<deep breath> ok. Things are getting really, really weird. But. Focus on the positive. Sauron is moving to a position of settling the war. By creating some alternate reality where he negotiates a favorable peace with Ukraine…but only with Trump and Xi. The words barely make sense to even type out…it’s totally absurd. But his open talk of peace is at least some kind of good.
What leverage does he imagine that Trump and Xi can use againt Ukraine and it’s European backers? Pretending that Trump and Xi speak for Ukraine is not exactly a sign of towering strength - it’s a sign of absolute deranged deathcment from reality. There’s absoultely no way that Trump and Xi can find a way to stop Ukraine from turning your low functioning grunts into piles of burnt spaghetti and blowing up your industrial backbone into smouldering ash. If they were capable of that, they would have done it already. So here we are, where they will put on some kind of political theatre to decide the end of a failed invasion, without the participation of one side of the war. Wait…wut? I mean…the reality is he knows he’s trapped and their perverted RUSSIA STRONK psyche can’t accept simply having lost. So they do this sort of weird bullshit.
Put the crazy aside for a second - let’s be equally crazy and assume that it works - however we get there, the shooting stops. Then what? Russia will immediately retool, seek to corrode Ukraine’s support network, and simply resume attacks in a year or two if they get favorable political partners in Paris and Berlin. You know, stooges. That plan is actually going way too well - it’s actually pretty frightening. But that will still take a couple more years to happen and Russia and Trump probably don’t survive that long.
What in the name of hot fudge sundaes is even going on?
<Reset Brain>. This is nuts. Objectively ridiculous. The plan is nuttier than squirrel shit. But…fine. It screams Russian weakness, and that’s a good thing. While they throw impotent tantrums about Ukrainian war mongering, their position weakens further in the near term.
This would explain why Trump has also abandoned even the flimsy disguise he had on before as a completely bought and paid for russian asset. They understand what’s coming, and it’s time for him to fulfill his final duty before his nuts are cut off in the midterms. No matter what mischief he runs there, all of his illegality and corrosive fuckery becomes harder to execute as he pivots to personal survival mode for the last paranoid months of his life. Once again, where the hell has the CIA been for the last 10 years while the president himself continuously shows that he is a russian asset??? Please don’t answer that, it’s too gross and scary to think about.
It’s not all good for Ukraine. Right now, they are able to attack Russian factories and cities daily pretty effectively. The russian public that matters is finally feeling it. But - their support may be substantially weaker in 2 years. But…Trump will be politically neutured by then. Or maybe dead. 🤞 . Ukraine emerges free, viable, wounded, Europe-aligned and with the best army in the world for fighting the Russians. Maybe one of the best armies in the world, period. Certainly the most tested drone army.
Russia, on the other hand, is going to enter a SEVERE post-war period that will make the 90’s gangsterism look like child’s play. You have to re-build your army personnel and hardware, which is a decades-long project. Longer than Putin’s lifespan, at any rate. Domestic problems will abound, and the scramble for post-putin succession plans is going to go into hyperdrive. This will create instability and ethno-corporate warlord factionalism that might create opportunities for Ukraine to regain control over the occupied territories. A post-trump America will almost certainly be harder on Russia than Krasnov is, and China is poised to solve all it’s resource challenges by ripping Russia apart. India just wants cheap energy. Russia has no good friends for a Marshall Plan or reconstruction.
It’s a wild, weird phase we’re in. Upside - near term, Ukraine has survived what was plainly to be a complete genocide. Downside - the mid and long term are as clear as mud. If you get a bad peace now, the sooner the next invasion happens…but the weaker russia will be.
The best thing to do might be to keep Russia bleeding until something fundamentally changes, or the orcs will soon be back. They’re squealing for peace, and in absurd ways. Tough to say what the ‘right’ next thing to do is for Ukraine. I usually have a theory, but…<shrugs>. I got nothing except Slava Ukraini. Hopefully someone else who’s actually smart has some idea and Comments.
Oblasts in Russia have not all suffered equally from Putin’s extraction of human and natural resources. A plan for reconstruction and reform that plays well in St Petersburg won’t play the same in the Siberian Oblasts were their young were marched into the meat grinder while simultaneously being ignored for growth and support from Moscow for decades.
The Russian Federation will have at least some break up, and China will be there to welcome or shepherd these new republics into the second half of the 21st century with a strong support in Han culture. In only a few moves, China will solve its natural resource limit problem, its access the Pacific without problems from the First Island Chain.
Russia exhausting itself in Ukraine and ignoring its western populations plays right into China’s hands. I think Putin has figured this out, but doesn’t know how to change the situation.
I think you’re right. Taking several steps back, the Russian empire is collapsing like the Ottoman one did. Over 300 years, and multiple phases, which makes it difficult to assess where you are in a single human timeline. The Ottomans collapsed by losing wars they should have won, decreasing quality of leadership, suffering from corruption at all stages of their society, a declining military that lost wars everyone assumed they would win, the loss of trade networks, loss of their prestigious colonies before collapsing into the ethnic rump state of Turkey they have today. Point being - it rarely all happens at once like the Death Star exploding and the emperor getting thown down a shaft by Darth Vader.
This seems the most likely outcome - russia collapses into a rump state still controlled by St. Pete’s and Moscow, from Murmansk in the north to Sochi in the south, and from Belgord to the Urals. And if it’s led by ethno-corporate warlords, then they will immediately start fighting each other and it will be yet another generational bloodbath, but - at least it will make it hardre for them to mess with their neighbors in a conquest type of way.
China is the big winner here. They are now the undisputed leader of the Axis of Authoritarian Hellholes. All of their resource shortfalls can simply be taken from Russia incrementally. For a man so consumed by legacy, he might go down as the worst Russian in history - the man who lost Ukraine for good, pissed away the soviet inheritance and gave away the country to China.