Putin’s goals by GrimJim
So, the Europeans have said that Russia must grant an unconditional 30 day ceasefire, or they’ll ramp up aid to Ukraine and put on more sanctions, including some against Nord Stream II. They claim Trump is onside, but Trump hasn’t confirmed this.
What a surprise.
What Europeans want is for Russia, which is winning on the ground, to give them thirty days to rearm Ukraine. Can’t imagine why Russia won’t go for that.
The Euros are delusional. They have no leverage. They’ve already said they intend to end all energy purchases from Russia as soon as they can. (That isn’t yet, they’re buying tons of Russian energy still, it just goes thru India first.)
Why the hell would Russia agree to give Ukraine time to re-arm and entrench without something in return.
Once again, Russia’s best alternative to a negotiated agreement is to simply win the war. And while advances are still slow, they’re all on Russia’s side and the Ukrainian army is showing signs of being near the breaking point. They’ve also been pushed past almost all of their prepared defenses.
Personally, I think Putin is being incredibly generous offering a ceasefire at all. I think that’s a mistake.
But the Euros are living in LalaLand. They don’t have any real leverage and they keep acting like they do. Ukraine is losing. Nothing the US and Europe can do, short of declaring war, will change that fact. And since the Euros have admitted the Minsk accord were signed with the intention of building up the Ukrainian army for another war, well, why the hell would Putin want to make a new deal that creates another frozen conflict?
Just insane. Europe doesn’t get that they are a has-been power, in serious decline and that they just can’t push other nations around any more. They don’t have the muscle or the industrial base or the tech lead any more.
The war will be ended on Russia’s terms unless Putin is incredibly foolish. That’s possible, contrary to the Western narrative Putin isn’t a Hawk, he’s the least Hawkish person anywhere near power in Russia. If he was to have a heart attack tomorrow, whoever replaced him would be far more militaristic and far less restrained. Putin prefers peace. He’s just learned, probably, that peace can’t be made with the West, it must be imposed.
mago
Western so called leaders live in delusional Lala land way beyond your header and Ukraine. . .
Z
They’re not only delusional, they are drugged up …
https://x.com/BGatesIsaPyscho/status/1921644382714724527
Z
Purple Library Guy
In terms of the Ukrainian army showing signs of overstretch . . . so, Ukraine has a whole bunch of guys whose job is to recruit . . . basically, to enforce the draft, or to put it bluntly, to grab Ukrainian men off the street and take them off to war. Most Ukrainians hate their guts.
So, recent recruitment drives have apparently been seriously faltering. My understanding is that Zelensky finally made a desperation move that will improve his popularity considerably. See, there’s like 110,000 of these guys. And lately, they weren’t delivering the goods. So, Zelensky ordered them to the front.
It makes sense, but it points to a basic fact: That’s the last bunch. If recruitment was failing so hard they’re giving it up and sending in the recruiters, that means there are no more soldiers to be had. Or at least, that the situation is bad enough that the Ukrainians are staking it all on a gamble that the war will end before this one-time infusion of men runs out.
Alan Sutton
Putin does indeed seem to be dragging his feet with the war. I know that the defence has the advantage in this new type of modern war but things would get a lot easier for Russia if there was to be a serious collapse of the Ukraine Army at the front. It looks pretty likely that Russia could bring that about.
What are the Russian waiting for?
vmsmith
I don’t know how you can say Russia is winning on the ground. Their 3-day “special military operation” has turned into over three years of botched tactics and horrible losses. What little progress they’ve made (only recently) has come at a terrible cost, both in people and equipment. It took them months to get Ukraine out of Kursk, and only then with North Korean assistance.
Plus, Ukraine has boxed in the Russian Black Sea fleet, and they are pummeling Russia with drones, knocking out key strategic targets regularly.
The Russians have shown themselves to have been the most overrated military in the world. And almost no matter what happens, Ukraine has won. Putin thought this was going to be a simple little 3-day walk in the park, and three years later they have almost nothing to show for it except hundreds of thousands of casualties. All because little Ukraine, run by a comedian, has turned out to be the mouse that roared.
Ukraine might not get all of its territory back, but make no mistake, simply by being such a fearsome David to Russia’s paper tiger Goliath, it will have won.
Revelo
Maps and discussions of territory tend to be stupidizing where Ukraine is concerned. Yes, geography matters in the very long run, but in the short run, hearts and minds is what matters. Russia “wins” when Ukraine, Europe and USA (in order of importance to this war) lose heart and gain minds and thus get tired of fighting, and that takes time.
