Ukraine, Unexpected
2022-05-10
It’s been about two months since the war started, and it has gone very differently from anyone’s expectations.
Ukrainian Army
Something everyone, especially the DIA and myself, underestimated was the resolve of the Ukrainian forces. Generally, puppet governments fold at the first sign of trouble, and their poorly-equipped militaries don’t even bother to fight, preferring to secure favorable terms with those taking the land. Leadership generally flees and assets are transferred out en masse.
The opposite has happened.
The UAM (Ukrainian Military) has built a very successful strategy out of denying Russian access to roads and air, by using infantry equipped with suppression and AA/AT rockets. MANPADs have been wildly successful at countering Russian ground-attack air assets, and while Ukraine has essentially ceded the skies, Russia is still denied air supremacy. While this strategy has been used successfully in the past (Somalia, notably, focused on defeating the American will to destroy them by drawing in and subsequently downing two Blackhawk helicopters, which made Americans question why we were even in Somalia), this is certainly the largest scale that we’ve seen infantry AA be so effective.
Russia
This leaves the Russians mostly getting into gunfights with UAM assets, which is where the scales are more in UAM favor. UA has effectively abandoned any rural zones, and focuses entirely on making urban areas into hellscapes. Urban warfare strongly favors the defenders, to the point where any attacker likely needs 3x-5x the men and ordinance to be able to succeed. Russia (unlike the US) hasn’t fought an urban war since WW2, and it shows.
At the same time, Russians may have mostly free reign over the countryside, but the rasputina has made it so that roads are their only serious means of crossing distances - making themselves a target for small wandering UAM assets to take AT potshots. And while they initially pocketed and destroyed a good amount of UAM assets, the remainder have been able to continue receiving logistics and build surprisingly resilient holdouts in the urban cores. It’s a tall order for Russia to be able to truly siege every city they need, to be able to starve out the belligerants inside.
Prediction?
Predictions at this stage are difficult to make. Russia has conceded Kiev to the UAM, but it is firmly committed to the Russian regions to the east and south - especially in the interest of creating a corridor to the beleaguered Transnistria region, a "breakaway state" inside Moldova which has repeatedly asked for Russian aid. Russia hasn’t been very effective at controlling UAM assets (due to lack of air supremacy and intelligence), which means that UAM is more free now than ever to bolster its forces on the eastern and southern fronts - now that the north is lost.
Russia, for its part, is under no illusions that it can lose this war. They’ve been cornered and forced into this, and now must fight through. Sanctions will not stop even if the war stops. The west is trying to set up a deathblow to the country, and if Russia fails to take Ukraine, it’s likely that blow will land. The federation in this case risks breaking even further, losing more states and becoming ever more divided and weakened. I’d expect a repeat of the fall of the Soviets - states break away and become western vassals in a decade or two. The western goal has always been to enslave or fracture the largest nuclear competitor in the world, such that the number of states that we can dominate is reduced. This topic deserves a whole article on its own, but TLDR the only countries safe from western invasion or overthrow are those who possess nuclear weapons.
Mujahideen, again
The West has, since the beginning, looked to make Ukraine into the new Mujahideen. There is a nightmare scenario for the entire world here, which would be quite acceptable to western leaders. Let’s play this out;
Afghanistan was invaded by the Soviets, the civilians became refugees and fled en masse. Men stayed behind to form "Mujahideen" ("militia", roughly) to fight the Soviets. They fought for a decade, and became hardened and cruel people because of their fight. Brutality on either side is beyond what can reasonably be expressed here. The Soviet Union collapsed and exited the conflict. Refugees tried to come back, but found that their home was permanently gone - replaced by a selection of warlords and thugs occupying bombed out villages. Kids who had grown their entire lives in Pakistani schools came "home" to find their monstrous relatives treating every scrap of land as if it were a slave camp with infiltrators in every corner. These kids, students, "Taliban", then fought and overthrew the old mujahideen and ruled the country as an Islamic theocracy. We’ll skip the American parts.
Doesn’t this sound a bit familiar? Ukraine is fighting a brutal enemy (not as brutal as the Soviets, of course), and might possibly do so for years at this rate. Russia will be unable to persecute the war for a decade (just watch as i turn out to be wrong about that too), but in the process will push UA refugees into neighboring countries, leaving only the worst to stay and fight. Those such as Azov or Svboda voters, who wear actual Nazi German patches, crucify their opponents, and volunteered almost ten years ago to fight a nebulous bush war in Donbas. These are ultranationalists, and when Russia describes them as nazis, they’re not exaggerating. They haven’t gone away, and those like them are only becoming more numerous as the war continues.
The parallels should be obvious, and this is the nightmare scenario - Ukraine adopts ultranationalism to defeat Russia in the same way that Afghanistan adopted Islamism to defeat the Soviets. They become cruel and monstrous people, who only serve to incite more conflict even if they win. At worst, the United states invades them 20 years later - the way we so often do to those we provide indirect military aid to.
Good outcome?
The best outcome is that Russia accomplishes its goals - barely. It has to stay, as predicted before, somewhere just east of the Dniepr, and is able to survive the economic warfare being raged against it. To do so it would likely need to prove its utility to China, in order to be a belt-and-road partner. We would see further splintering of the internet (as the West demands, in order to maintain more information control), and especially splintering of world economies and cultures. But an independent nation (Russia) would not be destroyed, and NATO would be unable to justify persecuting a nuclear war.
We can only hope.
