Rugoz wrote: The perspective of a decisive Ukrainian victory is the only "stick" that would bring Putin to the peace table.
As Obama told us 2016 already in various articles and interviews (he said it multiple times), Russia has in Ukraine what he called "escalatory dominance". That means they are next door to Ukraine, have a lot of frontier with the country itself, and thus, no matter how much the west tries to escalate in Ukraine, Russia can escalate even more than the west. Last not least because Russia is a nuclear superpower.
Furthermore he pointed out Ukraine is part of the national security interest of Russia, again because they are next door and because Russia has a long history with Ukraine, including that Kiev was once the capital of the Rus, the predecessor of Russia. Again, Russia is a nuclear superpower. Threatening a nuclear superpower too much and do I have to explain what the end result will be ?
So Russia has the better cards in Ukraine and Russia has every motivation to maximize their investment in Ukraine because they view this as an existential thread. Including the nuclear option in the end.
Therefore even if conditions would have been much worse for Russia in Ukraine than they actually turned out to be, Russia would STILL win.
MAYBE the west would have had a small chance in Ukraine IF:
- They would have changed into a war economy, with something like 50% of GDP of the west going into arms production.
- Thus sufficiently supplied with military goods, they would have sent NATO soldiers into Ukraine to help with the fighting big time, and would have subjected all ukrainian troups rigourous training.
- They would have done what Russia did, and fought to win the war, not fought to get nice headlines for western propaganda. Namely they should have assumed a *defensive* stance, not an *offensive* one. Because the defender in a fortified position is always in the advantage.
But what would have been the consequence of that ? The best case scenario would be that Russia would have asked their friends, namely China and India, for help. They never did that, because they've never even remotely been in the situation that they needed any help.
And thats the best case because again, nuclear superpower.
Instead of course the west made a lot of empty promises to Ukraine, used the local nazis to force Zelensky onto the course they wanted, and drowned Ukriane in crippling debt by "selling" them military goods, and those goods have just been whatever the west no longer needed, including outright museum pieces like the Leopard I tanks, and even later whatever the west could afford in peace time without completely draining their reserves.
The only other instrument of the west have been sanctions.
Sanctions against Russia. Literally the largest country of the world. Literally a country that has the most crude materials on the planet, and the industrial base to exploit such crudes.
So even if Russia actually WAS isolated, as it is constantly depicted in western propaganda, this trickery, too, was still far from sure to succeed.
The whole idea that you can Russia to negotiate by actually threatening them is a pipe dream. Russia is a nuclear superpower. According to the world bank, Russia is now #4 of the world in regards to GDP (PPP). Its closest allies are China and India, who are #1 and #3 of the world in regards to GDP (PPP). And neither China nor Russia have much chances to actually get a full fair rating by the world bank, which after all is highly west aligned.
On top of that of course, Russia keeps making peace offers all the time. They are just ignored by the west, and Ukraine. Because the west wants to destroy Russia and those peace offers will completely disarm Ukraine as an instrument for doing so. And because Ukraine is in the grip of ukrainian nazis who serve as useful idiots of the west and will only accept total victory, or else.
There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning. - Warren Buffett
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