With sufficient money and weapons, Ukraine could fight for many more years. Without constant infusions of money and weapons, it will fall quickly. Europe, in theory, could support the war forever, but that implies reduced standard of living and Europeans are unlikely to make the tradeoff of dubious pleasure of backing a proxy war at the expense of reduced pensions, etc. USA is better positioned than Europe but also has even less reason to derive dubious pleasure from backing a losing proxy war. So USA and Europe will give up in under a year, stop the weapons and money infusions, and then Ukraine quickly falls.
Russia has already damaged its reputation by moving the border in Crimea and southeast Ukraine and it wants to avoid further damage, so it will almost certainly NOT absorb more territory. What it wants is a puppet state covering most of Ukraine (including parts of the area shown as green, namely Zhytomyr and Vinnytsia Oblasts) and then leave far west Ukraine as a poison pill for Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania to occupy and bring under control.
Russia does not want to ethnically cleanse the east and south Ukraine puppet state, but it does want the fanatics (including ethnic Russian fanatics, there are plenty of neo Nazi ethnic Russians from both east Ukraine and Russia itself in the Ukrainian army who hate Russia precisely because it is multiethnic and includes a large minority of non “white” Churkas aka Mongoloids live in east Russian) to go the far west Ukraine area where Poland can have fun dealing with them.
Mark Level
Good note from mago. How nice has Putin been? So, the DEMAND from the Trump Admin that got the Euro War Pigs (Starmer, Macron, the new boy Blackrock Merz) so excited was that Russia agree to an “unconditional cease fire” of 30 days, to take effect today, May 12 in the West, for the re-armament you mention, a 3rd or 4th round since Minsk was openly violated repeatedly.
Putin politely demurred, & his counter-offer was meeting again in Istanbul, between Russia and Ukraine, on the 15th. That led to that flatulent phalanx (I’m misquoting George Galloway) getting Russian permission for a train trip from Poland to “Keev.” Macron on arrival exultantly hugged and smooched, including cheek and face-smooches, Zelensky. (Alex Christoforou calls contact with the Green Goblin “the ‘Elensky Curse,” at one point early in the war, since the letter Z was prominent for the Russian military since the Great Patriotic War, Zelensky denounced it, as he denounced speaking Russian, his primary language, because, paraphrasing, “I hate all Russians, they are evil and focused only on war, Russian is the language of the Imperialists.” The Elensky Curse is that anyone closely tied to him gets removed from power– the delusional clown Olaf Sholz being the most recent example.)
They made their pointless plan to “defeat Russia” and there was a small scandal on the return train ride, when the press came into their compartment and there was “a bag of white powder” in a Kleenex, also a little metal spoon (shaped like the McDonald’s stirrer spoons in the 80s used for cocaine), Macron guiltily bundled it up and threw it away. The French https://www.business-standard.com/world-news/emmanuel-macron-cocaine-keir-starmer-friedrich-merz-train-ukraine-russia-125051200252_1.html
I love that the “Business Standard” link shared to Protect the Leader (no, George Bush did not have a visible “device” on his back during the debate with cyborg AlGore, https://www.salon.com/2004/10/30/bulge_5/) has “BS” emblazoned atop it. The Cocaine Cowboy ‘Elensky at least left them with a worthy gift which is popular in his Presidential office. This stuff is straight from the Marx Brothers film “Duck Soup.” You can’t make this shit up!!
Jan Wiklund
I think many agree.
Kishore Mahbubani:
“What shocks many in the world is that Europeans didn’t anticipate the quagmire they’re in. One of the first rules of geopolitics is that we must always plan against worst-case scenarios. After the Ukraine war broke out, all European strategic thinking was based on the best-case scenario of the United States being a totally reliable ally, despite having experienced Trump’s first term and his threats to pull out of the world’s biggest military alliance. For a continent that has produced strategic minds like Metternich, Talleyrand, and Kissinger, there has been almost infantile strategic thinking on Ukraine and its long-term consequences.” (https://mahbubani.net/its-time-for-europe-to-do-the-unthinkable/)
Anatol Lieven:
“And in any case, can Macron’s advisors no longer read a map? How is the Russian army supposed to get to Moldova, let alone Romania, without crossing the Dnieper River and then the whole of southern Ukraine?
This kind of public hysteria makes thinking rationally about sensible long-term European strategies extremely difficult. Thus if you took seriously Starmer’s speech to parliament last week (in which he announced that Britain would raise its military spending to 2.5 percent of GDP by cutting international aid), you would have to think that not just Warsaw but Paris have already fallen and the Russia’s army is in London.” (https://responsiblestatecraft.org/uk-france-ukraine-meeting/)
The European topside seems to live in a bubble, but what kind of a bubble is it that makes them unaware of the principal difference between wish-thinking and reality? Do they still believe they live in the 19th century when “we have the gatling gun and they have not”?
