The War in Ukraine Can Only End One Way

MEDIUM

And it’s not good for Putin…

Wes O’Donnell

Dec 30, 2022

By now, countless commentators, including me, have analyzed the “why” behind whyPutin decided to invade Ukraine.

Ultimately, Putin’s ill-fated decision to invade can be distilled down into the following ingredients:

· He wanted to create a buffer zone between Russia and NATO;

· He was emboldened by the “free pass” that the US gave him concerning his support of Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad;

· He was further emboldened by the weak response he got when he annexed Crimea and the Donbas in 2014;

· He had faulty intelligence of his own military’s capabilities;

· Putin took the disastrous US withdrawal from Afghanistan as a sign of Western weakness;

· Europe has a dependence on Russian gas;

· Trump’s presidency appeared to weaken ties between the US and NATO; and

· He had bad intel about the Ukrainian military which he perceived as weak as the one he faced in 2014.

But more interesting, at least to me, is how this war ends.

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I’m going to make a broad generalization; one that’s likely to earn me some scorn in the comments… But, since the end of European colonialism, somewhere around the end of the 1800s — after the “scramble for Africa” — most big wars have been resolved as a rejection of authoritarianism, fascism, and imperialism.

All things being equal, justice usually wins in the end.

Of course, the real world is complicated. Sometimes the bad guys win and sometimes unjust wars end in tears and destruction. But here, I believe Ukraine will win.

In Ukraine, it’s clear now that Volodymyr Zelenskyy has no interest in ceding territory to Russia. He has stated multiple times that no peace talks will take place until Crimea and the Donbas are back in Ukrainian control.

What’s more, Ukraine demands economic reparations from Russia and accountability for war crimes.

I think it’s safe to say that Putin won’t be agreeing to any of that.

In the meantime, Ukraine is prepared to fight forever — or until its territorial integrity is restored.

Even if Putin were to be able to break out of the east and south, something he is planning to do in the upcoming Spring, the Ukrainians would make Russia pay for every meter of ground.

It’s because of this incredible Ukrainian resistance that many analysts, myself included, predicted that Putin’s only way out would be the use of a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine.

As Russia continues to be pushed out of Ukrainian territory, there are enormous incentives for escalation. Heck, even NATO doctrine from 1965 allowed the use of nukes to avert a conventional defeat in West Germany.

Thankfully, this hasn’t happened yet — although things did get a little dicey in October when Ukraine performed their Thunder Run.

When I wrote about the signs to watch out for that Putin was contemplating the use of a tactical nuke, one of the signs was a public warning from Xi Jinping to Putin not to use nukes. Two weeks after I published that article right here on Medium, that exact thing happened.

Signs to Look For if U.S. Thinks Putin is About to Detonate a NukeThese are the warning signs that things are about to get very bad.wesodonnell.medium.com

We know from history that war is a test of will and logistics.

Russia has neither.

When I see the quickly improving logistics in Ukraine, and of course, the will of the Ukrainian people, I see no other resolution than a complete Russian rout.

So, the only remaining questions are “when” will Russia lose, and whether Putin will still be in control of Russia when it loses.

It’s a little too early to schedule a victory parade in Kyiv, but it will happen — and sooner than you might think.

Ultimately, we need to know how much more political clout Putin can afford to lose before he is forcibly removed from power.

Putin’s attempt to control the narrative through state-sponsored media worked for the first six months of the war, but the truth always finds a way to squeeze through the cracks.

Now, pro-Russian military bloggers are speaking the truth about the war — not because they’re traitors — but because they understand that the only way to fix a broken machine is to acknowledge that it is broken in the first place.

Once it becomes public just how badly Putin has damaged the Russian Federation, his people are likely to sack the bum. After all, Russians have a proud history of bum-sacking when it becomes evident that a leader is inept.

Let’s imagine for a moment a Russian Federation without Vladimir Putin.

Presumably, the new post-Putin Russian leader would want to reverse the destructive economic sanctions as quickly as possible. This means an end to hostilities and a full withdrawal of Russian troops.

And let’s acknowledge that, God forbid, if something bad were to happen to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine would continue to fight. But Russia probably wouldn’t continue fighting without Putin in charge. After all, this is his special military operation — Putin’s folly.

The only exception that I can see is if that wackadoodle Dmitry Medvedev took over. He might be worse than Putin — I know, I know — a scary thought. Who can be worse than Putin? Well, Medvedev actually wants war with the West, believes Elon Musk will be President and predicts a US civil war.

The other option is that Putin stays in power, but the Russians still lose.

I find this less likely to happen only because Putin is committed to keeping Crimea and the Donbas and will burn down his entire house to keep them.

In this instance, Putin would eventually give up his quest for total Ukrainian control and try to maintain the current lines of conflict –to preserve the land bridge to Crimea and Sevastopol.

This will never be acceptable to Ukraine and, eventually, they will break through Russia’s incompetent military lines.

As we cross into 2023, I think it’s safe to say that the new year will be an interesting year for Putin.

What’s my prediction?

My prediction is that Russia will lose this war in 2023, Putin will be deposed and replaced with Sergey Kiriyenko, a pragmatist, and Ukraine will claim back the Donbas and Crimea. Ukraine will allow Russia to slowly phase out its naval fleet at Sevastopol thru 2025. Ukraine won’t seek NATO membership, but will continue building a modern, lethal military long after the last Russian conscript has left Ukrainian territory.

Someday, Russia will have a leader who will want to reintegrate with Europe, so Western leaders should be thinking about that now, and what that relationship looks like.

Слава Україні!