How Does It End?

Via Instapundit, I discovered this piece by George Friedman, How the Ukraine War Will Likely End.

. . . Putin cannot stop, nor can he reach an agreement with Ukraine that he will keep. Every deal – except for surrender by the enemy – is a revelation of weakness on the part of a weak country and a weak ruler. The only alternatives are ineffective action because the force he sent to war was the wrong force from a country that didn’t have the right one.

He can reach a genuine cease-fire, but if he does, he’s finished. Not being able to defeat the Ukrainians, and held in contempt by others, destroys the myth of his power. Continuing the war endlessly reveals the same thing. As this goes on, Putin’s primary task is to pretend that the defeat is not happening because anything less than victory is a defeat. Every agreement must end in betrayal, and as it happens with guerrillas, they get stronger the longer the war drags out.

I think "cannot stop" is a key phrase, because the war is not just a series of disconnected snapshots that can be paused and examined at will. New things are happening based on what's already taken place. For instance, there's the question of Finland and Sweden joining NATO:

Finland will clarify next steps regarding a possible decision to seek NATO membership in the coming weeks, Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto told reporters after attending a NATO foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels on Thursday.

. . . Finland, a European Union member state, shares a 1,300-km (810-mile) border with Russia. Haavisto said Russia's invasion had shown that Russia is willing to take increasing risks in its military operations, can quickly mobilise more than 100,000 soldiers against a neighbouring country, and has mooted more openly than before the possible use of its nuclear and biological weapons.

"There we come to a situation in which we may need cooperation," Haavisto said, alluding to NATO.

He added that NATO member countries have offered to help Finland with ensuring security during an application process and said they estimate it would take from four months to one year to approve the application.

Regarding Sweden,

. . . [T]he Swedish prime minister remained hesitant until recently about her country's NATO position.

In early March she said it would "further destabilise" that part of Europe and "increase tensions" if Sweden joined. But by the end of the month that position had changed, a sign of the shifting discussion within the Social Democrats and feeling some heat from Finland, with [Prime Minister Magdalena] Andersson now saying "I do not rule out NATO membership in any way."

Not mentioned in current discussions, as far as I can see, is the loss of Russian credibility when it threatens "consequences" for either country joining NATO. As a practical matter, as of today, Russia has committed the best part of its military resources to a failed invasion of Ukraine. The consensus view is that for Russia even to resume its Ukraine offensive will require reconstitution of its forces, a process likely to take months -- but this leaves out what would be needed to impose "consequences" on Finland and Sweden for joining NATO.

The Russo-Ukraine War has shown that Russia is unable to invade even a militarily weak neighbor without imposing extreme costs on itself, and in the end, it can't achieve anything like its objectives -- the best case for Russia now would be a return to something like the status quo ante. Finland and Sweden would be much harder to invade now even without the new NATO promise of security guarantees during their application process.

In fact, given the extent of atrocities coming to light in Ukraine, a negotiated outcome of the war that would include Ukraine staying out of NATO itself seems increasingly distant. Nobody wants a situation in which Russia can recover from the war and simply resume either open aggression or threats of it.

On the other hand, I don't see an extended stalemate given the history of the war so far. The move for Finland, likely followed by Sweden, to join NATO now is an indication that the myth of Russian power has already been destroyed. The threats of "consequences" even a few weeks ago are now empty.

What we've seen so far in the war, with Kyiv the best example but Odesa/Mykolaiv serving as well, is that Russian advances "culminate" before reaching their objective, followed by a period of Ukrainian counterattacks that eventually result in a Russian rout. I think equivalent conditions are building for the Russian drive from Izyum southeast toward Slovyansk and Barvinkove.

I think what we'll eventually see is a situation where Ukraine regains territory at least beyond the de facto 2014 borders, but Russia will be unable to accept conditions that acknowledge this. Meanwhile, Finland and Sweden will join NATO, Ukraine will at least continue to threaten to join, and Russia will be kept busy retaining possession of Kaliningrad and the Kuril Islands.

But this leaves out the whole issue of war crimes trials and reparations, which could put Russia at an even greater disadvantage. At that point, I think we'd be in a position calling for something like a new Congress of Vienna.

Yet More On Zelensky As Rhetorician

The text of Ukraine President Zelensky's Tuesday address to the UN Security Council is available here. As rhetoric, it's up there with the speeches that, without a text avaialble, the ancient historians would compose as the speech a statesman would presumably have given taking into account the circumstances he faced and the goals he meant to achieve. But I'm no longer sure if Zelensky has modern parallels -- Lincoln, Churchill, and Roosevelt in their wartime addresses spoke primarily to national audiences or specific groups of allies.

