Page 16 - RusRPTDec22

“Even if the projectiles that hit Poland were fired by the Ukrainian missile defence and Poland and its NATO allies treat the strike as an accident, there’s no guarantee the next alarm won’t lead to a need for NATO to get fully involved,” Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist said in a column. “That threat trumps — at least from a US perspective — the rest of the fallout from the war, such as the influx of refugees to the European Union, the depletion of European stocks of weapons and ammunition or the energy price hikes.”
Ukraine could be in a position by the start of next year to retake Crimea, according to some military experts and Bankova has made it clear that its war goal is to expel Russian forces back to the 2014 borders, however, the West may push Ukraine into a peace deal before that. What would that look like? Bershidsky laid out five scenarios in a column, reproduced below.
1. Ukrainian victory: A swift Ukrainian military victory. It’s possible, while unlikely: The Russian surrender of Kherson in the south allows Ukrainians to move combat-hardened troops elsewhere, attack Melitopol and then Mariupol, cut off Russia’s “land bridge” to Crimea and make short work of the demoralized Russian units in the east and in Crimea itself. Ukrainians, however, will not go on to take Moscow — they don’t have the military power to invade vast Russian territory and they’ll likely get no Western help to pursue an invasion. That means the conflict will not be resolved. After Iran beat back Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in its first war of conquest, the deadly conflict resumed several times as Saddam wouldn’t give up; peace only came eight years later. By itself, Ukraine’s success in retaking Russian-conquered territory is not a lasting solution while Russia’s imperialist ambitions persist. Even if Ukraine’s victory is sealed with some kind of peace deal, Russia will not honour it — just as neither side honoured the Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015.
2. Putin falls: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s publicly expressed stance is that he will only negotiate with Putin’s successor. It’s a long shot bet but not entirely groundless. The recent mass mobilization undermined Putin’s popularity, and the military defeats have driven even the most pro-war Russians — the ultranationalists — to blame him for the humiliations. “Absolute power has a reverse side,” philosopher Alexander Dugin wrote in a blog post. “Full power given success — but also full responsibility for failure.” But, for one thing, Putin isn’t yet so weak that the benefits of trying to overthrow him outweigh the risks. He’s still in control of the powerful repressive machine he’s built, and both the military and various “freelancers” engaged in the war on Russia’s side obey him. And for another thing, if he ever becomes weak enough, likely after more defeats, some kind of democratic revolution is less likely than a takeover by an equally or more hawkish personality or group. No group of Russians remaining in the country, and most certainly no emigre organization, has the will, determination and broad support required for a successful uprising or even the ability to execute a coup. So even if Putin falls — or dies a natural death — the conflict, quite likely, will not be over.
3. Backroom deal: For all the talk of a diplomatic effort, for all the rumours and speculation that Russia is ready to talk peace if it’s allowed to hang on to a minimum of territorial gains (see the Elon Musk tweeted “proposal”), for all the
16 RUSSIA Country Report December 2022 www.intellinews.com