Russia invaded Ukraine in February of 2022, and despite all the happy talk you may have heard in the media about how Russia is supposedly losing unsustainable numbers of men and equipment, nothing has changed all that much in the last three years.
Well, actually, that’s not quite true. The conflict has gotten bloodier, messier, more expensive, and Russia has been incrementally taking more and more ground. For example, look at these two maps which are about three years apart:
You’ll notice that in three years’ time, the battlefront has stayed roughly the same, although Russia has now taken another 1 to 2% of Ukraine. That tells you that this whole conflict has turned into what Donald Rumsfeld might have called a “long, hard slog.”
Furthermore, if you’re wondering who’s more likely to win this war of attrition, keep in mind that Russia has roughly 3.5 times as many people as Ukraine. That may explain why some Ukrainian front-line units are already reportedly operating at half strength, and why there’s no real possibility of Ukraine pushing Russia out of its territory and taking the fight in the other direction.
So, where does that leave us? Well, I wrote this back in August of 2023, and it’s just as true today as it was back then:
The one thing I would change in retrospect at this point is that if Ukraine gets completely depleted of manpower and Russian forces break through across the country, I doubt they’d keep it long-term. They’d probably just murder, rape, and loot everything they could find and then pull out to lick their wounds, rather than continue to endure long-term guerrilla warfare… but who knows? Russians still have a capacity for suffering that too many of us in the West seem to have lost.
Incidentally, if you’re wondering what could change this equation, we already have some answers. Biden tried to break the Russians with crippling sanctions that failed, in large part because the Europeans have allowed themselves to become completely reliant on Russian energy. How reliant? Well, Trump said this:
Incidentally, the numbers vary depending on how they’re compiled, but Europe does appear to have paid more money to Russia for energy since this war started than they’ve given in aid to Ukraine.
This is a huge problem because realistically, there were two potential ways for Ukraine to “win” the war.
The first was that the sanctions Biden put in place would work, but they did not. They failed miserably.
The other possibility would be putting American and/or European troops on the ground.
However, Ukraine is not a friend, not an ally, not a member of NATO, and our obligations to them under the Budapest Memorandum are very minimal. This is very clearly a war of choice that really doesn’t have much to do with America’s interests. Even if Trump were inclined to put American troops on the ground in a situation like this, which he’s not, the American people’s appetite for it would be pretty close to zero.
Theoretically, the EU could send troops into Ukraine, but that would also be a war of choice, which would mean America would have no NATO obligations to join them. Could they turn the tide? Probably, yes – it’s hard to say because Europe SHOULD be able to do that, but they’re timid, let their militaries degrade, and are out of practice. However, even in the best-case scenario, they’d likely see a lot of their troops come home in body bags.
Nobody really knows how many people have died on each side of the war so far, but some estimates say somewhere around half a million for the Russians and 150k for Ukraine. You think European nations are willing to lose 20k, 40k, 60k, or more of their troops to turn the tide of the ground war against a country they’re STILL buying energy from (although less than they used to)? Highly doubtful.
Against this backdrop, Trump has been trying very hard to end this war, but he hasn’t had much luck.
Part of that is because dictators like Putin, who start looking weak or incompetent to their people, don’t have a long life ahead of them. Putin probably feels as if he HAS TO WIN.
Incidentally, Zelenskyy may not be in a much better position if he acknowledges the inevitable and signs a deal that cedes Ukrainian land and rights to Russia on favorable terms. He could end up dead, in prison, or perhaps end up as a pariah in his own country or even much of the world if he’s blamed for giving in to Putin too soon. According to Trump, Zelenskyy has actively thwarted attempts to make peace on multiple occasions, and that’s probably why:
“Zelensky could have settled this war many times, many many times, and he chooses not to. Very difficult. It’s a war that should have never been started. If I were president, if the election weren’t rigged, I would have been president, and that war would have never started. But he could have settled it many times, and he chose not to. We said you can do whatever you want to Russia. Don’t hit the refineries because that’s a world problem that’s caused. And he wants to make problems for the world. He wants to make problems for our farmers, our ranchers with diesel fuel because Russia supplies a large portion of the diesel fuel throughout the world, and we told them, do whatever you want, but don’t hit the diesel fuel because there’s a big problem, a big shortage. And what does he do? He goes and hits the diesel fuel….”
The best thing Ukraine could have done would have been to make peace back in 2022, when people were furious at Elon Musk for pointing out the obvious:
That deal? It’s CONSIDERABLY BETTER than anything Ukraine could get today. Today, in a PRETTY MUCH BEST-CASE SCENARIO, Ukraine is going to lose MORE of its country than they would have with that deal. Russia is going to demand MORE and Ukraine is going to be in a considerably worse condition than they were back then.
One of the reasons Trump has been trying so hard to push for peace and offering up all sorts of potential concessions for Putin is because it DOESN’T GET BETTER from here for Ukraine. All that happens for them is more death and more damage, ASSUMING they have a country at all, which they could lose if their manpower gets low enough to stop the Russians from breaking through their lines and rolling through the whole country.
This is reality.
What we hear from far too many politicians, people on social media, and in the mainstream media about all of this is magical thinking.
It’s basically:
“Ukraine shouldn’t lose any territory! There can be no concessions to Putin! Putin must be defeated and made to pay for his war crimes!”
That sounds nice, but how do you do that? The truth is you probably don’t unless you want to put American troops on the ground.
What these people really want is to run out the clock instead of admitting the obvious. That would mean probably sometime in 2027 or 2028, you’d hear them go, “It’s not my fault that Ukraine was overrun. I put a Ukrainian flag in my bio, pledged my support for Zelenskyy, and called for us to give them all the money they wanted. It’s terrible what Putin did to those people after they broke through Ukraine’s defensive lines, but it’s not my fault!”
The truth is that it would take an unforeseeable miracle for Ukraine to end this war without losing part of their country and at least promising not to join NATO. Miracles certainly do happen, but being in a position where you need a miracle to win is never where you want to be.
If people want to waste massive amounts of money and watch human beings die by the hundreds of thousands because they don’t want to admit the truth, okay, but that’s not smart, moral, or the right thing to do. Trying to make peace between Ukraine and Russia, like Trump is doing? That is the right thing to do.
How does one justify fueling a proxy war while your own house is burning down around you?
The EU militaries have been hollow paper tigers for years. Now the EU will need their money and military to combat the leftist islamic uprisings in their own countries. Good luck with that, and Ukraine will now find itself pretty much alone and unsupported.
Dick Minnis
removingthecataract.substack.com