the battlefield which doesn’t have something either directly made in China or at least made with machines using chinese components. Smarter Everyday on youtube had a video series while back where they built grill scrubber using only USA manufactured parts and even that was a decent challenge. And all they needed was some steel, few nuts and bolts and few plastic parts. Anything with a charging port would be much more difficult to build without chinese components.
The grill scrubber was a good one. Apparently Ukraine has massively ramped up local production though and now has drones (almost) made entirely start to finish there.
They are making a good progress and kicking EU in the right direction too at the same time. I’m not too familiar on how they actually manufacture their drones, but there’s practically no options build anything only from European components. In theory you could team up with some university and get a handful of chips, but that would be extremely expensive and it’s literally a handful of processors at best, so nothing at the scale any kind of production line could do anything with.
If it’s enough to be ‘non-chinese’ then there’s a few options, but it’s still a long supply chain and manufacturers are in South Korea, Japan and (mostly) Taiwan. And even then there’s very little to choose from without relying on chinese designs and toolchains. So practically speaking there’s no way to avoid being dependent on China if you’re building a computer of any kind, no matter if you shoehorn that in a drone or make a new line of laptops.
It goes further: when Trump declares dictatorship, & turns on Canada, using Greenland to sever Canada’s Atlantic trade & EU-lifeline,
Putin’ll be powerless, but if China simply makes him an offer he can’t refuse:
China supplants Russia in gov’t and industry, & then Putin gets to continue playing “tzar” and rampaging on Europe to his heart’s contentment … then China gets the West grinded-down, while fascism is highjacking the West,
& China can concentrate on enforcing its imperial-dominion throughout Asia.
Win-win-win, from China’s perspective.
Later, when the Regional-Consolidation Time is done, the West grinded-down, then the Chinese Empire can step-in, & begin rampaging the remnant of the West.
Fascist-highjacking’s cancer.
The West has it.
& Trump’s changing-the-rules is, unless he drops, inevitable.
Everybody-else is betting he drops.
Except me.
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A lot of people would answer that the Russian strategy is go “carry on and hope for the best”.
But the Russians have been working very actively to sponsor right-wing extremists and manipulate public opinion, in nearly all Western countries. The election of Trump and Orban for example have been hugely beneficial to Russia.
Plan B I think would be to escalate the war by attacking the EU -forcing them divert resources meant for Ukraine- then sue for peace as soon as they’ve reached some sort of significant territorial gain in either Ukraine or the Baltics.
Its already evident that US won’t lift a finger if NATO countries were to be attacked. In fact Trump would likely use the situation to his advantage and try to extort Europe for money, power or territory.
hungary seemed to be a linchpin that putin had in EU, since orban via putin also funded cpac/daily wire which is significant for bringing in men into manosphere.
I think that this war is in stalemate position for russia. It cant win, but continues to fight just to delay inevitable loss.
It does not matter whether huilo ends or continues war. Economics and society will collapse because of sanctions and being tired of putin.
Ukraine, while does not have ability to actually win back on front, can cause disaters in the back, and keep defensive positions with continued support from allies.
In the short term, it’s probably what Russia says it is: getting the territories that it wrote into the constitution. Stopping at the areas currently in control would also be acceptable, as that’s already more than Russia had before 2022. Then it’s going to be about regrouping for new attacks and invasions, which don’t have to be aimed at Ukraine. Even if attacking Europe were out of the picture, there are former Soviet countries to its south.
Well - here’s the thing. The worst part of the war for Russia might not even have started - occupation. A war of conquest is only meaninful if you can exploit and extract value from that territory. If Ukraine retains the ability to snipe, drone, bomb, harass and kill occupation forces and any moronic Russian pioneer replacement settlers, then what good is owning burning rubble. Just like the U.S. experience in Vietnam, if the terrioty you take can’t be held or pacified when your most qualified troops are killed or move to the next objective, then what has been the point of taking Hill 835 or whatever. You have to leave at some point because it’s not worth the ongoing bloodshed, and then the ‘enemy’ just comes back.