Or what?
Feral Finster
The plan ever always only was for NATO to intervene and then the United States to ride to the rescue rather than let its eurocatamites hang out to dry.
This is part of the groundwork towards that goal. The europeans know exactly what they are doing.
Feral Finster
@revelo
“With sufficient money and weapons, Ukraine could fight for many more years. Without constant infusions of money and weapons, it will fall quickly. Europe, in theory, could support the war forever, but that implies reduced standard of living and Europeans are unlikely to make the tradeoff of dubious pleasure of backing a proxy war at the expense of reduced pensions, etc.”
Nobody will ask europeans what they want. You think a farmer cares whether his sheep would prefer to be sheared or fleeced?
Oakchair
They’re not only delusional, they are drugged up …
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Our rulers (or at least the puppets that are the face for the real rulers) are frat boys too busy getting drunk, high, and having sex to bother with any of those loser things such as knowledge, understanding, intelligence, or hard work.
The reason the most intellectual of their arguments is “the experts say” is because they quite possibly are unable to think for themselves. They’re just following orders from their handlers who also supply them with copious amounts of emotionally and intellectual impairing drugs and chemicals. Top the drug fueled parties with cameras recording all their crimes and misdeeds and what more do their handlers need to keep those drug bathed tools in line?
Feral Finster
@ Oakchair
“Our rulers (or at least the puppets that are the face for the real rulers) are frat boys too busy getting drunk, high, and having sex to bother with any of those loser things such as knowledge, understanding, intelligence, or hard work.
The reason the most intellectual of their arguments is “the experts say” is because they quite possibly are unable to think for themselves. ”
Our rulers don’t need to bother with loser things, because they always have been able to resort to brute force to get their way.
Revelo
>Nobody will ask europeans what they want.
All “democracies” are oligarchies, where the oligarchs compete peacefully among one another to win the allegiance of voters, and so the feelings of voters do usually count, except when oligarchs are united versus the masses (such as regarding taxes on the rich), in which case obviously the masses don’t count. European oligarchs are not universally benefiting from this Ukraine war, and some clans of oligarchs do want the war to stop, so feelings of voters do matter in this case.
More than likely, rearming of Europe is getting widespread oligarch support not to help Ukraine, because fighting Russia is dangerous, but rather Ukraine is just an excuse to rearm in preparation for going after African resources before China grabs them all. Algeria and Libya are oil/gas rich, Morocco has the world biggest phosphate reserves, and that’s just North Africa. Since the cockeyed plan to plunder Ukraine and Russia is failing, maybe it’s time to restart the old African colonial plundering plan. USA will back African plundering, provided it gets the lion’s share of the loot. China and Russia can provide weapons to Africa, but here is a case where looking at the map helps: note that Europe is much closer to North Africa than China and Russia.
Soredemos
@vmsmith
I know there’s probably little point in arguing with what is very likely a bad faith troll, but more for the benefit of onlookers:
Russia has never once given any kind of timeline for this war. The three day victory claim came from a Western General, not anyone on the Russian side. They likely hoped for a quick victory ending in negotiations (and almost got it, before the West assured Zelensky he could win if he stayed in the fight), then shrugged and transitioned to a grinding war strategy when that didn’t happen.
The Russian military is larger and better equipped now than it was at the start of the war. They’re running a strategy of minimizing their own losses while grinding the Ukrainian army into dust. ‘Demiliterization’ will be achieved one way or another, including if needed by sinpyk killing every Ukrainian soldier that can be found until there are none left.
The Kursk incursion was turned into a slaughterhouse. Setting up enclosed firebags has been a repeated Russian strategy in this war (one Ukraine keeps falling for). Why be in a hurry to push Ukraine out of Kursk when Ukraine was so eager to just keep pushing units into the cauldron to die? Second tier Russian units were sufficient to contain the problem while better units continued grinding away inside Ukraine.
Russian is essentially running this war as a side show. They can afford the cost from the booming economy and increased oil and gas revenues (which have gone up after the sanctions, not down), they physically have no shortage of latent industrial capacity or of willing soldiers (‘army of unwilling conscripts’, blah blah blah; voluntary sign ups remain high in Russia. As ever, what Ukraine accuses Russia of is actually the case for Ukraine itself ). Ukraine is essentially a way for the entire Russian army to get real battlefield experience by being rotated in and out. Meanwhile Kiev is well into late Nazi Germany territory of just keeping formations in the field until they die.
Poul
RUSI expert Alex Vershinin with an estimate of the casualties for both parties in the war.
