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Ukraine Cannot Win
Since the start of the invasion of Ukraine, I have wondered what the end game would be. I have never understood the West’s goal with intervention. I understand sending a message and “this will not stand” and we don’t want China getting ideas, etc. What I have not understood is a path to victory for Ukraine. I have asked in these pages what that looks like, and the answer ranged from unclear to getting Russia to leave to Russia leaving and paying reparations. There have even been talks of regime replacement and coups.
The facts are, there is no way to force an aggressor to leave if you cannot attack its base. It has to choose to give up. I have seen nothing proposed that would get Russia to give up. The idea that this is all Putin has struck me as unsupported at best and nonsense at worst. It does not matter how many years of weapon stockpiles we burn through to help the people of Ukraine. It does not matter how many weapons we put into the hands of Ukrainian people (leaving aside the question if they are not mostly ending up in the hands of organized crime in Ukraine). There is no way that Ukraine can win this war. They are going to lose. They have always been going to lose. Russia was always going to get what it wanted or, failing that, destroy the nation. Either way, the outcome is a loss for Ukraine.
Now I see this report and it seems to back up my darker thoughts. Its closing paragraph has a truth that was clear from the start:
Zelensky and the Ukrainian people will soon come face-to-face with the ugly prospect that continuing to fight will only bring more death and destruction to its people, cities, and armed forces – but be insufficient to stave off defeat. The truth is, military fundamentals and simple capacity are in Moscow’s favor. It is unlikely those factors change in time to avoid defeat for Kyiv and its brave people. That is the ugly, bitter reality of war.
Life is not fair. The West should not have encouraged Ukraine to fight Russia. This outcome was always as it was going to be.
Published in General
Give us a list of the “many regional powers.”
Yes. There are a multitude of wars in which a population defeated a more powerful enemy without invading the enemy’s territory. The Afghans eventually were able to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan.
Ukraine has killed more Russian soldiers than the Soviets lost in all their years in the Afghanistan war.
So, defeatism isn’t appropriate at this point.
HW, I have no confidence in anyone’s figures about losses, on either side. I wish that I had a reliable source of information about this.
The figures that I’ve seen for Afghan losses in the Soviet occupation, by the way, are around 500,000. There are wildly varying estimates. If the Ukrainians want that sort of a result — a 10-year occupation and about a half million deaths — then they can go ahead. I question the wisdom of that course, but it’s up to them.
I do not wish to spend our money on the conflict, nor do I want to encourage the Ukrainians to persist.
I did not read most of the comments so maybe this has already been pointed out:
You are advocating for the surrender of Ukraine, and your reasoning is because Russia winning was inevitable.
I find this ridiculous, because there is only a couple of European nations which could actually resist and win a war with Russia. With this logic, you’d advocate surrender for any country attacked if you deem defense hopeless. I suppose if Russia attached Poland, or Sweden, or Austria- any European nation except Germany, England and maybe France- you’d advocate surrender? I guess we should just tell Vlad he can have everything to the border with Germany.
I don’t think even Neville Chamberlain would have surrendered so much territory. The only way to stop an aggressor is to fight them. Surrendering- or refusing to fight in the first place- is just giving the aggressor what they want, and encouraging him to do it again. It’s a reward. What you subsidize you get more of, what you tax you get less of. Can Ukraine win? I don’t know. But I’m interested in dragging it out as long as possible to find out, and killing as many Russians as possible in the process.
Boy, you know that in 1938, England couldn’t afford to go to war with Germany.
Nor could the United States afford to go to war as of December 5, 1941. (Of course, we had been arming England under Lend-Lease before Pearl Harbor Day.)
Joe Biden didn’t invade Ukraine, Putin did.
Exactly.
I am saying I don’t think they can win. I don’t think there is a call to action in my post, other than asking the people who do think Ukraine can win to tell me how. So far, one person has taken me up on it.
Well, two, Gary is clearly arguing that we should send just about every gun we have into Ukraine. I think that is a foolhardy thing to do, but at least it is an argument. Not well planned, but better than calling me a Putin Stooge!
Maybe you don’t have confidence that the Moon isn’t made of green cheese because you have never travelled their personally.
Just because you are locked into an epistemological cul-de-sac doesn’t mean the rest of us need to be.
I am glad that our government is not as penny-wise and pound foolish as the you and the rest of the appeasement lobby are.
The Afghans did not drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan. They outlasted them, and did so with a ton of military aid from us. Military aid, I might add, that later was used against us.
Winning could be defined as getting Putin’s military out of the territory it conquered after February 22, 2022 or winning could be defined as getting Putin’s military out of the territory in conquered in 2014 and after.
I’m fine with either goal. It’s doesn’t have to happen by next week.
As long as Ukrainians are willing to fight for their country, we should give them the weapons they need to kill Russian soldiers on Ukrainian soil.
Aid to the Afghans played a key role in causing the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is a good thing that the US government didn’t adopt the “it’s too expensive to support them” policy that many are asking to adopt with respect to Ukraine.
When there exist many brave people willing to fight against Soviet/Russian imperialism, it’s best to give them the most effective support possible.
Well now, if I can give up some territory and still have a nation, it makes sense to do so, does it not? If they later attack me in all, well, then I can fight and kill as many as possible. Personally, I am not there, and you are not there, so I find the idea of your interest in Ukraine destroying itself to kill Russians somewhat stomach turning, to be honest.
I do not believe the template of WWII is the correct one here. Perhaps that is a key part of the disagreement. I see things differently. The funny thing is, Japan found out what it would mean to go to war. I think just running with the figures on the table would have been better than all those lives lost to figure out they would always lose in the end.