Kennedy and Reagan apostrophized Soviet leaders, again with domestic and allied secondary audiences. In his address to the UN, as well as in individual addresses to other world legislatures, Zelensky is rallying much of the civilized world, looking not just to invigorate a base but to bring over the uncommitted. He begins by referencing the particular atrocities the Russian army committed in Bucha, but he moves beyond that to the central issue:

How is this different from what the ISIS terrorists were doing in the occupied territory?

Except that it is done by a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.

It destroys the internal unity of states.

Destroys state borders.

. . . So where is the security that the Security Council must guarantee? There is no security. Although there is a Security Council, as if nothing happened.

So where is the peace that the United Nations was created to guarantee?

It is obvious that the key institution of the world, which must ensure the coercion of any aggressors to peace, simply cannot work effectively.

, , , Ladies and Gentlemen!

I would like to remind you of the first article of the first chapter of the UN Charter. What is the purpose of our organization? To maintain peace. And to force to peace. Now the UN Charter is being violated literally from the first article. And if so, what is the point of all other articles?

. . . Why did Russia come to Ukraine, tell me?

I will answer. Russia's leadership feels like colonizers - as in ancient times. They need our wealth and our people. Russia has already deported tens of thousands of our citizens to its territory. Then there will be hundreds. It abducted more than two thousand children. Simply abducted thousands of children. And continues to do so. Russia wants to turn Ukrainians into silent slaves.

. . . If this continues, the finale will be that each state will rely only on the power of arms to ensure its security, not on international law, not on international institutions.

Then, the UN can simply be dissolved.

Ladies and Gentlemen!

Are you ready for the dissolving of the UN? Do you think that the time of international law has passed?

If your answer is no, you need to act now, act immediately.

The power of the UN Charter must be restored immediately.

The UN system must be reformed immediately so that the right of veto is not a right to kill. So that there is a fair representation of all regions of the world in the Security Council.

. . . It is now clear that the goals set in San Francisco in 1945 during the creation of a global international security organization have not been achieved. And it is impossible to achieve them without reforms.

Therefore, we must do everything in our power to pass on to the next generations an effective UN with the ability to respond preventively to security challenges and thus guarantee peace.

. . . And now we need decisions from the Security Council. For peace in Ukraine. If you do not know how to adopt this decision, you can do two things.

Remove Russia as an aggressor and a source of war from blocking decisions about its own aggression, its own war. And then do everything that can establish peace.

. . . Or show how you can reformat and really work for peace.

Or if your current format is unalterable and there is simply no way out, then the only option would be to dissolve yourself altogether.

I am convinced that you can do without the third option.

He went further in a Facebook address later on Tuesday, as reported by the BBC:

"The UN Security Council exists, and security in the world doesn't," Zelensky says in his nightly Facebook address after his virtual speech to the UN panel in New York on Tuesday.

The UN, he says, "is currently unable to carry out the functions for which it was created". He goes on to blame Russia - a permanent Security Council member, for its dysfunction.

Russia, Zelensky says, "discredits the UN and all other international institutions where it still participates".

The Ukrainian president has called for Russia to be removed from the panel, where it wields veto power, saying in his Facebook address that Russia's role at the UN is "to block everything constructive and use global architecture in order to spread lies and justify the evil it does".

. . . Ukraine, he says, is preparing for visits from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell in the coming days.

"Now Kyiv is the capital of global democracy, the capital of the struggle for freedom for all on the European continent," says Zelensky.

I almost think we have to go back to the classical period, to ancient Athens and Sparta, or to the Maccabees, to find this historic level of leadership and fight from small-state players. I'm still trying to absorb what this means. UPDATE: The YouTube below from Rabbi Henry Abramson, a specialist in Ukraine history, provides more historical and religious context:

Who Remembers The 40-Mile Convoy?

I'm not a military analyst, but I watch the coverage of the Russo-Ukraine War. and I'm starting to see a pattern to it that I've seen since the start: the 40-Mile Convoy Syndrome. What I think is the current (and correct) military view is this one from the AP and Pentagon spokesman John Kirby:

A sidelight of the battle for Kyiv was the widely reported saga of a Russian resupply convoy that stretched dozens of miles along a main roadway toward the capital. It initially seemed to be a worrisome sign for the Ukrainians, but they managed to attack elements of the convoy, which had limited off-road capability and thus eventually dispersed or otherwise became a non-factor in the fight.