His estimate is that Ukraine has 3-3½ times the losses of Russia.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/05/an-immediate-peace-is-the-best-one-ukraine-can-get.html
Mark Level
Thank you to Sorodemos taking down the Troll’s “Dust in the eyes of the profane.” Quite ridiculous claims, but a bit more skilled at rhetoric than Tallifer (who still hasn’t joined her/his Ukrainian allies in the fighting.) NAFO trolls get paid, so at least something results from their efforts. Don’t spend it all in one place, Agent Smith!! The gravy train will be exhausted in under a year, how much under is the only relevant question.
Feral Finster
@Revelo:
What classes of european oligarchs want the war to stop? The oligarch class is europe is pretty united on this matter, to the point where anything other than full-throated Goebbels at the Sportspalast in 1943 is a social faux pas akin to standing up to interrupt a High Papal Mass to demand that the person who just farted please identify him- or herself.
different clue
@Alan Sutton,
” What are the Russians waiting for”?
They may be doing their own version of what I read somewhere that Francisco Franco and the Rebel Forces did in the Spanish Civil War. The theory I read was that Franco knew very well that he had all-but-won the war very early and could have moved for a swift conquest and domination of a very unhappy Republican half of all Spaniards. But instead he decided to drag the war out as long as possible to give as many Fighters for the Republic a chance to “dance before the guns”. His goal was to attrit-by-killing all Spaniards healthy enough to fight and willing to fight against the Franco forces. When he was satisfied that the Republican side was demographically depleted enough to be conquered and ruled without lingering insurgency, he moved on to conquer Madrid.
That is what Putin is doing. He is giving all resisting Ukrainians their chance to “dance before the guns”. When Ukraine is so depleted of fighting-capable young Ukrainians that it no longer has a demographic reserve left to engage in guerilla insurgency either, then Putin will move in to complete the operation to his satisfaction.
He is waiting for Ukraine to reach that state of collapse.
His longest term goal will probably be to have a Russia-friendly Russiakraine in the East and Center, and let the West have its West-Friendly Galiciakraine in the Far West. Maybe he will have his forces occupy Galiciakraine just long enough to Shermanize ( or maybe Groznify it) first ( “March to the Sea”) before retreating to let Galiciakraine live on as the Paraguay of Europe.
The Banderazi Galiciakrainians will then amuse themselves for the next few decades by planting bombs and doing terror all over EUrope ( and Canadamerica too if they can reach us) to get revenge for us not having supported them hard enough long enough to conquer Russia all the way to Vladivostok).
Oakchair
More than likely, rearming of Europe is getting widespread oligarch support not to help Ukraine… but rather Ukraine is just an excuse to rearm in preparation for going after African resources
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If that is the case I wont be surprised when it fails and blows up in their faces. Pretty much exactly how the wars in Syria, Libya, Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan, and Ukraine went for NATO.
Feral Finster
@Oakchair:
If Ukraine were an excuse for europe to re-arm, they wouldn’t be sending everything they have out already.
As to the idea of an old folks home for geriatric metrosexuals, the biggest wimps on the planet, becoming a military power – don’t make me laugh.
Revelo
>What classes of european oligarchs want the war to stop?
Those losing money, obviously. Mainly from higher energy costs but other reasons war is hurting some businesses.
Oakchair
@Feral Finster
“As to the idea of an old folks home for geriatric metrosexuals, the biggest wimps on the planet, becoming a military power – don’t make me laugh.”
——
I’m chuckling but at the same time look at the military destructiveness of the shopping mall filled with asthmatic, diabetic, opioid addicts who scream invective at the idea of having to turn away from the TV.
Oakchair
Anyone else notice the projection from the west?
Russia’s going to commit ethnic cleansing to imperialize a nation!
Um… That’s what NATO backed Ukraine was doing to southern and eastern Ukraine before Russia intervened. It’s what Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Poland are currently doing to Russians in their country. It’s what the West is currently doing to Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. It’s what America has done worldwide since before most of us were born.
Kouros
The map posted has blind spots.
Nowhere in Moldovan constitution says that R of Moldova cannot re-unite with Romania. I really, really love that shortcut. Yes, Transdnistria was never Romanian territory and it is a creation of the Soviets (1924), but legally is Moldovan Territory. I’ll take it as compensation for Budjak (souther part of R of Moldova / Bassarabia) that was given to Ukraine, and is on the coast of Black Sea (nobody thinks that piece of land there is a bit wonky?)
Feral Finster
@Revelo: I am aware of no such class of eurooligarchs.
As pointed out before, anything other than full-on support of Ukraine remains unthinkable.