But territory can only be exploited from economic activity underwritten by a peaceful state of things. And occupation forces can’t live in smouldering puddles of rain water - they live in barracks among communities that generate economic wealth. Russia is YEARS away from reaping occupation, reconstruction and repopulation benefits, and that’s assuming Ukraine stops shooting at all. Nobody seriously expects Russia NOT to try again in a couple years, so from Ukraine’s perspective, the only path to lasting peace is to keep bleeding the Russians dry until something fundamental changes withe the political leadership
Russia’s expectation is what it wrote for Trump’s peace deal. It definitely wants it in writing. Though Russia itself doesn’t respect its agreements, if one were signed by Ukraine and supported by the US, Ukraine would likely not attack unless attacked. We saw this with Russia’s de facto annexation of parts of Georgia and with Crimea. The latter became a vacation resort for Russians and many bought property there, doing just fine until 2022.
Kazakhstan and the other neighboring countries may be within China’s sphere of influence, but I don’t see China getting involved in any serious way.
china cares more about its economy, than wars, a war/military assistance can seriously affect its trades, they think in the long term. thats why taiwain is mostly sabre rattling its for internal consumption.
think that this war is in stalemate position for russia. It cant win, but continues to fight just to delay inevitable loss.
It does not matter whether huilo ends or continues war. Economics and society will collapse because of sanctions and being tired of putin.
Ukraine, while does not have ability to actually win back on front, can cause disaters in the back, and keep defensive positions with continued support from allies.
Rose @lemmy.zip to Ukraine@sopuli.xyz • What Exactly is the Russian Theory of Victory At This Point? In the short term, it’s probably what Russia says it is: getting the territories that it wrote into the constitution. Stopping at the areas currently in control would also be acceptable, as that’s already more than Russia had before 2022. Then it’s going to be about regrouping for new attacks and invasions, which don’t have to be aimed at Ukraine. Even if attacking Europe were out of the picture, there are former Soviet countries to its south.
Sure, but those states have already aligned themselves to China (Kazazhstan and the rest of the Central Asian Republics), Turkey (Azeris) or otherwise disavowed themselves from Russia like Armenia. Georgia and Belraus are pale consolation prizes for what was a one-time shot at restoring the great russian empire.
The only theory of Russian “victory” is to keep at it until Ukraine breaks. There are many breaking points that could give: foreign support, domestic political will, manpower, even corruption.
Russia has only one feasible path to long term stability, and it’s to keep a war economy until something better comes along, like plundering Ukrainian natural resources or some other EU country. That could be gearing up reserves to invade the next country after Ukraine, or revanschist attitudes if beaten by NATO.
Stopping now will kill Putin, tank the economy and create a huge power vacuum that will cost Russia at least a decade before recovery can get started, and possibly be felt for another decade after that. Annexing Ukraine could yield morale victory and plunder to tide them over into the next war, it’s the only way to avoid a collapse, and thus worth every life and sanction.
This, so called front line is essentially empty in a lot of places and one big loss can break unstable in many ways country. We are lucky that they are regarded and inefficient in many areas (in general their army is great at implementing doctrine, doctrine itself is flawed so far with exception of drone warfare, they aren’t cutting edge in this but implementation and standartization is the key here).
the mistake of putin was not plundering during obama years, like when the pro-russian president of ukraine was still in power, he waited too long to act, im guessing putin was getting his info 2nd or 3rd hand.
Well, they did annex a hefty bit of Ukraine under Obama, and suitably stabilised & evaluated the situation afterwards.
Imho, since the frontline stabilized somehow, they are waiting for the right moment to call quits on it. Trump, european politicians, Israel - all cause their bargaining rights to flow up and down week to week, month to month. The pressure on them is not enough to push them either way, so they are still sitting on it and try to make it bigger with their foreign meddling.
Automated defense is not useful if you cannot supply it with ammunition or you don’t have enough people to control it remotely. One story about taking a position using robots is nice, but that won’t win the war. With USA blowing its load on Iran, I wonder how the supplies of ammunition is going for Ukraine.
I think their position is to grind down resistance until populace elects a stooge just to stop the war. Best option in taking over a country is to get its police force to police and control its own population.
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Russia still has large conventional warheads that can flatten city blocks or wipe out county towns.
They’ve been concentrating their efforts on making it through winter. In a few weeks the mud will have dried and they will begin their summer campaign.
Russia has not targeted the ruling class or oligarchs because they believe they can win them over.
If Putin were to fall out of a window, the Communist party would not feel any such constraints.
russias greatest weaknesses they havnt overcome is the winter apparently.
