Where do you see the Ukraine - Russia War ending?
I’m conflicted.
On one hand, I could see an end where Russia keeps conquered territory in the east. Those regions never wanted to be in Ukraine in the first place. So let them go into the tender arms of Putin and a disastrous demographic situation.
On the other, that gives the Russians respite, a chance to regroup, re-arm and come back stronger and harder in a few years.
Then there’s their demographic situation. They already don’t have anywhere near enough young people to be sustainable and are compounding that problem by killing off a bunch of potential fathers. How many? Who knows? The numbers they admit to are damning, and they lie about all their numbers.
So I wonder whether Russia would be able to mount another military campaign in a few years.
Like I said, I’m conflicted.
Do you have any thoughts.
As for the eastern regions, you need to be very specific. Portions of Donetsk and Lugansk Oblasts had a significant population that wanted to pursue policies more closely aligned with the Kremlin than with the EU. Since 2022, Russia has occupied much of the rest of Donetsk and all of Lugansk, and much of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia (but not all of them).
Also, Russian-speaking does not equal "pro-Kremlin."
There is a process of ethnic cleansing going on. When the Russians occupied Donetsk and Lugansk in 2014, most pro-Kyiv Ukrainians (both Russian speakers and Ukrainian speakers) bugged out. (Yes, some were simply murdered by the Russians, but most left to escape) What was left was the very old and the pro-Kremlin.
For Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, there were even fewer pro-Kremlin people in 2013, but more of the pro-Kyiv left before the Russians got there in 2022. Kherson and Zaporizhzhia became overwhelmingly pro-Kremlin (just like the pro-Union voters in West Virginia in 1863). I am not at all sure those regions, in a fair vote, would want to join Russia. In fact, I seriously doubt Kherson and Zaporizhzhia would.
Russia has a severe demographic problem and the war has made it worse as young Russians left to dodge the draft.
If the war ends without Russia retaining the conquered territory, I suspect Putin would fall out of a window and Russian will get a new Chekist head of state. If he retains the currently occupied land, he can claim a victory of some kind and probably weather the storm (until the Grim Reaper takes him).
Once the war ends, it will take a decade or more for the Russian armed forces to recover, and once rebuilt, the Russian military will be smaller, leaner, but of higher quality (because all the old junk has been used/destroyed). This means Russia will rely on hybrid warfare (non-overt, non-military) means to pursue objectives in the West: criminal activity, propaganda, intelligence activities/active measures. But Russia will still pursue foreign policy objectives, nevertheless.
