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[Loud Whispers]

If a Ukrainian counter-offensive fails, why would Russia agree to this kind of terms?

Because Russia is not in a position to be dictating terms. They are woefully unprepared to fight a war whilst their political leadership refuses to even acknowledge they're at war; Ukraine is capable of utilising all of its resources whilst Russia cannot utilise all of her own. That's not even factoring in that Russia will run out of war materiel far faster than NATO ever will

Russia is already taking steps to occupy all of the captured territory.

Of the approximately 150,000 Russian troops used to attack Ukraine in late February, an estimated one-third have been killed or injured, according to British officials.

So that leaves 100,000 Russian troops in fighting fit shape. These chaps suggest 80,000 more troops would be needed to occupy eastern Ukraine, with another 80,000 later to allow for troop rotations. Meanwhile Ukraine has mobilised 1 million men and plans to mobilise 2 million more. Without resorting to conscription Russia can't compete with those numbers, and certainly everyone here expects that conscription would result in Putin getting toppled. This also assumes a Ukrainian passivity which just isn't there; the Ukrainian forces have shown they will counter-attack wherever they see weakness like in Kiev or Mykolaiv, whilst partisan attacks inside occupied lines would be a whole other headache requiring even more losses, even more boots on the ground. From where I stand, the best outcome for Russia is an ordered withdrawal where they can claim a token of victory to keep their pride intact, or else just topple Putin and accept that they wasted the many lives of Russians to bleed their neighbours in order to secure the excellent foreign policy goal of turning allies into enemies and achieving the grand elevation of Russia into diplomatic pariah #1, North Korea #2

Also, if a major countet-offensive will fail resulting in a huge loss of combat ability... Russia will start offensive on its own. It is how it works.

I'm trying to guess what at what would cause Ukrainian morale to falter, not the strategic outcome of the war. Because Ukrainian morale is far higher than Russian, and with NATO handing them a blank cheque, the only limit to their fighting ability is how willing they are to fight

Any joining of (whatever remains of) Ukraine with NATO will be very difficult for Putin, because that is a key causus beli upon which he hung his whole invasion upon. So I also think LW is wrong here.

I don't disagree, yet the Ukrainian government is not going to sign a peace treaty which would just be grounds for a future Russian invasion in the event Russian military capability recovers and learns from its mistakes. Even a situation where Russia withdraws completely from Ukraine doesn't answer the question of "what if round 2?" Even if they don't join NATO, they would still seek some legal mechanism which would protect them against Russia since Russia decided the Budapest Memorandum was toilet paper

Using a broad brush to paint this picture. I still think that the most likely outcomes (cumulatively, if mutually-exclusively with many of the othets) are ones that arise from the unpredictable turns of fate that change the whole story and make the above either/or moot in most respects. But that's in a chaotic mess of shoulder-shrugging foggy futures.

There is a third outcome: the war drags on for a long time, outliving Putin himself, until Russia exhausts itself militarily and economically

[Quarque]

One of my Polish friends here maintains to this day that the best thing for Ukraine would have been for the UK & USA to cut off all arms supplies to Ukraine so that the war ends faster. He would not be convinced that the best thing would be for the European Union to stop purchasing Russian gas to that the Russian fed defaults on government debt

You're not going to end the fighting by giving Ukraine more weapons. You're just going to end Ukraine, at which point the fighting will, admittedly, stop.

It still amuses me greatly that people think Russia 'defaulting' would even do anything at this point.

Could you please explain your position? From this short post I can't tell.. Do you believe that the Russian army can't be defeated? If so, how do you explain their retreat from Kiev?
If you had been living in Ukraine, what would you prefer: having no weapons and occupation by Putin, or having weapons and be able to fight back? And why?

[Strongpoint]

One of my Polish friends here maintains to this day that the best thing for Ukraine would have been for the UK & USA to cut off all arms supplies to Ukraine so that the war ends faster. He would not be convinced that the best thing would be for the European Union to stop purchasing Russian gas to that the Russian fed defaults on government debt

You're not going to end the fighting by giving Ukraine more weapons. You're just going to end Ukraine, at which point the fighting will, admittedly, stop.

It still amuses me greatly that people think Russia 'defaulting' would even do anything at this point.

The thing is... not giving weapons to Ukraine will just prolong the war for many, many years. First, the Ukrainian army will fall back as resources deplete, then transit to asymmetrical warfare, then many years of resistance. And no politician will be able to stop this resistance.

The only way to end this war quickly is to give Ukraine enough weapons to smash the Russian army to pieces.

[anewaname]

I don't think Putin can be toppled from within...

If the existing government forces him to step down, the existing government inherits all of Putin's wrongs because they will be incapable of reversing what they have been parroting. The problem with a government consisting of "yes men", both coerced and on-salary, is that there is no leader among them to turn to who has been openly disagreeing with the government's course of action (open disagreement, not open disobedience).