Of course, I think the people of Iraq should have just rolled over an accepted America rolling in, and they didn’t. The end result was not good for Iraq at all.
I think if Russia attacked a NATO nation, I would advocate telling them to stop or we would use a Nuclear first strike. That is what NATO is about. We should be clear on that right now. More than we are for sure.
Now I answered your direct question. I challenge you to answer mine: How does Ukraine win? I don’t think you have an answer other than you are willing to see as many dead Ukrainians as it takes to find out.
Did Russia attack the United States of America while I was not looking?
So as long as they are gone, it is a win? Does this include Kiev being rendered a modern Dresden?
No. But giving Putin more land and resources isn’t going to make Putin an easier enemy to contain.
There exist lots of Ukrainian soldiers willing to fight against Russia. We should supply them weapons so that they can kill as many Russian soldiers and destroy as much Russian military equipment as possible.
If the Ukrainians are able to recover land stolen from them by the Russians, that’s good too. But we shouldn’t just take a defeatist attitude and allow Putin to win through intimidation and terror.
The Ukrainians are willing to fight at enormous cost because to surrender means accepting Putin’s homicidal ambitions.
Every Russian soldier killed, every piece of Russian Military equipment destroyed is a victory for the free world.
When there is a serial killer on the loose, it’s smart to want that serial killer killed or incapacitated. To respond, “Well, that serial killer hasn’t attacked my family; why should I care about that serial killer,” is a very short-sighted way of looking at things.
Is it modern Dresden in 1945 or in 2022?
Kyiv is under Ukrainian control and has not been destroyed by Russian forces. This is in part because the US and other nations of the free world have provided Ukraine anti-missile defense capabilities.
Comparisons to the UK and to America in WWII don’t make sense.
I don’t think we should have and should be, depleting our stockpiles of weapons that will take years to replace.
Saying my attitude is defeatist is to dismiss my argument. I am being rational about the realities on the ground. We can disagree on that. You are the one making it into an issue of moral failure. I could easily do the same with the idea that hundreds of thousands of civilians should die for the cause. Was it moral for the Japanese to fight the way they did? They are not cast in a good light by history today for it.
It is possible we disagree on the facts. That does not make either of us an immoral person.
1945
If Russia wants the city gone, it can do it.
Again, I don’t think this is all about Putin, anymore than Iraq was all about Saddam.
I am not sure I agree with that. I think we will have to agree to disagree.
That is a straw man.
The United States has over 1000 howitzers. We have sent about 10% of them to Ukraine. We should double or triple that number.
Putin recently said in a speech that Estonia and Latvia are not “real” countries. Estonia and Latvia are members of NATO. We are sworn under Article V to defend them. With all due respect, I would rather that Ukrainians kill Russians instead of Americans killing Russians.
Japan took the bet that we would negotiate after they attacked Pearl Harbor. They were wrong, and Hawaii was not even a state.
Are you willing to give up Texas or Georgia to placate our enemies?
No, they were not; the majority were ethnic Ukrainians who primarily spoke Russian due to decades of Soviet domination and ‘Russification’ efforts-just like Zelensky.
So let’s have General Dynamics double or triple the production of 155 mm howitzers.
Our howitzers are being proven to be superior to Russian howitzers. The problem is that Russia has 10 to 15 howitzers to every one that Ukraine has. So while one Ukrainian howitzer can kill one Russian howitzer, asking one Ukrainian howitzer to kill 10 to 15 Russian howitzer is a step too far.
Not everything is a WWII analog.
At the same time, not nothing is a WWII analog. From where I sit, Zelensky sure looks like a close approximation of Churchill.
We have no evidence that Putin intends to attack Estonia or Latvia or Poland at this point. Over a week ago, the Russian military exclaimed proudly they had achieved a “land bridge” between Crimea and their base there to Russia through the Donbas and the Mykolaiv/ Kherson/Mariupol territory to Crimea.
All the fighting seems to be along the border of that “land bridge”. There appears to be little fighting in the interior of Ukraine. That “land bridge” may have always been Putin’s objective. Much of the populace of this region is ethnic Russian, not Ukrainian and those ethnic Russians have been under siege for 8 years. It gives Russia a buffer from the western countries and it gives the warm water Sea of Azov to Russia. Russia for all practical purposes has taken and secured that territory. For Ukraine to “win” in the way many here are talking about, Ukraine would have to invade and attack that territory, much of which has been fighting Ukrainian “nationalists” since 2014. It does not seem to be a “winnable” war to retake that territory either politically or militarily.
Politically, Putin could call for plebiscite election for that territory to secede from Ukraine and Russian would likely win. If I were him, that is what I would do.
The only question seems to be whether Russia will try to take Odessa, the only major port left to Ukraine. That is a big deal. A negotiated settlement now could leave Ukraine with Odessa, and Ukraine could keep roughly 90% of it’s territory, where there is little or no fighting now. Ukraine could then survive and become close to whole again. Continuing this war will only mean more death and destruction on both sides with little purpose.
This war was never as cut and dried as the Commie Democrat/Never Trumpers wanted to make it. The Ethnic Russians were being abused in Luhansk and Donbas, and there was a clear ‘red line” of not trying to get Ukraine into NATO which Dear Leader Biden clearly crossed, plus the Biden Crime family put a series of Bioweapons labs close to Russia. No wonder the Russians were pissed. This war is not Hitler taking Poland, or Japan attacking us. Far from it.