Thoughts on Ukrainian and Russian strategies

All played out. Some broader thoughts on war and peace. Kiev's four big bets. Praise for Russian fighting skills by western and Ukrainian media. The moral bankruptsy of moralism

In yesterday’s post, we saw that Zelensky is experimenting with peace narratives abroad and domestically, while at the same time continuing the stream of the usual militarism. What is he thinking? What is the Ukrainian strategy?

Played out

There’s a Russian/Ukrainian word - doigratsya (doigravsya, in Ukrainian’. It translates literally as ‘to play oneself out’. You could also say ‘to go too far’. The game you were playing became too dangerous, the risks you happily took led to your downfall.

Kiev is playing a dangerous game. The first bet - wunderwaffen. Bayracktar, Javelins, Leopards, and now F16s. As we saw yesterday, even Zelensky is openly doubtful now of their impact.

The second, particularly beloved bet - the imminent collapse of Russia. According to Orban, Zelensky brought up this to justify why he’s confident of his chances. This has always been a serious obsession among those truly invested in the war. When your prospects are what they are, time to believe in miracles. After some recent blackouts in the parts of Russia bordering with Ukraine, Russia’s coming energy crisis is their favorite topic. Again, one wonders why this theory has no relevance to Ukraine’s own ‘energocide’, but why even ask.

The third bet - China will help. Here, too, I don’t see any real logic, though real patriots of course have various remarkable insights into the Chinese hunger for Russian Siberia. No doubt Xi Jinping believes the only way to resurrect the Chinese nation after the century of humiliation is by annexing the Jewish Autonomous Oblast.

Another incredible bet is that Ukraine is ‘attritting Russian combat capacity’. The orcs are throwing millions to their deaths while we only lose 5 elves, and so on.

One pro-government commentator even came up with a truly powerful timeline (right after stating that prognoses are a bad idea).

According to Mr Grabsky (on right), 2024 will be dedicated to ‘attritting Russian forces’, 2025 to preparing for a counteroffensive, 2026 for a counteroffensive to take back southern Ukraine AND Crimea, 2027 to lay back and watch civil war and energy crisis in Russia, 2028 to take Donbass…

Reality whiplash

If we take a break from such wonderful timelines, other things are happening. The Russian army is moving forward on the frontline. Will Ukraine’s defensive positions further from the front match the quality of those that have been reinforced since 2014? If the recent battles in the Kharkov region show anything, probably not.

According to actual Ukrainian soldiers interviewed by the Washington Post, the quality of Ukraine’s army is worsening, while that of Russia’s is improving. Hardly surprising when the Ukrainian army is being increasingly filled, as I wrote, with forcibly mobilized sick old men and unmotivated rural proletarians:

Ukrainian soldiers even concede that Russia has a ‘clever’ strategy:

Even the notoriously biased neo-con, Kagan family-run Institute for the Study of War has recently been infected with praise for the Russians:

Contrary to bravado about mobilization records by the Ukrainian government, the soldiers that Wapo talked to said they hadn’t seen much difference in troop numbers:

Nor does the reality on the battlefield doesn’t seem to match the stereotype of orcs fighting with shovels. Ukraine’s supposed inherent, genetically-predisposed technological superiority is another favorite of Ukrainian futurologists:

Doigralis…

I started with this word - to play oneself out. I think that the Ukrainian government strategy is to bet on fundamentally wrong assumptions. To hope that things will change in the future, while in reality time is playing against them.

With each day, they lose more territory. The more they wait for F16s or Chinese saviors, or whatever else, the less land they’ll have from which to even launch their ‘2026 counteroffensive’.

According to the head of the British army, Russia may need 5 years to take full control of the four Ukrainian regions it has annexed. Even taking into account their bias, let’s assume that’s true. In the 17th century, Russia fought for decades with the Poles over control of Ukraine. Eventually, they won. In World War two, the Red Army was stuck from May 1942 to August 1943 around Kharkov, but once it took it flew across the rest of the country.

