The real “skinny” on Ukraine
6 min readNov 7, 2022
First, let’s get a few things straight. I’m not here to argue any of the following:
- Ideologies. If this is a struggle of good vs evil for you, then read no further.
- Putin’s psychology. If you are one of those who pretend to read into the mind of someone like Putin, please leave.
- Unity of either Ukrainian or Russian people. I deal with large human-generated statistics on a daily basis and am not interested in drawing straight lines in the sand among a couple hundred million people… Nothing here is binary or linear.
- Battlefield tactics. I have no military education and don’t pretend to understand how the day-to-day or even month-to-month tactical decisions are made. I look at what happens over time and compare to what I know about the historical context and the wider geopolitical and economic situation that’s developing around the issues.
- Anything driven by official information that completely diverges, depending which side you follow… such as any official figures presented by either military’s central command. According to each side, the other has lost practically all of its military multiple times over by now. At some point, I’m pretty sure Ukraine’s command was reporting more Russian planes shut down than were ever in service…
What I am interested in is reliable-information-driven conjectures based on history, sociology, and economic realities. I’m also not interested in arguing what I would call “outsider scholars” — i.e. intelligent people who possess the skills to analyze the problem, but have either no real “skin in the game” or completely lack cultural relevance necessary to really understand the issues, or both. This is for reasonable people who have direct recent ties to that part of the world.
That said, let me make some (likely unpopular) observations / predictions and provide basic evidence. You are always welcome to comment, and we can get into the details of any specific point. It’s too much to cover in one article…
- Most importantly, Ukraine will not emerge from this victorious. No matter how you try to skew the facts and bend the definitions. It’s just not possible. It lacks resources, social structure, military cohesion, and most importantly military equpment, weapons, and supplies. It’s 100% dependent on foreign aid, which will never be infinite. I asked this in the beginning, and now the signs are everywhere… What will the West do when this drags on and on, with no clear military resolution in sight? When weapons have to keep endlessly flowing into Ukraine (and often going dark) to keep the fight up? When oil and gas from Russia stop flowing? When Turkey flexes its muscles at the expense of it’s “allies”? When China openly supports Russia? When the winter hits? And this was before Russia demonstrated a nifty way to dismantle the entire Ukrainian energy infrastructure remotely, leaving much of the country in the dark right before the heating season. Doing so for weeks now… with weapons that were not supposed to exist… And this was before the latest right-wing / conservative swing in world politics (see Italy, Israel, and soon the US…) Here are a few recent developments. China has come out and said it fully stands with Russia after the recent Party Congress. India has been ramping up its hydrocarbon imports from Russia. Iran is supplying them with drones and who knows what else. Turkey wants the grain deal and has also replaced Germany as Russia’s #2 trade partner already. Israel has turned its back on Ukraine, even before their elections. Republicans in the US have threatened an end to large scale financial and military support for UA.
- Zelenskyy will not stay in power. Russia cannot allow this long-term for strategic reasons, but also the West will not allow it for PR reasons, after it becomes obvious his administration failed. According to insider information leaks, there are multiple power struggles long in play within the shaky Ukrainian government. They do not make it far past the internal UA sources, since they can be highly damaging to the cabinet as well as the western alliance’s outward image, and are therefore very aggressively suppressed. I suspect one of these factions is ready to flip its allegiance as soon as it takes over, however… Perhaps if the idiotic “Battle for Kherson” does begin after all, it’s gruesome aftermath combined with the effects of the oncoming winter, will serve as the trigger. Maybe this is already a done deal, and only Zelenskyy has not been notified.
- Russia will be quite happy with its gains, even if they stay at today’s or even slightly decreased levels. All the Ukrainian victories, all the territory reintegrated — none of it makes a difference. Russia gets the Russian-majority regions that are easier to integrate and are rich in resources, including oil, gas, rare metals, and lithium. They work with the existing energy infrastructure, which is heavily skewed towards the East and South. They work with oil and gas supply lines. They work with Crimea and the rest of the Black Sea. I keep saying that Kyiv was never the objective, but neither was Kharkiv or maybe even Kherson. Keeping Crimea and connecting it to Donbas was everything. And it was achieved.
- Ukraine will basically be reduced to a “forever in debt” supplier of raw resources, specifically non-ferrous metals, titanium, some oil and gas, corn, sunflower oil, and wheat. It will be left with Odessa as its lifeline and Turkey as its guarantor. The world will move on, but things will never be quite the same. China, India, and Russia will be a much tighter block going forward, as the relationship with EU can never be repaired — nor does Russia want it to be… Just wait till Kosovo blows again. Turkey is the big winner. Iran may be as well in the longer run. And the days of Germany keeping the entire Europe afloat, powered by cheap Russian gas are over, never to return. I don’t know what this really means and on what timescale just yet… but I think the Chancellor’s recent visit to Beijing is a good indicator of things to come.
