Thread by @RaduHossu

1/18 Strategically, in the long term Russia has lost the war, but Ukraine may lose it in the short term militarily
I. Two years ago, when I was still on the Eastern Front (Kharkiv Oblast), I used to say that Russia strategically lost the war. Why?
1. Politically:
It did not achieve its main political goal: political decapitation of Ukraine, changing the democratically elected political leadership with a puppet leadership already prepared from the Kremlin.

2/18 President Zelensky refused the US offer to flee, he stayed in Kyiv and this changed not only the history of Ukraine, but the history of the whole of Central and Eastern Europe, with (positive) consequences for the whole of the Collective West.
Also politically it managed to put Russia in the most ungrateful international position in its modern history. Never was Russia viewed with such hatred as it is now in most parts of the globe. During the Cold War, Russia at least had many communist allies/partners.

3/18 The Warsaw Pact stands at least in part, evidence to support this claim.
One important thing Russia has lost politically is the trust and respect of the common people. Yes, the leaderships of Hungary and Slovakia are pro-Russian, but if you ask Hungarians in Budapest what they think of Putin, you will see that no other leader in the world has a lower favorability rating than him. This is probably the case in all the world capitals. Don't think that ordinary Chinese in Beijing like Russia.

4/18 The world and especially the Kremlin leadership tend to ignore these facts, but an increasingly Russophobic world society will have a direct negative impact on post-war Russia, regardless of how the military conflict ends.
2. Military:
Only the Donbas-Crimea land corridor has been achieved as a primary strategic objective, of all the supposed ones. The others, including the conquest of Kyiv, the conquest of the territories east of the Dnieper, reaching the Danube Delta or the conquest of Donbas failed.
It is true that the No.

5/18 2 army in the world, as it has been ranked in the military charts by all the experts and specialized departments of the world's governments, is still managing to advance in Donbas and Kharkiv today, and is doing so at an ever increasing pace, but the same army is losing the most equipment and soldiers for every square kilometer conquered since it fought in World War II.
The "infinite" strategic strategic reserves of equipment that Russia inherited from the Soviet Union are increasingly finite, and this is causing Putin the greatest concern.

3.6/18 He bet that the West would tire before Russia would tire, but the West has not even seriously mobilized industrially, and Russia has already taken most of its tanks, artillery guns and infantry armor out of reserve. The figures are truly worrying for Russia and deserve a detailed analysis, which I will do soon, and this is forcing it to sacrifice over 40,000 men ONLY in October 2024. If the trend continues, only time will ensure that this humanitarian and military catastrophe will not affect Russia strategically.

7/18 3. Diplomatic:
One of Russia's pre-invasion 2022 diplomatic "weapons" was the export of oil products and natural gas. After promising the EU that it would literally freeze if it supported Ukraine, the EU broke away from Russian dependence, and now this weapon has drastically lost its power. This has obviously led to a decline in Russia's ability to negotiate and project power or influence regional or global decisions.

8/18 Not to mention that sanctions are still in place and will not be easily lifted, and at the level of international organizations, Russia is a pariah. The Kremlin's backers can get drunk on the existence of the BRICS, except that this year's summit in Kazan demonstrated that the BRICS is far from viable for Russia's interests in the short or medium term, and certainly not for Russia's interests in Ukraine. The biggest Chinese banks do not accept transactions with Russia for fear of international sanctions. That's just one example.

9/18 russia is India's "vassal" when it comes to natural gas or oil transactions.
4. Economic:
Even though the Central Bank of Russia has managed to stabilize the ruble after a crash that happened right after the invasion of Ukraine, Russia's economy is not doing well. From what I've read and informed myself over the years (because this really isn't an area I've mastered) I understand that the slowing of the economic collapse is due to the war economy entering the war economy. But after the war stops, most economic experts predict a rapid downturn.

10/18 A rapid degradation that would come on top of record inflation, on top of an economy from which more than 1400 major international companies have left, on top of an economy where oil and natural gas no longer bring in the same revenues.
All in all, Russia will be badly affected by this war for many years to come. It will be stunted in its development, it will lose the international race of "arming" itself with intelligence, be it Artificial Intelligence (or maybe, MAYBE, MORE Artificial Intelligence).

11/18 This does not mean that Russia will disappear or collapse as a state, although even that cannot be ruled out. But what this strategic defeat does mean is that Russia is losing and will have lost its status as a key player at the global negotiating table. It will become just a country of regional importance, which yes, has the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. And that is all.
II. But even if in the long term Russia has lost the battle, in the short term and militarily, it is Ukraine that is losing the battle in Donbas.

12/18 One of my bets going into 2023 is that Donbas will never be fully conquered by the Russians. For those unfamiliar, Donbas is the historical region that today is composed of the Lugansk and Donetsk regions (Oblast). Currently, Russia illegally occupies 98.58% of Lugansk Oblast and 61.01% of Donetsk Oblast, after earlier occupying 98.30% of Lugansk and 58.42% of Donetsk.

13/18 Only about 2.5% of the territory of Donetsk has been occupied by the Russians in the space of 10 months, with incredible losses, and it would take another 20 years to conquer all of Donetsk at this rate. But things in a war do not happen as we think they do, at a predictable, linear pace.
The fall of Selydove today is a very bad sign for Ukraine's defenses in the Donbas. My opinion is that Russia's next steps are to conquer Kurakhove, which is a town of huge operational importance for the entire South Donbas-Vuwledar front.

14/18 Simultaneously they could conduct an assault from the south towards Andriivka (Horlivka District, Donetsk Oblast). Later the Russians could flank Pokrovsk from the south-west-west which would lead to the cutting of important Ukrainian logistical lines and the subsequent fall of the city. Following the fall of Pokrovsk, the Russians would focus on creating a pincer around Sloviansk-Kramatorsk.
Could that happen? Yes. In 2025 I'm sure this is Russia's goal.

15/18 Because such a deployment of forces in this sequence could exist only through the repeated collapse of Ukrainian defense lines, which in turn would lead to a moral collapse of the military and a degraded socio-political situation in Ukraine. And that would force Ukraine to enter negotiations from a much weakened position, with a Russia that with its last remaining military forces (almost totally depleted at that time) would project an image of invincible force with infinite reserves and resources.

16/18 Even if the truth were radically different, Ukraine would still have to enter into negotiations, not only because of its internal lack of resources, but also under pressure from the West to end a war that would already be in its 4th year.
Can such a scenario be avoided? Yes. And as much as I have personally scolded the West for the weight of the decisions taken, I believe that in the last two months, the economic, military and political mobilization has been beyond expectations.

17/18 Even with the turmoil created by the US elections, equipment is once again starting to arrive in Ukraine, more is being promised, and the difference in the ratio in artillery shells fired on the battlefield (according to Ukrainian sources) is only 1 to 2. Which is a miracle in itself.
But avoiding such a scenario also requires Ukraine to make no mistakes in the defense struggle, to continue to fight internal corruption and to continue to reform the army. If these things happen, Ukraine will hold out in late 2024 and early 2025.

18/18 It will continue to inflict colossal losses on Russia and will have a chance to regain the communicative, political and perhaps military initiative towards the middle of 2025. But only if, and internally, Ukraine does its job.
We, the West, must stand by them. We the volunteers, the citizens, must continue the war on the Russians' lying propaganda and support Ukraine's war effort as much as we can.

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