Richard Haass explained a different point of view on Ezra Klein podcast recently. He was of the opinion that Ukraine would not be able to win its objectives (going back to the 2014 boundaries prior to the illegal annexation of Crimea) militarily. He thought it would make more sense to hold Russian assets until they can be used to negotiate with Russia after military stalemate. I can’t remember the quote exactly, but it was something to the effect of “they don’t need money now, they need ammo. They should save the money to negotiate later.”
I am still pulling for Ukraine to get what they need to win, and for regime change in Russia, but I can also see his point about holding back some cards. Of course, money can buy some ammo, but US & NATO countries can probably deliver better than what Ukraine can buy.
I've said before that the war will most likely end in Russia. Russia is taking staggering losses and hiding it from the population is getting more and more difficult to hide.
Putin has been careful to ensure there are no other power centers in Russia. Unlike the breakup of the USSR, where each of the republics that broke away had their own leader when they broke away, the Russian provinces are all run by weak governors appointed from Moscow. There is no internal organization to support the breakup of Russia, but there are many ethnic groups other than ethnic Russians and those ethnic groups have never really liked Moscow.
One thing that is a constant in Russian history, at least over the last 160 years is that there is always some kind of rebellion after they lose a war. Russians are very tolerant of taking high losses to win, but they don't accept taking high losses only to lose.
Russia isn't winning in Ukraine, they are taking huge losses, but aren't losing ground. Whether it can be seen as a loss or not is a gray area, but I think more and more Russians are beginning to see it that way.
As long as Ukraine and the west can keep up the pressure on Russia, they will break eventually. They can't sustain this level of combat for much longer. Perun's video last week was on the state of affairs in the war. Russia is producing a lot of vehicles right now, but the majority of "produced" vehicles are refurbished vehicles from storage and satellite images show that the storage facilities are getting down to the dregs.
When they run out of vehicles from storage, they will have to start making vehicles from scratch and their production rate will start out at zero until those plants get tooled up to build the vehicles, and they will have to buy most of the tooling from China. Russia doesn't make the tooling. Most of the tooling they use now is made in Germany and Chinese tooling is inferior. Some tooling may not be available because the Chinese are using German tooling too.
So they have some engineering challenges to figure out how to make new vehicles with the tooling they can get their hands on. What they will be able to make is probably not going to be as good as what they were making before the war.
Once they get the factories retooled, then production will slowly start to ramp. They will never achieve the levels they are at now because building new takes more effort than rehabbing old equipment.
So Russia is at peak production now, and they are looking at a cliff when they run out of vehicles to rehab, then very little production for a while and eventually back to maybe 1/3 current production by 2028.
They are at max capacity for ammunition production now. They need to build new factories to expand production and that is going slowly.
Meanwhile Europe is working to expand production. Ukraine is going to have a difficult year, but as long as they make the Russians pay a high cost for any ground they take and hold the line, the US will likely be back giving aid next year if not sooner. In 2025 Russia will likely be weaker and with US aid flowing again Ukraine will be stronger.
This war isn't lost, it's just taking longer than people would like.
Macron Ready to Send Troops to Ukraine if Russia Approaches Kyiv or Odesa
by Kyiv Post | March 8, 2024, 12:34 pm
French President Emmanuel Macron met with parliamentary parties on Thursday. During the meeting Macron said he was open to the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine, as announced by, according to French newspaper L’Independant.
[...] “Macron [allegedly] referenced a scenario that could lead to intervention [of French troops]: the advancement of the front towards Odesa or Kyiv.” [...
At a meeting with a range of political parties, the President of France floated a scenario that could potentially lead to French troops deployed in Ukraine.
www.kyivpost.com
I note that there is an "if" in that headline. Russia is unlikely to approach Kyiv or Odesa. That leaves this whole thing in the realm of shadow play and political theater. Macron is threatening Moscow with a threat he doesn't believe he will ever need to carry out.