“They never really provided a resupply of any value to Russian forces that were assembling around Kyiv, never really came to their aid,” said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby. “The Ukrainians put a stop to that convoy pretty quickly by being very nimble, knocking out bridges, hitting lead vehicles and stopping their movement.”

However, this was not the consensus as of early last month. A March 3 report in The National Interest had this take, including remarks from the same John Kirby:

Reports emerged earlier this week of a massive Russian military convoy—made up of main battle tanks (MBT’s), towed artillery units, and other armored vehicles—heading for Kiev. However, the Russian convoy has reportedly stalled in recent days. "They haven't … from our best estimates have not made any appreciable progress geographically speaking in the last 24 to 36 hours, and again nothing very significant. It is difficult for us to know with great specificity all that is going into this stall if you will," said Pentagon press secretary John Kirby on Wednesday.

Kirby offered several potential reasons to explain the apparent delay. “One, we believe the Russians are deliberately, actually, regrouping themselves and reassessing the progress that they have not made and how to make up for lost time. Two, we do believe that they have experienced logistics and sustainment challenges, challenges that we don't believe they fully anticipated. And three, they are getting resistance from the Ukrainians. We have some indications—nothing that we can 100 percent independently verify, but we have some indications that the Ukrainians have in fact tried to slow down that convoy. And we have no reason to doubt those reports, but again we can't speak to it in great specificity,” Kirby said.

Though Ukrainian units have allegedly chipped away at the convoy from the front and rear, Kiev simply does not have the capability to destroy or meaningfully degrade a force of this size.

Except that in hindsight, Kyiv did in fact have the capability to "destroy or meaningfully degrade" that same convoy, which Kirby himself confirmed a month later, "by being very nimble, knocking out bridges, hitting lead vehicles and stopping their movement".

The pattern of analysis I've begun to see throughout the war follows this model: the Russians fail to do what is predicted, e.g. to encircle Kyiv in a quick move. Various explanations are offered, all of which put forward reasons other than Ukrainian battlefield skill: mud, corruption, low morale -- or indeed, the Russians are just regrouping, in fact, it isn't a delay, it's just a strategic pause. Versions of this were being offered, even by military veterans and retired generals, up to the middle of last week: there were limited Ukrainian counterattacks in Irpin, but the 40-mile convoy hadn't weighed in yet!

I've actually come to the view that the current conventional wisdom is just a variant of last month's 40-mile convoy theory: the Russisn advance has had inexplicable setbacks and delays, but they're going to reposition and resupply and move to a new objective. Any day now. Just you wait! Thus the current line from the Institute for the Study of War, as of this morning:

Russian forces continued to reposition to continue their invasion in eastern and southern Ukraine, having abandoned the attack on Kyiv. They have largely completed their withdrawal from the Kyiv area and are reportedly redeploying some of the withdrawn combat forces from Belarus to Russia. . . . Russia has not yet committed forces withdrawn from the Battle of Kyiv back into the fighting in eastern Ukraine. . . . Belgorod continues to emerge as the primary concentration area for Russian forces regrouping and refitting after their retreat from Kyiv and in preparation for onward movement to their home stations or to join the fighting in the east

The subtext here couldn't be clearer: the words "reposition", "redeploying", "regrouping", and "refitting" all appear, in "preparation for onward movement" -- just like all the tanks and guns and trucks and stuff in the 40-mile convoy. The problem is the conflict between the consensus assumptions and other reporting, for instance in the London Times:

Russian units are suffering losses as high as 40 per cent and recruits in St Petersburg are being fast-tracked through training to prepare them for the front line, according to Ukrainian intelligence.

After six weeks of heavy fighting the Kremlin is rotating its forces out of Ukraine as it concentrates on more limited objectives including the encirclement of Donbas.

Some Russian units returning to their bases across the border are suffering from heavy losses, according to the Ukrainian defence ministry.

The difficulty is that the current conventional wisdom is that somehow the Russians are going to pull this out. Gen Milley said yesterday:

"I do think this is a very protracted conflict, and I think it's measured in years. I don't know about decade, but at least years for sure," Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley told the House Armed Services Committee Tuesday during testimony on the defense budget.

