Ukraine, Expectations
2022-02-26
Russia has invaded Ukraine. I want to put down some thoughts, predictions, and expectations about the conflict before it goes too far.
Ukraine Beats Russia!
Many are saying "Ukraine is putting up a hell of a fight" or "Russia might have to withdraw on this one". They’ve been saying it since Day 2 (it is currently Day 3). There are Ukrainian-backed rumors of many thousands of Russian casualties. The persistent narrative seems to paint Ukraine as the heroic underdog, and everyone wants them to win.
I doubt it.
Remember, it took the USA a month to finish its invasion of Iraq in 2003. We’re on day three. It’s going spectacularly badly for Ukraine. Maybe not a "Seven Day War" like with Israel, Russia is definitely not achieving every objective on the timeline it was hoping, but that’s far from a defeat. Every theater has seen Ukraine pushed back, pocketed, cut off, and otherwise defeated. And Russia hasn’t even committed a quarter of its massed forces - this is still just the tip of the spear.
Ukraine will lose. It will lose in about a month. There won’t be a single day where victory is declared or the Ukrainian government agrees to terms with Moscow (they can’t, they’re NATO pawns). The military will be functionally destroyed within that time, and eventually there will be a medium-intensity insurgency west of the Dnieper. But given what the civilians have been doing, it will not be all that successful at first. There’s a possibility that a terrorist organization emerges from that, which will be very easy to brand as neo-nazi fascists, which serves the same function as al-Qaeda to the USA, and that organization might receive American funding. But i wouldn’t actually put my money on it - if i had to bet, Ukraine will be pacified in a month and no serious insurgency will exist. The Ukrainian government / Western tactic of trying to rack up "civilian" casualties (more on that later) will ultimately fail to do anything but stain historybooks.
Russia wins.
"Civilian" Casualties
While it hasn’t yet come up very much, Ukraine’s defense strategy seems to be to maximize civilian casualties to garner international sympathy. Russia is not known for caring very much about civilian casualties, and doesn’t hesitate to treat resistance as resistance, without worrying much about uniforms. Ukraine has pulled the fighting into urban areas and ceded remarkable amounts of land to the Russians. They’ve also conscripted all men aged 18-60, banned them from leaving the country, and handed out 10,000 rifles to civilians.
What happens when those "civilians" get killed? When this couple gets shot, are they civilian casualties?
My expectation is that Ukraine is positioning itself to be Russia’s Palestine - as its military is more and more degraded by the war, eventually they’ll use more human shields, claim more of their fighters as "civilian casualties", and toss out the phrase "war crime" more and more to describe what happens when their soldiers get killed. Western media will absolutely lap this up, and we’ll see a lot more hardening towards Russia, and fuel for the "if you say anything even neutral towards Russia in the war, you’re a traitor giving comfort to war criminals" - like what has happened when Tulsi Gabbard when she reiterated reasonable and factual reasons for Russia’s war on Ukraine being a response to NATO expansionism. Just by trying with the barest effort to understand why Russia would feel the need to go to war, she was branded a traitor (not the first time, Clinton called her that as a presidential candidate).
Ghost of Kiev
A lot has been made about an alleged single pilot ace who has taken down a series of Russian planes in an ancient plane. Unfortunately, nothing currently exists to support this story. Worse, the Ukranian Ministry of Defense posted a fake video from DCS attributing it to the ghost of kiev. My joke the last couple days has been that "every time this gif gets posted, his kills go up".
Aside from not having any video of any of these kills, Ukraine has only claimed 7 total kills, which is the same number attributed to this single MIG-29. Look, here’s a Su-25 getting destroyed by a ground missile, is that the Ghost of Kiev?
I expect that there are 2-3 pilots who each got a kill, with the rest of the downed russian craft being hit by hidden surface fire - such as this case where Russian helicopters get freaked by unexpected ground fire, hit their flares, and flee. The Russians claimed to have neutralized Ukraine’s air defense on the first night, and i expect they got all the targets they knew of, but have been repeatedly surprised by stealth attacks like this.
Literally Hitler
Finally, many frantic predictions have been made that if Ukraine is "allowed" to fall to Russia, then Russia will see this as a sign that they can invade whoever they want, and will start rolling other countries - like a Moscovite Anschluss. Evidence for this is "what would stop them?" and the demands made by Russia before the invasion, that NATO not only cease its eastward expansion, but roll back a number of nations (Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Romania). This is, to put it bluntly, pretty unlikely.
