Russia has invaded Ukraine

[Pierre]

Ok, I think we can agree that the outcome of any cessation of war will not be Ukraine restored to pre-2014 borders.

Neither would Putin be content with just holding onto the Crimea, as he’s already had it for over a decade and he won’t give up Sevastopol.

So what’s on the table are the gains made by Russia since the war started. Which is about 1/5th of Ukraine (not sure if that includes Crimea or not).

It may be simplistic but what else would the negotiation look like?

- Russia retreats, keeps Crimea and gets a minerals deal with Ukraine? I don’t see that squaring with Putin’s dream of restoring Greater Russia.

- Or perhaps Ukraine fights on to victory, as the picture you seem to be painting has them in the ascendancy.

---------- Post added at 18:27 ---------- Previous post was at 18:24 ----------

Originally Posted by pip08456

Pierre, you obviously don't know otr understand the Ukrainian people, they will never surrender, never give terrortory to anyone. Either Russia is defeated (and they can do it) or they cease to exist. They are now developing and producing their own weapons to do it.

Your point falls in 2014. The Crimea has been under Russian control for over a decade and was taken with barely a whimper.

---------- Post added at 18:37 ---------- Previous post was at 18:27 ----------

territory changing hands by conquest is anathema in Europe, what with that unfortunate business we concluded in 1945

Indeed, but borders changing in Europe after wars and after the fall of the USSR, is not to be unexpected.

I may have mentioned on this thread before, but I had a conversation in Feb with an ex- Colonel and said this ends with Russia keeping some of the gains, a new border with a demilitarised Zone manned on the Ukraine side by European and or NATO Troops.

[pip08456]

So the Ukrainian constitution is a red herring?! Try telling Ukrainians that! They fought for it in 2013-2014 in the Maiden (Independence Square) protestss! I kknow people who were there, thankfully I don't know any who were shot.

Without going to the people the Constitution cannot be changed, they will not cede any terrortery or surrender.

Try understanding the people first. Thankfully I made the time to do so when I went there last year and made so many friends.

They will fighrt until they die, they have no other option.

Putin wants the whole Donbas because it’s mineral rich and gets him closer to Kyiv, which is where he really wants to be. No Ukrainian leader with any agency will agree a peace treaty that hands it over on the basis of its present administrative boundaries because that puts Ukraine’s fortress cities and defensible high ground in Russia’s control. If any territory is ceded at all, it will be Donbas, more or less as presently occupied.

Putin also wants the other southern gains because he wants a land bridge to Crimea. He wants Crimea because whoever controls Crimea controls the Black Sea and he wants a land bridge because the Kerch Strait Bridge is vulnerable, and by some estimates so badly damaged it can no longer support traffic of any weight. All of those reasons are precisely why Ukraine will not agree to any of it, and while I think there is a deal to be had on the basis of Donbas-ish only, there’s no deal ever going to be had for any more than that. The very most we’d ever see would be a Korean-like freezing of the conflict but that would only happen if both sides could tacitly agree they’d worn out their ability to continue.

Who does, however, have the ability to continue? Ukraine is increasing its capabilities month by month and by credible estimates is suffering casualties at only a tenth of the rate of the Russians. The Russian meat assault tactics just can’t go on forever. They are going to run out of people, just as they are going to run out of Soviet era tanks. They can make lots of Shahed terror drones but Ukraine’s getting better and better at shooting them down, and in any case Russia seems unable to put them to strategic use. Meanwhile the whole of Europe is re-arming at an increasing pace and even our shameful politicians are starting to reverse the myopic underinvestment of the past 30 years. A Europe armed to the teeth and attuned to Russian military adventuring was not what Putin was aiming for.

Much of the commentariat is stuck with the old ‘Russian Bear’ mindset which ceased to be the case in the 1990s and has only crumbled further since. They have no army worth the name, crumbling infrastructure and dwindling equipment stockpiles. They are only continuing at all because their leaders have a genocidal disregard for their own people and are willing to sacrifice them by the thousand on futile daily assaults designed to soak up Ukrainian bullets. But even that can’t go on forever.

---------- Post added at 18:57 ---------- Previous post was at 18:56 ----------

Originally Posted by pip08456

So the Ukrainian constitution is a red herring?! Try telling Ukrainians that! They fought for it in 2013-2014 in the Maiden (Independence Square) protestss! I kknow people who were there, thankfully I don't know any who were shot.

