I also don’t know why they keep saying it’s going to be a stalemate, Russia is already taking kilometres on the north which is more than Ukraine managed to take during the whole two months now.
Once the offensive burns itself out, it’s almost certain that Russia will start a serious offensive of their own.
Putin and Russia are now claiming what I saw several people mention as a possibility many months ago, namely that Poland will intervene once the Russian offensive gets started.
The US will probably let them do so because Putin said he’s cool with it and it will guarantee they can seize some Ukrainian assets and space to subject to neo-liberal hell to try and pay off all the money they spent.
The claim being that Poland will invade (with or without Zelenski’s approval) and annex a part of the the western country that they consider historically theirs (realistically more than that really because why not). They’ll probably send in NATO units after a time and basically carve the country in half. The question is, if this happens how soon and will they push to take a larger chunk of the country that might place them in direct conflict with Russian troops just to get that border closer to Russia (NATO’s goal or one of them afterall) or will they happily just occupy the western half, militarize it and let Russia have the current eastern annexed territories plus maybe a bit more? And will there still be a Ukraine, like with Kiev and this weird slice of vertical land sandwiched between areas occupied by Russia and Poland/NATO? Or will it entirely be dissolved into new Polish lands (whether they formally do this or claim they’re just holding onto it for them while in practice ruling it with no intent to ever give it autonomy)?
Poles are a bit unhinged to be honest in the things they say. The anti-communism reactionary fever they have has made them deranged and I honestly worry they’ll try something like invading Belarus or fighting directly with Russia. US doesn’t want this as it kiboshed their claims that stray Ukraine air defense missile that landed in Poland was Russian really quick but if Polish troops are eyeball to eyeball with Russian ones or on the border of Belarus they might not be able to stop them. Especially if Wagner decides to go on the offensive (RT recently reported that Lukashenko has said he worries about them) and I still think Wagner is mercenary enough that if someone were to pay them to stage an attack to allow a response that they might do so.
Eh, I think Wagner is kept on a leash tighter more so now. I like the rest of your analysis though.
If this plays out, it will be interesting to see how reactionaries talk about NATO annexation after reducing Russia’s motive to a land grab. I say interesting. What I mean is, it’ll never come up unless an anti-Imperialist brings it up. And then they’ll misuse a logical fallacy to avoid admitting that NATO is a fuck.
Same way they talk about Germany or South Korea being occupied, probably - pretend it’s something else
Oh they’ll claim NATO had to do it, that NATO intervened to save the poor Ukrainians, that they now live under glorious Polish/NATO rule instead of evil Putler rule and how much better their lives are and how actually they should have pushed further in and pushed the Russians out entirely.
And then they will get back to mentioning 17.09.1939 with straight face again.
I’m not sure about that, but we are right now in the phase of manufacturing consent for intervention. Not sure exactly how that intervention would look since it’s rather unspecified now, but grabbing part of Ukraine is probable. No idea if it will work, up to last year i would say that revanchism for “kresy” is dead and officially opposed by every government since 1945 including the bourgeois ones but here we are again. They can also just go and do it regardless of popular support.
On a side note, Russia recently warned Poland that acts of hostility against Belarus are acts of hostility against Russia, so they might suspect something more?
They’d dearly like to punish Belarus. They don’t dare attack Russia directly because taking a nuclear blast to the face is not fun or profitable but they could be deranged enough to think Russia wouldn’t really use nukes to protect Belarus.
And as to intervening. They’ve invested a lot. It’s not just give-aways to the arms manufacturers and swapping out old stocks for new better, more profitable ones for the conflicts to come and spending a little coin to bleed Russia to try and weaken them. It’s the fact Ukraine has sold itself to western capital and if Russia takes it entirely or forces a capitulation to its own terms, such things might be annulled or ignored and at any rate if it goes back into Russia’s sphere it will be very hard to enforce such things. So invading even part of it as “peacekeeping” could be hedging their bets to make sure they still walk away from the board with something no matter what.
What’s dangerous is they could be betting that they could push the lines right back up to the territories that Russia annexed after a legal vote in them, declare Russia can have those but everything else is off limits and then proceed to not dismantle Ukrainian intelligence and allow them to continue conducting terrorist attacks deep into Russia and into the annexed new Russian territories while allowing them to hide under the NATO overcoat. Russia might suspect as much and doing so thusly could put us directly into a conflict between Russia and NATO at which point the chances Russia makes good on its warning and uses nuclear weapons increase. It’s a very dangerous and dicey situation. I think Russia understands it can’t just grind at the front forever and has to undertake an offensive to take Kiev or at least push further in and really put the screws to the Nazi fascist regime there.
Because the terrorism by fascists and their liberal stooges is what this is all about. It’s why Russia moved into Ukraine in the first place, it’s what set off this larger conflict because Ukraine couldn’t stop its Nazi battalions from committing genocide against Russian speakers and because they kept shelling and dropping bombs and trying to blow up bridges in Crimea. It’s what the US wants more of, a destabilized region on Russia’s borders, western/Ukrainian intelligence cells and their groomed Russian liberal agents. They can’t fight Russia directly but they can fund and fuel an insurgency, terrorist attacks deep into Russia, try and convince the Russian people they’re unsafe with Putin around and only getting rid of him for some more pliable puppet will bring them safety. Meanwhile it also encourages a brain drain as non-ideological and liberal types seek to flee a place beset by terrorism and still under heavy sanctions for the better paying, safer west. Much as how the west plundered Russia of many of its brilliant people in the 90s because of the situation of deprivation and misery after the fall of the Soviet Union.