Thread by @ChrisO_wiki

1/ Viktor Orbán has disclosed what he says is Donald Trump's plan for ending the war in Ukraine – by cutting off all American aid. As Trump has at least a 50-50 chance of becoming the next US President, this has to be taken seriously. Could Trump's plan actually work? ⬇️

2/ There's good reason to believe that it wouldn't, and could not only make the war much worse – particularly for the Ukrainians – but would also damage Trump and could also force European powers to intervene directly, turning the war into an overt EU-Russia fight. Here's why.

3/ Let's think first about what Ukraine needs from its allies: military equipment, ammunition, air defences and financial aid. Europe has provided a lot, but US support has undoubtedly made the difference between survival (so far) and defeat.

4/ What happens if that support is cut off abruptly? A number of short-and medium-term things:

🔹 Putin will redouble his offensive in Ukraine and will have even less interest in negotiating. He has already made this clear.

https://twitter.com/yarotrof/status/1767824155108311284

5/🔹 Ukraine won't stop fighting, because it can't afford to. The more territory it loses, the less viable it becomes as a country and the less defensible the remainder becomes. It also can't abandon its population to Russian torture, repression and expulsion.

6/🔹 Ukraine will still be getting support from the EU and others – but possibly not enough to hold back the Russians fully. The front lines would be pushed back to the west and north, but not in a linear fashion – there is a real risk of localised collapse and breakthrough.

7/🔹 Many Ukrainian long-range air defences will run out, making it much more likely that missiles, and perhaps even Russian Air Force bombers, will be able to attack Ukrainian cities (though European-supplied air defence artillery will still be available against drones).

8/ 🔹 Without US financial aid, there's a risk that the Ukrainian economy will collapse, making continuing the war unaffordable for Ukraine. (Though I would expect that the EU would seek to fill the gap – this is perhaps a lesser risk.)

9/ Importantly, despite Trump's pretensions to end the war "in a day", this process would go on for months. Trump seems to think that Ukraine is only able and willing to fight because of US support, like the former Afghan government. That belief is absolutely not the case.

10/ The optics of this would be terrible for Trump: TV screens would be filled with pictures for months on end of Ukrainian cities being destroyed for a lack of US air defence systems, Ukrainian territory being lost, and triumphant Russian declarations of imminent victory.

11/ Ukraine is not Afghanistan. Its government and cause have popular legitimacy and ongoing foreign military aid on a large scale. Its people know what's at stake. US abandonment would extend the war into areas of the country that have so far been unaffected.

12/ As President Macron of France has publicly acknowledged, Ukraine's defeat would be catastrophic for the whole continent. In the worst-case scenario, the Russian army would stand on the Polish and Romanian borders once again, with Russia seizing control of Ukraine's resources.

13/ Macron has mooted the possibility of the French army going to Odesa to deter any Russian moves in that direction. If things were going that badly, I would expect the Poles and perhaps other European nations to make a similar move to protect Kyiv.

https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1768536810336948400

14/ In such a scenario, there is an obvious danger of a direct conflict between European forces and Putin's armies. But this brings us to the most important point of all. What does Putin actually want? In reality, this isn't a secret, as he's been open about this.

15/ As well as replacing Ukraine's government with a pro-Russian one, he wants Ukraine to surrender the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, including the parts not under Russian control (which includes the Ukrainian-held cities of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia).

16/ There's no reason to believe that that's the end of his territorial ambitions. Russia's former president and prime minister Dmitri Medvedev has presented a frankly delusional map showing Russia controlling most of Ukraine, with Poland, Hungary and Romania getting the rest.

17/ I don't take this particularly seriously – Ukraine's western neighbours aren't going to dismember it. I do take far more seriously a map leaked in January 2023 showing eight Ukrainian regions plus Crimea being annexed to Russia.

https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1619990411820535808

18/ This was part of an industrial plan drawn up by the oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev, who is very much part of Putin's inner circle. It essentially shows all the key industrial areas and ports of Ukraine being annexed, leaving the agricultural heartlands landlocked.

19/ Ukraine is a big country – twice the size of France (or nearly the size of Texas) and with a pre-war population of nearly 44 million people. It was never realistic for Russia to seek to conquer the entire country, given the difficulty of controlling such a large area.

20/ It's unclear how 'official' Malofeyev's map is, but given his connections I think it's fairly likely to be well informed by the Kremlin's ideas. It would make sense for Russia to focus on annexing areas adjacent to its own borders and creating a corridor to Transnistria.

21/ I suspect that Macron is thinking along similar lines, which is why it was particularly interesting that he focused on protecting Odesa. It's a clear indication that he considers any Russian moves towards Moldova to be a red line.

22/ I think that Russia's forced retreat from the right bank of the Dnipro in November 2022 and the destruction of all the river crossings will make it unlikely that it can move on Kherson city and Odesa. However, I wouldn't rule out an attempt to move further up the left bank.

23/ In the early days of the war, some suggested that Putin aimed to seize the whole of left-bank Ukraine (i.e. the regions of Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava, Chernihiv, Sumy and part of Kyiv in addition to the existing occupied/part-annexed regions). But there are good reasons not to.

24/ Apart from Dnipropetrovsk, the north-eastern regions are less economically valuable than the industrial heartlands of the south-east. As Russia's failed invasion of the north-east showed in 2022, it's also a very big area to take and hold down. Overstretch is a real risk.

25/ Malofeyev's map of the Russian occupation zone therefore may represent what the Kremlin sees as a viable middle ground – all the most economically and strategically valuable regions that Russia has the capacity to seize and annex.

26/ Putin has committed himself to seizing the whole of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Luhansk is almost entirely under Russian control, as is about half of Donetsk. I think this has to represent at least a minimum objective for his war goals for the next year.

27/ Russia still controls a sliver of the Kharkiv region and is continuing to press the Ukrainian lines to the west. The terrain and rivers make it a difficult area to fight over, so any Russian gains would likely be slow and costly to achieve under any scenario.

28/ Trump's plan would undoubtedly degrade Ukraine's ability to resist the Russian advance but clearly wouldn't end the war. It is possible that he would attempt to cause a Ukrainian collapse by pressuring other countries to also end military aid.

29/ This may result in Europe facing a choice between caving to the demands of a de facto Trump-Putin alliance or continuing to support Ukraine. One problem with many European countries adopting US military equipment is that it provides a Trumpian US with a means of leverage.

30/ European states would in any case face fresh waves of refugees from a further Russian advance, and the now explicit threat of Russia conscripting occupied Ukrainians into its army to support further offensives. The threat becomes existential for some countries, like Poland.

31/ So in summary, Trump's plan would likely result in the war's intensification, a slow Ukrainian retreat over the course of months, a risk of localised Ukrainian collapses, many more refugees, and an increasing risk of European countries having to intervene directly. /end