Without going to the people the Constitution cannot be changed, they will not cede any terrortery or surrender.

Try understanding the people first. Thankfully I made the time to do so when I went there last year and made so many friends.

They will fighrt until they die, they have no other option.

In terms of which reasons actually, genuinely, prevent a peace deal occurring, yes it is. I’m not saying the Ukrainians would vote to cede territory, I’m simply saying it is untrue that a statement in a constitution forecloses even the possibility of it.

A useful take on recent events from Timothy Garton Ash, professor of European Studies at Oxford:

https://timothygartonash.substack.co...rumps-disgrace

The outcome of this war won't be determined by any peace talks any time soon. (The White House claimed Putin had agreed to meet with Zelensky next; but Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov says he won't. Another slap in the face for Trump.)

No, the outcome of this war will be determined by the course of this war - and by the defence and deterrence arrangements in place when it finally reaches a ceasefire. 'Security guarantees' are not a matter of words on paper. (Ukrainians remember the fine words of the security assurances given by the US, UK and Russia in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which turned out to be not worth the paper they were written on.) In real life, security guarantees are a matter of steel, firepower, electronics, physical presence and mutual trust.

If Ukraine can keep holding the line, with only small losses of territory despite its acute shortage of young men ready to fight, and Europe (together with countries like Canada, and some vital strategic enablers from the US) can sustain its military, defence-industrial and economic support for Ukraine while planning for longer-term deterrence – particularly in the skies – the pressure can eventually become greater on Russia than it is on Ukraine. That’s more likely to happen next year than this. Only then, if Putin finds he is getting nowhere militarily while the returning bodybags and a faltering economy begin to threaten the stability of his regime, might he be ready to start talking seriously.

Russia escalating again: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c2enwk1l9e1t

Sending drones into Polish airspace.

Russia will always take as much as they can get.

Poland should have been shooting down incursions long before now. Russia’s trying it on because they’ve been given reason to believe they can get away with it; now they want to know how much they can get away with.

If Nato had any balls whatsoever it would declare a no-fly buffer zone 50 miles beyond its borders into Ukraine, and ‘reserve the right’ to take down anything 50 miles inside Belarus on a trajectory threatening Ukraine or Poland. Russia only understands a slap in the face. Words, it ignores.

[Sephiroth]

Not that I know anything - but if Poland hadn't shot down the drones and said drones then exploded on Polish territory, there'd be a NATO situation. So it might have been a navigational problem given all the GPS jamming that's going on etc.

[Carth]

on that note . . .

conspiracy theory #57

Ukraine drones hoping to drag Poland into the shit too

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

Not that I know anything - but if Poland hadn't shot down the drones and said drones then exploded on Polish territory, there'd be a NATO situation. So it might have been a navigational problem given all the GPS jamming that's going on etc.

That’s the Kremlin line of course, and is being disseminated by their sock puppets in Belarus this morning.

In reality, the track of all drones emanating from Russia is followed and recorded carefully. In this case, we know that a dozen or more violated Polish airspace, but none violated Hungarian or Slovakian airspace (coincidentally, Europe’s two big Russia cheerleaders); furthermore none showed any sign of going off course within Belarus, which is frequently used for overflight by Russian munitions.

The scale and nature of the incursion is far too great to be anything other than deliberate. It’s likely to have been calibrated to look small enough for them to say it was accidental with a straight face, but large enough to force NATO’s defences into action. Be in no doubt this was a probing attack intended to see exactly how far Nato can be pushed and what it will do when its hand is forced. The fact that Nato seems only to have shot at drones they were reasonably certain would come down within Poland (and not veer back into Ukraine after a brief incursion, as happens from time to time), tells Putin that somehow, more than 3 years into the Ukraine war, Nato is still not prepared to take any active, direct action to shoot down something intended to explode inside Ukraine, even while it’s over Nato airspace.

Nato has not come out of this smelling of roses.

---------- Post added at 12:18 ---------- Previous post was at 11:56 ----------

Russia’s diplomatic representative in Poland now saying no evidence has been presented for the Russian origin of the drones.

As per the playbook, they throw multiple, contradictory, contrary statements into the public domain. Having everyone else argue endlessly about what actually happened is the actual point.

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by Chris

That’s the Kremlin line of course, and is being disseminated by their sock puppets in Belarus this morning.

I'm more worried that such lines are amplified by the likes of Reform UK and GB News, whose viewers think it's edgy to take an alternative line.