What I would consider victory for Russia is holding onto significant portions of Ukrainian territory at the end of hostilities. That would allow them to say to their population "look, we took land from them and they were forced to accept it! It's only a matter of time before we can take more." By and large, the price won't matter as long as they can point to the glory.
With everything that has happened in this war to Russia I don't think that will cut it. Russia is supposed to be a superpower. We all know it's not anymore. It's a regional power at best. That's not going to look good for Russia or the Russian people. We took a little bit of land from this small poor Eastern European nation and that's the best we could do as a "superpower". That's not going to look good no matter how the Russians try to sugar coat it.
They need to do more than just claim they took a little land from Ukraine. I even doubt they will be able to do that. The Ukrainians could just push them out of their country and back into Russia. Either way around it's not going be good for Russia. The Russians might get a small portion of Ukraine but nothing else will change. The West still won't do business with them. They will still be under sanctions. Europe isn't going to buy their oil and gas. It will take decades and that's if it ever happens. There is no good outcome for the Russians in this either way.
Depends how you consider winning vs losing.
In a purely territorial border war context, yes; Russia still has a high probability of walking out of this war with objectively more land than it did before.
Somewhat like the Cenepa War or the recent Nagorna-Karabhak Conflict, the difference is its not Ecuador vs Peru or Armenia vs Azerbaijan. Its fucking RUSSIA vs Ukraine. The question remains if Russia can regain its image as a "world power" and "second strongest army" after getting stopped dead in its tracks by Ukraine?
In the sense that we consider the 2003 US Invasion of Iraq a "loss", the victory ship has sailed and Russia has already long lost that one the minute they failed to take Kiev. Russia has already taken far more casualties, both man power and materiel, for far less and ultimately failed to take over the country and failed to enact regime change.
People ignore the bigger picture in this situation. Russia has lost so much in this war. It's been a total humiliation for them. They failed to take over a small poor Eastern European country. Their days of being considered a superpower are over. The second strongest army is over as well. The world now knows their army is crap. But some people already knew this. They told people the Russian military is garbage. It took a war and hundreds of thousands of people dying to prove they were right. Of course, that is all Russia's fault. They started the war.
Russia will never regain its status as a superpower. Its reputation is completely shot all to hell. Even if they managed to hold a part of the Ukraine it would not make it worth it. It wouldn't justify the war and all of the losses Russia suffered. Great, they got to keep a small piece of Ukraine. But they are still going to sanctioned heavily. The West won't do business with them again and if they did it would take decades.
Zeihan has a lot of broke brain takes on issues. But he is right here. No one should count on seeing any Russian and Western business deals for a very long time. Russia is done.
That's the way I see it. The damage this has done to Russian economy, society, relationships and overall image is simply not recoverable at this point. Certainly not by capturing few Ukrainian villages and small towns, which is all they could hope for, they've ultimately antagonized the West and made sure that NATO became conscious of their border with Russia and the threat therein, giving them a reason to not only persist but grow and strengthen - good job.
People look at the fact that sanctions didn't literally cause millions of Russians to starve immediately and think that they don't work, overlooking the fact that the government had to pull out all the stops to ensure the whole thing doesn't collapse, restricting trade, killing foreign businesses and investment that came along with it, trading away natural resources for next to nothing, using every loophole to bypass sanctions and import essential goods. Budget deficit reached record low, GDP is seeing "reverse growth". Everything that went into making sure Russia doesn't fold under sanctions has a cost associated with it.
It's literally setting money on fire.
Forget an equivalent return, it's all sunk cost, the only sensible decision is to stop. But Putin is DSP of politics, it's not in his nature.
This. There is nothing that will make the war worth it for Russia. Matter of fact Russia is in an even worse position than it was before the war started. They are cut off from the West in terms of trade and business. They can't sell their energy resources to Western Europe anymore. No one will do business with them except India and China and that's only as long as China's economy stays running. It could collapse given the economic issues they have.
Then you have the expansion of NATO. Both Sweden and Finland are in NATO. NATO has grown stronger and European nations like Germany are talking about spending more on their military. NATO is more popular than ever and seen as necessary. Before this people were talking about NATO breaking up. There was serious talk about NATO not being needed anymore. The Russians fail war in Ukraine has gotten them the exact opposite of what they wanted.
Taking a small part of Ukraine is not going to make up for any of this.
@Wendy Wheelchair
NAFO, to me, as someone eternally on Twitter, seems to be by-and-large non-native English speaking European Zoomers., hence the cringe and reliance on forced memes (I lived in Germany from 2019-2021. My friends unironically thought "You mad bro?" was still funny). A lot of them seem also like Ukrainian diaspora 2nd generation kids, too. You also have to look at it from the EU lens. Europeans are so cucked that they cannot ever show any national pride (except via soccer) and claim moral superiority by only badmouthing the US since they know we won't do anything to them. NAFO seems like the perfect opportunity for repressed Eurofags to let off some good old fashioned semi-nationalism and unify against a common enemy.
I pretty much stopped monitoring the war a few months in, so apologies if this has all been said before, but I really don't see the point in trying to monitor things so closely. Either side is going to release biased data on the progress of the war. Also, the people sucking Russia's dick here can say "Ukraine flag people are NPCs and annoying", but I've really seen no average American Ukraine supporter do anything other than say "I support Ukraine". They never make claims as to how the war is going or make any kind of assessments way beyond their understanding. Meanwhile, American vatniks post the stupidest unverified shit ever, especially videos that are years old. Every vatnik is somehow a military strategy expert. It's such dumb Zoomer self-importance cope a la Nick Fuentes.
The only people I really trust on this are the Polish. They have the most to lose by Ukraine losing and nothing to gain by making shit up about it. They're putting their money where their mouth is both literally and by taking in refugees. Isn't it weird every populist right-winger has loved every single thing Poland's done up until the war?
I have no idea who is behind the NAFO thing exactly but it's cringey. I know the F in NAFO stands for fellows/fellas because fellows and fellas is considered gender neutral. Which is funny because when I hear the term fellas I think males. I think that should give some idea of the cringey fucks behind it. Yes, it's all very forced and cringey. I don't know if it's Zoomers or not. I would say possibly younger Millennials. People in their late 20's and possibly early 30's. The Millennials in their late 20's often get confused for Zoomers but they are actually Millennials. Yeah, some of them can be quite cringey. Even cringier than the older Millennials were when they were that age.
I don't follow the war that much myself either. I am sure as hell not sitting around looking at maps and waiting for the Russians to move up one apartment building at a time in Bakhmut or for the Ukrainians to hop out of one trench and scramble to the next. I will watch some videos but I am not sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for what will happened next. If I did my ass would go numb because that's how slow and boring this has gotten.
From my experience most Americans are neutral. It's a spectacle. Like two people fighting in the street. They might look at it and say "damn" and move one with their day. I don't know many Americans that are supporting one side or the other. If they do it seems to a small part of the population. Just look at the view counts on those NAFO videos and the subscriber count for the NAFO channel.
