Ukraine - more first drafts of history

Last year’s Predictions compo invited short essays on Ukraine.  I largely ducked this one but there was a very decent effort by Caesar H, including: 

Trump comes up with a Big Deal that makes sense to him, Zelensky signs off on it begrudgingly, Putin doesn’t. Trump, having paper thin skin, takes this badly … by year end some of Russia’s gains will have reversed, and there’ll still be an embedded Ukrainian presence in Russia, and Trump will start suggesting giving them nukes in response to Russia’s usual bellicosity about using them. Think of the geopolitical version of “I offered you a way out asshole, you slapped my hand away, so I’m going to crush your nuts until you cry like a little bitch”.    I expect this theory to disproven by February of course 

Putting aside the nukes bit, it was actually a very fine prediction.  Putin seemed at first to be playing a decent hand with Trump, but his early political gains have been squandered (does anyone really know how to play Trump?  Even Netanyahu?).  I believe Ukr still holds a few square meters of Russian soil to this day; and although none of Russia’s gains as of Jan 2025 have been reversed, several of their advances during 2025 have indeed been reversed – though the definition of “advances” changed during the year**.   

I have no idea what the collective western brainpower around the most recent “coalition of the willing” table thinks they’ve come up with this week.  They all know, for 100% certain  – even, or perhaps especially Witless, who’s had several lengthy in-person lectures from L’il Volodya – that the idea of NATO boots on the ground / air patrols in Ukr airspace are an absolute Red Line for Putin, despite the endless red lines of his that the west calmly breezed through in 2022 / 23 / 24.  

Is it a Cunning Plan?  Designed to get a wholly predictable ‘Неt‘ that will enrage the Orange One?  If so, the parallel Venezuela adventure is reinforcing the C-Plan nicely, forcing Putin to eat more shit as he is lamely reduced to asking that his tanker crew will be nicely looked after.  What a piece of serendipity that is!  Yep, lots of random shit happens on Planet Trump.

I don’t have a conclusion on Ukraine right now, because a massive and fairly binary pivot-point looms (and of course may fade away again, as have several before).  Just a few observations:

• while there’s still nothing to stop Putin having what he wants in terms of the Donbas (as I’ve said all along), he doesn’t seem willing to pay the price (or at very least is understandably reluctant), and still hopes to get it on a plate via a 1-1 with Trump
• the only possible way he’ll get more than just the Donbas (in terms of territory or in any other dimension) is also from Trump
• once again, both Russia and Xi are utterly dismayed, as ever, by the casual ease with which perfidious western nations sweep away years and even decades of patient strategic effort: this time Venezuela, the latest in a long series

We’ll shortly have another post on this last point.

ND

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** Russia has more-or-less given up on even small-scale armoured thrusts (they all get eliminated piecemeal), or even the motorbike / quad-bike “dragoon” charges of 2024, settling instead for a pretty feeble doctrine of “infiltration on foot in 2s and 3s”.  Sometimes this is genuine recce, but mostly it is simply for the sake of probing, and often for no more than raising a flag, having a quick photo taken by a drone, then the job’s done, the map is updated, and nobody in the Russian command much cares for the subsequent fate of the probers.

On this last point, honest Russian milboggers are incensed by the endemic Russian practice of over-claiming territorial gains, in what they call “beautiful reports” from lower echelons to higher command and even to Putin himself.  They observe that “victories on credit” frequently result in carnage for the troops on the ground: they are either ordered to “make the maps true” by hurriedly and suicidally advancing into the falsely-claimed territory, and/or having resources taken away because, their having already “gained their objective”, they no longer need them.  They also observe that promotions and medals are frequently awarded on the basis of “beautiful reports” alone.