And is it really correct to assume the Ukrainian defensive constructions are everywhere the same as in the Donetsk region, where they have been built since 2014? If the recent Russian advances in the Kharkov region offensive showed, probably not. A Ukrainian military officer interviewed recently by the (relatively pro-government) Yury Romanenko also stated that ‘the Russians dig in many times better than we do’.

So Zelensky can experiment all he likes with manipulating popular attitudes for peace with small dosages of fake pacifism. But beyond media manipulation, which he is so familiar with, there is also reality. And this reality is costing Ukrainians very dearly - countless dead and wounded, economic devastation, demographic collapse.

Some thoughts

The reality has always been the same - Ukraine is weaker than Russia, and the west will never enter into a full-scale confrontation with Russia. It can either accept the Russian demand for Ukrainian NATO neutrality - which, as even the NYT is writing now, is all this conflict has ever been about - or it can continue losing territory.

What I hate is that when you say something like this, some people instantly resort of moral accusations. Oh, you’re a Putlerist shill. Oh, you love dead Ukrainians.

All this does it replace reality with moralization. The reality is that the Ukrainian government will end up agreeing to the same thing one way or other. The only variable is how many people have to die - in reality, not hypothetically - until it does.

I wonder what those screeching about Putlerist peace narratives will say when, inevitably, the Ukrainian government agrees to some form of oh-so humiliating freezing of the frontline - at best. Most probably nothing, and will continue with the same old song as always.

Not only that, but the longer it waits, the harsher Russia’s conditions will be. Russia’s goal, as former Zelensky advisor Arestovych never tires of repeating lately, is to eliminate any possibility of any sorts of threats arising from the territory of Ukraine. Given Ukrainian intransigence, and the constant talk of how even if it doesn’t join NATO, Ukraine should become ‘a big Israel’, in Zelensky’s words - how willing would Putin be to take Ukraine’s word on it?

Would Russia really trust the word of Ukrainian government officials on their supposed geopolitical neutrality? Would Russia really be happy to allow the rest of Ukraine to join NATO and be left with part of the east and south, as the NYT claims?

A grand deal on the global chessboard?

Of course, Putin has done many deals with the west in the past. Nowadays, he complains he was tricked. I used to also believe in the likelihood of an upcoming ‘grand deal’ between the west and Russia.

In truth, that was more probably my own optimistic hope than anything else. For one, I don’t see why the west has any interest in giving up the fight in Ukraine. I think they’ll suck all the juice they can out of ‘the Ukraine game’ for as long as they can. The Americans are much smarter than the Ukrainians, that at least is obvious. Something approaching real red line for them might be around the Dniepr river - which is also probably what the Russian government would be relatively happy with.

Once the Russians get around there, NATO could send troops to the western half of Ukraine. Of course, if NATO doesn’t do that, which is also entirely possible, I don’t see why Russia wouldn’t be averse to going to the Carpathians - Russia’s only real geographical barrier, as Arestovych says.

Lest I be accused of prognosticating, I also think it’s entirely possible for more of the same - steady, if slow, Russian advances, degradation of Ukrainian military capacity, going on for years. But it also seems somewhat unrealistic to suppose it can continue indefinitely.

My opinion on this has always been the same, before 2022 as well as before. This is a war fought because a small group of Ukrainians - a core of about 20-30% - are dead-set on joining the EU and NATO. United by broadly middle class values and hatred for the poor majority of their own country, they view the EU, NATO, US, or Israel as symbols of bourgeois ‘normality’, as opposed to degenerate proletarian heathen - the Russians, the Arabs, or their own citizens. Plenty of them survive on western funding, or have tied their life to either war or the atlanticist political project. I’m happy to say all this, because my family is filled with these lovely specimens.

Plenty of Ukrainians don’t want to die for this, but they are given no choice. People justify endless, pointless death by moral abstractions. If nothing else, it’s enough to convince one of the moral bankruptcy of moralism.