And, Putin cannot be toppled from below, because the existing government has too many strong controls against civil uprising and too many controls against the military supporting an uprising.

And no one is going to topple Putin by invading Russia because of the nukes.

There is a third outcome: the war drags on for a long time, outliving Putin himself, until Russia exhausts itself militarily and economically

I believe that this will be the outcome (if there isn't nuclear war), but how Putin dies could be unnatural.

[Lidku]

Shinzo Abe just got assassinated!?

[Loud Whispers]

Shinzo Abe just got assassinated!?

oh fuck he actually died from the wounds

[Starver]

I woke up to this[1], after a bit of snatched dream[2] wondering where the Japanese region would get involved in the current edge-of-Europe geopolitical mess. The internal conclusion was that it wouldn't be significant without... well, my dream-geography was a bit more messed up even than real east-Asian geography, but they do have contact/disputes with .ru and though my internal screenwriter[4] was tending towards purely domestic crises not having anything to do with foreign influnce (strangely not China Sea stuff/Best Korea, in this version, which waking-self might consciously default to), there was an applied hint in my head that there'd be some shadowy influence looking to destabilise a distant bit of the world (as distraction) would... do something. Details fuzzy, but the paraoic conspiracy-theoretical mindset would clearly sieze on this.


Myself, unless anything new has been revealed in the last couple of hours, I'd say homegrown lone-wolf maniac with a (self-contrived?) grudge, and yet I'm sure new-Q types (or original Q/those who engineered 'his' recent ressurection) might have something to suggest, amongst others. All grist to the mill.


Where was I, again? Ah, well, I expect there'll be fall-out. Hopefully no more than unguided and unfounded hyperspeculation. If it gets to the level of actual international relations shifting/hardening significantly, then its got to involve falling dominoes of various increasing sizes, which one can't rule out but can only wait and see and try to identify once any sequence has actually played out.


[1] My motto clearly is "Late to rise / Late to bed / Makes a man Stupid, Endebted and Dead..."

[2] Amongst other things[3] that might be equally random but not recallable as significant.

[3] There was a thing about The Doctor/mass amnesia and another about resource allocation system, for which I know exactly what inspired them in the nightly neural defrag of the prior day's experiences; other things less so/not 'clearly' precognitive in nature... Yet!

[4] I have a tendency to dream rewound/repeated scenes (within a given sleep, not across several nights) as if I'm fine-tuning the plot. Ends up a bit bullet-dodging/I Know Kung-Fu at times, which probably makes for something that wouldn't actually be a plausibly monetisable script IRL, or maybe I'm missing out on loads of Hollywood Dosh? (And this is why I don't post to the Dream Thread any more. Too much potential detail, and you might steal all my ideas and sell them to Disney/Marvel/Michael Bay/Lars Von Trier!)

[Lidku]

The authorities raided the residence of Tetsuya Yamagami (the suspect) and found he had manufactured an electric 9-barrel shotgun.

 

[EuchreJack]

Generally, when a leader is assassinated, their beliefs get adopted in excess by their people.

Hello Ultra Japan!

[Starver]

What if they get backstabbed, but hang around anyway just to not to have a shorter tenure than the predecessor he in turn backstabbed..?

(The longer it drags on, the more likely that the direcy successive PM is not the directly successive party leader..  )

[EuchreJack]

What if they get backstabbed, but hang around anyway just to not to have a shorter tenure than the predecessor he in turn backstabbed..?

(The longer it drags on, the more likely that the direcy successive PM is not the directly successive party leader..  )

Dead leaders are often more effective than when they were alive.

[Lidku]

wtf

Shinzo Abe has been Prime-Minister since my start in middle-school (2011ish?) and way past of when I graduated high-school (2019)...

[Starver]

Talkng of Prime Ministers, I think the current list of MPs vying to be the next Conservative Party leader here in the UK is 356. i.e. every Conservative there is except for Boris (though I wouldn't put it past him) and Ben Wallace (who might actually be a more useful leader than any of the others I've seen named, but I also actually trust him when he says he doesn't want to be). ((Ok, so it's actually currently 8 confirmed and 10 or more who are still prime candidates to join in on the bit where it's "18 men, women and lizards enter; two of them leave"... and then eventually those final two tweak nipples[1] and trade chinese-burns until one or other of them gives in.))

And then there's always the possibility that if they don'at actually sort out their next Conservative Leader quickly enough, then the next Prime Minister might not even be the same person. Awaiting the 1922 Committee's decision on how it all proceeds, then any reaction that might come from Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition and everyone else that's not the DUP who will probably want to spoil things anyway for their own reasons...


[1] Or some other suitably non-mysoginist choice of extremities, maybe.

[hector13]

Rishi Sunak appears to be favourite to win, he who was fined along with Boris for Covid breaches, and he whose very wealthy wife has (had?) non-dom tax status, despite being married to a government minister.

[Loud Whispers]

Not surprised if dishy Rishi wins, the Tories no doubt hold his tax dodging status as evidence of his credibility