Moldova and Georgia
The top two in these predictions are Moldova and Georgia. Georgia, you might remember, was the country that had a 2008 separatist movement in South Ossetia, fought a war with Russia over it, and lost. Russia could absolutely retake the country for its own, militarily. The same could be said of Moldova, an even smaller country.
Unfortunately, Moldova has strong ties to Romania - a NATO member - which sees Moldova as at least partly Romanian. There is a strong case that Romania would counter-invade Moldova and drag NATO into a war in order to keep control of Moldova. People shriek about WW3 with Ukraine, which is not reasonable, but Moldova could turn out that way. Russia knows this, and wouldn’t push the issue. Why would they? Their forces have already skirted the southern Ukrainian theater by sneaking through Moldova. Russia bet the farm that NATO (and especially Europe) wouldn’t stick out their necks for Ukraine, and was absolutely correct. But Romania might just drag NATO into a war over Moldova.
All these predictions center on this idea that Russia could just blitz through nations. That isn’t the kind of war being fought, and Russia doesn’t have the resources to do it. Russia is decidedly reserving most of its forces outside Ukraine, probably to shatter the defense and then roll fresh troops through to complete retaking Ukraine. It isn’t an American "Shock and Awe" campaign, and it’s not a German Blitzkrieg, it’s a very conventional and methodical dismantling of their enemy. It hasn’t positioned any troops to attack other nations, and the vast majority (~80%) of all Russian military units are focused on Ukraine. It simply is not poised to attack anyone else.
Moreover, Ukraine is a huge country. 44mil people, an area the size of Texas. Governing that region is going to require an extended occupation by military forces, especially if Zelensky gets his aforementioned insurgency off the ground. Russia doesn’t have the money or manpower that the United States has - it can’t just occupy a large nation and not think much about it. It will take far too much of Russia’s time and energy to keep Ukraine for it to go grabbing other nations.
But why?
And finally, we have to understand Russia’s political objectives. Its stated demands, for years, have been halting NATO eastward expansion. Don’t surround Russia with an anti-Russian military alliance whose sole purpose was the destruction of Russia during the Cold War. Ukraine might just make that point, and while many nations have seen Western color-coded rebellions, coups, and compromised governments, it’s possible the West will rethink the strategy of undermining a government, installing friendly leaders, and expanding EU/NATO infinitely eastward. The political recalculations here remain to be seen. If the West decides that they have the public will generated by propaganda during Ukraine, then it’s possible they’ll push to expand even more aggressively. In that case, all bets are off.
But i doubt it.
I expect that instead, the West will cool its jets. Europe has very little appetite for war with Russia, and indeed relies on Russia heavily for its energy (outside of France, who is ~75% fission-powered). Europe pays an enormous amount of Russia’s bills buying natgas and oil, which they are generally unwilling to jeopardize. And why would they? They have no alternative. The logistics do not yet exist to buy from other nations, and they’ve decomm’d much of their fission plants, so have no other energy source. Solar and wind might serve to light up a driveway, but you can’t run developed nations on them.
Until Europe rediscovers fission (which it won’t), it will remain a financier of Russia. And after this point is made with Ukraine, NATO will probably stop expanding.
Some would argue that Russia will retake other lands (Moldova and Georgia) to regain lost ground to NATO, but see above, i doubt it.
TL;DR - Russia stops to deal with Ukraine, at least for a year or two, unless NATO gets aggressive and Europe figures out an alternate power source.
Taiwan
Other nations see this war, and take notes. It’s worth writing a whole piece on it, but the international reaction to American diplomacy has mostly been to figure out our inconsistencies. North Korea pushed to get nukes because we don’t invade countries with nukes, but we absolutely fuck over countries without them (Libya had a nuclear program, abandoned it, and look what we did to them. Same with Iraq - they abandoned their nuclear program, and we lied about it and invaded them).
I’m not sure China will actually try to grab Taiwan - the USA has strong relations with Taiwan and actively defends it (unlike Ukraine, which has only recently been politically compromised by the US), and it has strategic importance to the US (TSMC alone is valuable enough to fight a war over). China is not great at wars to begin with, and their strength is in economic compromise. They want Taiwan, but it is not a defense necessity for them, the way Ukraine is to Russia. This might change if the USA publicly recognizes Taiwan as a sovereign nation, but until then, nah.
