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Time: Ukraine Can't Win the War
(time.com)
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this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2024
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Maybe I'm wrong here, but I think most people never thought Ukraine would win the war outright. Personally, I've never heard anyone say that they thought Ukraine would push Russia out entirely and the war would end. Even if Ukraine did secure all of its land, Russia would almost certainly continue fighting along the border to prevent it from joining any alliance like NATO. It seemed the best anyone hoped for is that there would be enough pressure applied to Russia that something changed within where they gave up on the war.
People, and importantly western leadership, absolutely thought they could force a regime change in Russia when the war started. For example, recall all the whole rouble will be rubble talk. The plan was for the west to isolate Russia economically using sanctions and intimidate other countries to stop trading with Russia. Russian economy was supposed to collapse as a result, and people were gonna overthrow the government.
This is why Europe went all in on the whole thing, they thought they’re gonna ride it out for a few months and then the west would get to put in a compliant regime in Russia like they did in Ukraine. After that, everything would get back to business as usual, and the regime would start selling off Russia to western companies the way Ukraine is currently being sold off.
Of course that’s not how it went, and now we're seeing a narrative shift because it's becoming clear that the west failed to break Russia economically. Not only that, but Russia is emerging more assertive and has the backing of the Global South. This is the worst possible outcome for the west, and Europe in particular.
Maybe I'm not doing the best at explaining myself, but my intent was for my comment to say much the same as yours (which I totally agree with). I was just trying to say that I didn't hear many people who thought Ukraine could actually win a war against Russia through fighting. There was definitely hope that Russia would have a regime change due to the pressure and that would put an end to the war, but that outcome seems more like Russia just ending fighting rather than Ukraine winning. I suppose my comment was moreso just arguing semantics on the word "win" in terms of this conflict, which is ultimately a bit pointless.
Oh yeah, I completely agree with that. The idea was to have Ukraine hold the line while the economic war does the real damage. We're very much on the same page here.
Yes, I remember people talking about how Ukraine was "systematically destroying" the Russian army at Bakhmut, and how it was a meatgrinder from which Russia would never recover -- in fact the opposite was true. Then (because Prigozhin) everyone was talking about corruption in the Russian military, how Putin's hold on power was extremely fragile, etc. etc., and saying with utmost confidence that the Summer Counteroffensive (lol) would absolutely collapse that whole house of cards; Ukraine would reconquer Crimea, there would be regime change in Russia, President Navalny would oversee the "total decolonization" of Siberia (also lol). None of that happened either. Plus throughout it all, we were consistently told that if we would just give Ukraine Leopards, Abrams, F-16s, HIMARS, Javelins, Patriot systems, Challengers, cluster bombs, horcruxes, baatleths, sticks and stones, and of course more of that sweet, sweet US taxpayer money, those plucky Ukrainian would beat the Russians in no time whatsoever. Western governments absolutely thought Ukraine could win, and some of the (particularly Britain) are still clinging to that illusion.
We're finally entering the stage where the fantasy world western media crafted over the past two years is coming into contact with the material reality, and reality always wins in the end.
I agree with everything, except the fact that the outcome is bad for Europe. Would be much worse had western governments reached their goals.
The problem for Europe now is that it's been effectively cut off from Russian resources. Now that Russia has managed to reorient their trade towards the east, I doubt they'll want to deal with Europe going forward. Why bother trying to do trade with people who hate you and are constantly trying to undermine you when you can work with friendly partners instead. Any trade with Europe will be seen as being a very risky proposition by Russia unless there's a dramatic political shift in Europe going forward.
European leaders should've realized that it was in their interest to do everything possible to prevent the war from starting in the first place. Yet, they chose to follow Pied Piper right off the cliff instead.