Any idea of a negotiated settlement to this conflict seems absurd at the moment.
If Ukrainian guarantees meant anything to Russia, things would not have escalated to this point.
Russia has already taken the brunt of all likely economic damage, so there is no reason for them to stop short of their goal since the damage has already been done even if sanctions are lifted tomorrow.
While the west is focusing all on the media perception war, the realities on the ground is that the Russians are winning.
For sure they are making a mess of it and taking needlessly heavy losses, but those are just cosmetic blemishes. On the grand macro strategic level, it’s all going one way.
The big tactical and strategic shift by the Russians is to slow down and advance more slowly but methodically rather than trying to do thunder runs.
I think the main reasons for this shift are threefold.
First and most importantly, NATO has proven to be an even bigger paper tiger than Putin could have hoped for in his wildest dreams.
The primary reason for the initial mad dashes by the Russians were their fear of NATO boots on the ground.
Had NATO had the balls to send troops in to physically block the Russian advances, I think Putin would have backed down rather than order his troops to open fire on NATO soldiers in Ukraine.
Thus the opening strategic imperative was to rush, at all costs, to key strategic crossroads and core objectives to secure them as backstops against such a NATO move. That would have allowed Putin to secure enough of Ukraine to achieve the minimum acceptable strategic outcome from the war to avoid needing to fight NATO directly to avoid a net strategic defeat, as just grabbing a few miles of Ukrainian territory would not have been worth the massive economic and diplomatic costs of the invasion.
With NATO categorically ruling out such an intervention, that risk failed to materialise, so the primary need for haste is gone. Thus the Russians can afford to take their time and go about this campaign in a more traditional and safe manner.
The second reason for the initial overreach was a combination of over-estimation of Russian military capabilities and underestimating of Ukrainian capabilities and will to fight based on 2014 results.
The Ukrainians learnt from those painful lessons to not try to fight the Russians in open field traditional battles; while the Russians learnt the wrong lessons and took their very successful BTG formula and watered it down to the point of uselessness in order to apply it across the board to save money and time instead of investing to upgrade all their units up to true BTG standard properly.
That failure has already been well covered so I see no need to repeat.
The third reason for the change in approach is more of a reach, but I think Putin is now putting into motion broader and deeper strategic plans.
Putin is not Xi and Russia is not China. I think internally Putin has a lot more enemies and a lot less power than most western commentators and strategists would expect.
While the degree of western economic sanctions might have been unexpected, it would have been impossible for Putin to have not expected significant western sanctions and planned accordingly.
Such plans would not have been so small minded as to only move money and assets out of reach. I think someone like Putin would have also planned to use western sanctions to weaken or even take out many of his internal rivals and enemies. Most of whom probably had the bulk of their wealth and power based in the west, where Putin couldn’t reach. Now western sanctions and asset seizes are doing to them what Putin never could.
I also think Putin both firmly believes the future strategic position of Russia is best served allied with China and not the west; but also that much of the Russian elite have rose tinted glasses and an unhealthy obsession/worship of Europe and America.
After Putin is gone, there is every chance another Gorbachev would emerge. But not after Ukraine.
Russia is now so firmly wed to China that even Putin himself couldn’t undo the knot even if he wanted to, and I think that’s by design.
I think the biggest longer term development from this war will be a new special-relationship forming between Russia and China much like the one between the UK and US, but where the junior partner gets actual respect and due consideration instead of being treated like a dog.
Putin and Xi already announced a full spectrum cooperative relationship before the invasion, now we will actually see it.
The immediate effects are already happening with full economic integration.
After the war, I see it very likely that Russia will undertake a massive military modernisation programme to address the many issues and deficiencies identified by the war, and I think much of that will involve new joint venture developments with China, or even large scale Russian purchases of off-the-shelf Chinese weapons and/or subsystems. Which will also future deepen the military integration and joint operational capabilities of the two.
I do not, as yet, expect to see much if any direct military sales from China to Russia during the conflict both due to diplomatic considerations as well as practical. Since any weapons worth having for the Russians would take months to train and deliver. The only way such Chinese weapons could get on the battlefield in time to make much difference for this war is if Chinese operators went in with them. And I think that’s a much bigger escalation than anyone is yet envisioning as likely even if the Chinese went in as ‘volunteers’ again. Not without direct NATO combat involvement in the conflict first in any case.
There might be scope for plausible deniability transfers like giving back purchased Russian PGMs from PLA inventories and sale of commercially available dual use stuff like gen2 night vision, thermal scopes, body armour, drone jammers the like.
But to be honest, now that the Russians have moved back to a much more traditional form of warfare, any talk of needing such Chinese military assistances is unnecessary because they are doing far better on the battlefield. Just look at how little new combat footage the Ukrainians are putting out, and that’s not because of a lack of fighting.
