At this point, Russia’s invasion has been a huge failure on any measurable scale.
What Putin needed to have happen, was for him to swoop in and take the country like the US did in Iraq, with just a complete shock and awe campaign. This would have allowed him to just get in there replace the leadership fast, and establish that as the new status quo.
This would have staved off a lot of international sanctions, as the global community would likely have just said, “well fuck it, it’s already done. No point in making things worse,” which was basically how the world responded to Crimea. There would have been some sanctions, but they would have bene superficial, and nothing like what it appears Russia’s going to get hit with.
Instead, even by simply holding Russia off for a few days, Ukraine has established a very concrete narrative of Russia as invaders, both amongst its own people and with the international community at large. Russia’s not only set itself up as the bad guys, but they’ve also created a narrative of themselves as kind of incompetent losers. Not necessarily the Russian soldiers themselves, but certainly their leadership.
Now, Russia may eventually take Ukraine… I feel like they’re almost certainly going to, just based on the sheer size of their military power. But that being said, I don’t see any way for Russia to win this conflict now.
Russia will never establish a friendly government in Ukraine. The entire civilian population HATES them now. They will never stop fighting. Once you’ve got the civilians manually making weapons to use against you, you are not going to win them over. The insurgency that they will deal with is going to absolutely dwarf anything that the US went up against in places like Iraq or Afghanistan, because it’s not going to be an isolated faction fighting against Russia. It’s going to be essentially the entire population of Ukraine. They can’t win that.
And since the invasion’s dragged on, and established Russia as invaders (as opposed to simply the guys who now occupy Ukraine), no one else in the world wants to be associated with that, so you’re seeing essentially everyone else in the world turning on them. Now, in a better world this would have happened immediately, as Russia’s intentions here haven’t changed, but still it’s passed a tipping point now that Russia’s going to suffer major economic problems now.
The flip side of all this, is that I don’t really see how Russia extricates themselves from this.
The best option would probably just be to “negotiate” with Ukraine and withdraw, because as I said, I don’t see how Russia can win. I think their best option is to just say, “Ok, sorry dudes. Our bad.” and start working on getting the sanctions lifted. But I don’t see Putin being able to do that, because it’s going to make him look dumb and weak, and the only reason Putin’s holding power is because he’s created a fiction that he’s smart and strong. I do not think Putin, as a leader, can survive having Russia lose this conflict.
But, like I said, I don’t think there’s any way he can win. I think he fucked up.
What I’m worried about, is that he’s going to be like a wounded animal now. He may do some very bad things before he goes down, and those very bad things may end up causing some global catastrophes. If he really does start using things like air-fuel bombs on civilian populations, I do not know how the international community will be able to not respond militarily. Dropping an air fuel bomb on a city is essentially no different than dropping a nuclear weapon on it. At some point, the argument of, “If we attack Putin, he’ll shoot huge bombs everywhere” doesn’t hold up, after he’s dropping huge bombs on cities.
Now, in that worst case scenario, I think that our actual last line of defense is going to be the Russian military itself. Our hopes would be pinned on the fact that normal Russian soldiers don’t want to murder civilians or destroy the world. It’d be similar to when Russia ordered their tanks into Moscow in 1991, and the tank drivers got out and said, “Nah, we’re with the protesters.”
