this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2025
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It depends. If the Russians install a pro-Russian government in Kiev then the country may still have a chance. They can renege on all agreements made with the West (they can declare them null and void because the entire post-Maidan regime has been illegitimate since it was installed via an illegal coup, plus Zelensky has been ruling as an unelected dictator since his term expired) and receive help from Russia to rebuild and become something like a larger Belarus.
If the Russians leave a rump Ukraine under a western puppet government, then yeah, Ukraine is done. It will be sucked dry of all its resources, it will become a neoliberal hellscape with zero worker protections or social safety nets, millions of people will leave, and all the remaining industries as well as the land and everything under it will be owned by western corporations.
The only parts that will be liveable will be the ones annexed by Russia. We are already seeing some quite rapid development in Mariupol for instance so at least those parts will likely go on to prosper and thrive in the future. New infrastructure is also being built in the south such as railways to connect with the rest of Russia. There's a lot of potential there and if Russia continues to invest in those regions after the war then i think they have a good future ahead.
My only real worry about this is, if the Russians do install a pro-Russia government then will the Ukrainians ever forgive them for it? They might see it as legit imperialism and then it’s back to square one. I know optics don't really matter but it’s something I am thinking about. Having a government that is anti-west (or neutral) is definitely for the best but will the Ukrainian people be okay with that? What if they do another coup? I honestly don’t know if they are aware that the war is the West’s doing. Maybe they do.
The Ukrainians who want to hate Russia are going to hate them no matter what Russia does. The rest i think are smart enough to understand that nothing that has been happening in Ukraine for the last 30+ years has been to their benefit.
It's not like the West has respected their sovereignty. They've had two color revolutions and neither time have the promises that were made to them been fulfilled. Things only got worse. So why not try something new?
A large number of Ukrainians have relatives in Russia so they are already not entirely ignorant of what things are really like there and how much better conditions are for Ukrainians living in Russia than in Kiev controlled Ukraine, despite the best efforts of the Maidan media's propaganda and harsh suppression of the pro-Russian viewpoint.
The biggest problem will be the young generation that has been educated on ten years of anti-Russia hate and lies and pro-Nazi indoctrination that the post-Maidan regime mandated schools to teach in Ukraine. But even that generation is now very disillusioned and many have been fleeing the country to escape the very real possibility of being drafted once the age is lowered to 18.
To add to that, most Ukrainians who hated Russia enough to fight are dead now.
Yes and no. A lot of the time the most ideologically devoted Nazis sit behind the front lines acting as blocking detachments and military police who will shoot retreating soldiers and make gruesome examples of deserters. They are too valuable to the Kiev regime to be wasted dying in trenches.
Plus there are still plenty of cowards sitting safe in Kiev and Lvov working as propagandists and enforcers of the regime, plenty of thugs and criminals that the state has given power and weapons to who take pleasure in bullying and extorting poor Ukrainians. These people won't get sent to the front any time soon because they too are vital for the self-preservation of the regime.
On the other hand, because these are cowards and opportunists they will flip very quickly once the power shifts. It's the ideological Nazis that need to be dealt with first and foremost. Many of them will flee to the West once the collapse occurs, but some will stay behind to cause trouble and will need to be rooted out.
Right, most of these people are cowards who force others to fight for them. I expect most of them will flee to Europe once it becomes clear that the war is lost. Also, once the army collapses, Russia will very much do purges the same way they did with Germany after WW2. There's already a blueprint for this.
Not so sure about the purges. The Russian state is pretty soft and liberal these days. I think we will see a significant number of terrorist attacks initially before Russia decides to properly crack down. By that point though these Banderite terrorists will have discredited themselves with the majority of Ukrainians since their attacks will primarily harm other Ukrainians, so Russia won't encounter much resistance from the population.
Right, any sort of a partisan movement requires support from the general public, and I just can't see that happening. Another thing to consider is that Ukraine may simply cease to exist as a state. Russia will absorb friendly and neutral territories in the east, while Hungary, Poland, and Romania will grab the ones in the west. That seems like an increasingly likely scenario.
How will the western powers receive the compensation that they think is owed to them if what remains of Ukraine is absorbed by the surrounding NATO countries?
These countries would still mine the resources, and in fact this is a strong incentive for them to do land grabs as it would be seen as a way to bring economic growth by developing these regions. Powers like US would of course prefer a rump Ukraine where they could do this on the cheap, but they might not have the pull at this point to stop the partitioning.