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?