Random Thoughts on the War in Ukraine

 

So, some random thoughts on the war in Ukraine, since it has been a while.

First of all, I do understand people who say it is a mistake to judge the counteroffensive solely in terms of territory taken, that we are spoiled by the accounts from last fall when Ukraine made sweeping gains in a very short time, that Russian defenses are hard to overcome, etc.  But in the long run, the answer has to be so what.  Yes, be patient.  But in the long run, if an offensive does not take territory then it has failed by definition.

In a strange way, some if this is sort of encouraging. The fact that the Russians have put their energies into fortifying defenses instead of capturing any more territory seems to suggest that have given up on taking any more.

Even more encouraging -- nuclear weapons seem to be off the table.  Early in the war, someone said that the Russians were unlikely to go nuclear unless the Ukrainians did something really crazy like bombing Moscow.  Obviously that wasn't going to happen!  Well now it is happening, quite regularly, though on a small scale, and the nuclear threat is nowhere in sight.  

But otherwise, I see nothing very encouraging. The ground war looks like an endless deadlock.  The prospect of Ukrainians pushing Russians out of the entire country seems impossibly remote.  And even if that did happen, there is no reason to think it would be the end of the war.  Russia's ability to keep raining down bombs seems infinite. The only way to stop it would the the sort of massive strategic bombing to destroy Russia's military infrastructure that really would lead to a nuclear response.  Nor does there seem to be any end to Russia's ability to blockade ports and destroy grain supplies.

Finally, by all accounts, many if not most Russians by now agree that the war was a mistake. Many will even agree that it was launched on false pretenses. When Yevgeny Prigozhin launched his bizarre, ill-fated putsch, he prefaced it by saying in no uncertain terms that the war was a mistake and launched on false pretenses.

But again, so what?  There is a huge difference between saying that a war was a mistake, and even that it was launched on false pretenses, and saying that you want to lose.