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Weekly megathread for news/updates/discussion of Russian invasion of Ukraine - August 3
This thread is posted weekly on Thursday - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.
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It’s a useful update. I think it stresses how hard defense is for Russia while minimizing the effects on Ukraine?
They seem to be saying it’s not technically a stalemate, even though it looks like one, because of the possibility of a breakthrough.
I guess we see who breaks first. In the meantime, large amounts of waste.
Thanks for elaborating a bit and how to interpret some parts from the article, but I think you've read a bit too much into OP's comment. I don't think they were intending to stoke flames or misinform folks. Or to put it another way, I don't get any both sides'ing or downplay Ukraine's efforts vibes here.
I've only been on the platform a month, but @skybrian's been friendly and cordial on my conversations with them, so I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. I've now read the article and also think the comment was lacking and vague on a subject that people are very passionate about and also rife with bad actors, so I'm glad you took the time to expand upon it, but I just wanted to emphasize they probably weren't being malicious or anything in this particular instance. Cheers! :)
I don't mean to be inflammatory or dismissive, but it was low-effort and I did skim. (I'm not paying as much attention to the Ukraine war as I used to.)
I meant waste in the sense that all war is incredibly wasteful. In modern times, even the winners lose more than they could possibly gain, at least financially. But it takes two sides to avoid a war.
I do wonder if we will see a breakthrough, or whether there will be a point at which both sides realize that they should have negotiated a cease-fire this year, if only they knew how it would go. I'm certainly not informed enough to do more than wonder about that, though.
It's very hard to say in advance. The article does a lot of hedging, as is appropriate. When a war's outcome is unpredictable, they have to do the experiment, though it may be cursed.
My guess is that if Ukraine became part of NATO as part of a peace treaty, it would probably hold? I don't think they're going to let their guard down, any more than Finland would.
I agree that the possibility of some important Ukrainian advance is why it won't stop now.
Ukraine does not want to accept a peace treaty that gives away any of the Donbass or Crimea. They could potentially be persuaded to change their minds on this in exchange for security guarantees, but I wouldn't bet on it.
Meanwhile the Russians are not willing to accept a peace deal that simply freezes the war on current lines, and instead have unclear but much further reaching demands.
In short neither side has a reason to accept a ceasefire, Russia thinks it can somehow win, and Ukraine wants to liberate their entire country. And any events that change one side's mind (ie, military realities convincing Russia to offer a truce) would likely encourage the other side that victory is within reach and giving concessions is unnecessary.
Yes, I think this can be summarized by saying that both sides still believe they can win something by fighting. It will take more failures to lose hope.
I strongly disagree with the idea that Ukraine facing more failures is a good thing, Russia gaining anything at all from this invasion will have far reaching consequences with regards to how expansion by force is perceived, and the Ukrainians who are in occupied areas deserve to be liberated, not kidnapped into Russia.
Additionally there's no reason to assume that Ukraine will continue to face failures forever, a significant part of the reason their offensive has failed so far is the almost complete lack of air cover. It'll be a while before they get F-16s, but its all but confirmed they will be getting them, and when those arrive and offensive is much more likely to succeed, even assuming the Russians don't give an inch before then.
I didn't actually say whether it was good or bad, because I don't know.
If Ukraine can win, continuing the war might be good? If it's futile, not so much. But we don't know the future.
How do you mean the winners lose more than they can gain? Is this a philosophical take along the lines of a single life being infinitely valuable? Because in financial terms, If Russia takes Ukraine’s natural resources, that’s an absurdly large gain on the order of tens of trillions of dollars. That’s not even considering the value of the geographical advantages of holding the Crimean port.
I was thinking of the argument made by Bret Devereaux that the cost of war in modern times (roughly since World War I) is is higher than countries can expect to gain, and this has made many countries less likely to go to war on average. This is contrasted with war in ancient and medieval times when war was profitable for the winners (due to plunder).
I didn’t look specifically at what this war was costing Russia. I did a brief search and found a few articles claiming that this war is fairly cheap for Russia. I’m not sure if they take account all costs. It seems like opportunity costs would have to be estimated somehow?
Mineral wealth tends not to be the basis of most rich nations’ economies but it certainly is for Russia. Maybe that’s a reason for a difference in motivation?
According to https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-war-markets-ukraine-investing-financial-putin-conflict-politics-gdp-2023-6
Compared to tens of trillions of dollars in potential plunder, that sounds like a bargain if they can succeed. There are also some other upsides from Putin’s perspective — clearing their prisons and killing off ethnic minorities inside their borders.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/09/23/russia-partial-military-mobilization-ethnic-minorities/
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/from-prison-to-the-frontlines-thousands-of-russian-convicts-sent-to-fight-in-ukraine
I think we have to go beyond direct war spending. Economic sanctions count as a cost of war, too.
I also think mineral resources can be a little nebulous. How valuable is coal these days when it’s on its way out as an energy source? If Europe decides not to buy natural gas from Russia in the future, does that make it less valuable to Russia, or is internal consumption enough?
For far-future use of natural resources, what discount rate do you use?
There can be differing opinions about these things, and that can affect how willing countries are to go to war.
It does seem like mostly limiting the fighting to Ukraine greatly reduces the cost for Russia compared to a wider war that causes devastation in Russia. That’s a major benefit of being a nuclear power.
The costs and profits of war aren’t fixed; each side tries to increase costs on the other side however it can. Did Russia think Ukrainian factories were valuable? Not so much when they’re reduced to rubble.
https://apnews.com/article/china-ukraine-russia-drone-export-dji-e6694b3209b4d8a93fd76cf29bd8a056#:~:text=BEIJING%20(AP)%20%E2%80%94%20China%20imposed,17%2Dmonth%2Dold%20war.
Not super new, but this is good news and either wasn't widely reported or I may have just missed it. Regardless this should hurt Russia's capabilities fairly significantly, if they are limited to using drones either built locally or imported from Iran that is going to hurt their procurement.
I'm also somewhat surprised that Blinken and the State Department have apparently been able to just nicely ask Xi to ban these and somehow made that work.
Ukraine finally made progress across the Dnipro river.