"This is a very extended conflict that Russia has initiated and I think that NATO, the United States, Ukraine and all of the allies and partners supporting Ukraine will be involved in this for quite some time," Milley said.

The problem is the pattern we've been seeing is Russia has an unexpected delay, and indeed an unexpected rout, followed by a period of inactivity that's interpreted as a strategic pause -- followed by another rout. When units lose 30-40% of their strength, they don't just regroup. It seems to me that it may take months for the Russo-Ukraine War to resolve, but it isn't going to take years. So far, nobody seems to be making serious plans for a rapid Russian collapse as a power player with an equally rapid rise of Eastern Europe as a geopolitical force.

That is, nobody but Zelensky.

They Use Clausewitz's Words, But They Don't Read Him

Here's a data point for the Russo-Ukraine War: as of Sunday, the Institute for the Study of War's report on the Russian offensive contained the same boilerplate it's had for several weeks:

Russian forces continued to capture territory in central Mariupol and will likely capture the city in the coming days.

As of yesterday, the ISW began to back off:

Little information about what is occurring in Mariupol is available likely due to the loss/interdiction of communications from the city. Russian media reported fighting in the city on April 2.

But as of today, they're in full retreat:

Additionally, the Ukrainian defenders of Mariupol have outperformed ISW’s previous estimates and continue to hold the city.

Shouldn't people be asking questions about the "experts" who are guiding our military policy? A couple of weeks ago, the buzzword was "culminate". The Russian advance on Kyiv had "culminated", but none of the talking heads would draw any conclusions about that. It's a little bit like saying we're having weather today. Should I wear sunscreen or take an umbrella? Well, nobody's gonna commit, we'll just go so far as to call it weather. The best they could predict was that there would be "stalemate" around Kyiv, which was the next big buzzword. The ISW itself only gradually shifted from that assessment. As of even last Friday, April 1, their view was:

Russian forces around Kyiv and in northeastern Ukraine seek to conduct a retrograde action—the orderly withdrawal of combat forces—for refit and further redeployment to other axes of advance. Russian forces remaining on the forward trace of Russian lines are a covering force intended to screen the retrograde of most of the combat power previously deployed around Kyiv. Ukrainian forces retook substantial territory both northwest and east of Kyiv in the past 24 hours. Ukrainian forces likely advanced faster than Russian forces anticipated, but Russian forces successfully withdrew much of the damaged combat power remaining around Kyiv into Belarus.

But as of last Sunday, April 3,the ISW changed its tune, a day after even Wikipedia declared Ukraine the victor in the Battle of Kyiv as of 31 March:

Ukraine has won the Battle of Kyiv. Russian forces are completing their withdrawal, but not in good order. Ukrainian forces are continuing to clear Kyiv Oblast of isolated Russian troops left behind in the retreat, which some Ukrainian officials describe as “lost orcs.” Russian forces had attempted to conduct an orderly retreat from their positions around Kyiv with designated covering forces supported by artillery and mines to allow the main body to withdraw. The main body of Russian troops has withdrawn from the west bank of the Dnipro and is completing its withdrawal from the east bank, but the retrograde has been sufficiently disorderly that some Russian troops were left behind.

This is mild indeed. Photos and videos widely available on the web show Russian columns, in some cases comprising entire battalion tactical groups, in "highway of death" tableaux with burned and dismembered bodies strewn around their scorched and flattened vehicles. That's how "sufficiently disorderly" the "retrograde" was. But why did it take the ISW until April 3 to call the battle when days earlier I could have had better information from Wikipedia?

The Atlantic has been publishing some good pieces lately, like How the West Got Russia’s Military So, So Wrong

What we are seeing today in Ukraine is the result of a purportedly great military being punched in the mouth. The resilience of Ukrainian resistance is embarrassing for a Western think-tank and military community that had confidently predicted that the Russians would conquer Ukraine in a matter of days. For years, Western “experts” prattled on about the Russian military’s expensive, high-tech “modernization.”

. . . Western analysts took basic metrics (such as numbers and types of tanks and aircraft), imagined those measured forces executing Russian military doctrine, then concluded that the Ukrainians had no chance. . . . As The Atlantic’s Eliot Cohen has argued, the systems that the West used to evaluate the Russian military have failed nearly as comprehensively as that military has.

The author notes,

[P]rognosticators paid too little attention to the basic motivations and morale of the soldiers who would be asked to use the Russian military’s allegedly excellent doctrine and equipment.

When the talking heads started throwing around buzzwords like "culminate", I did what my contrarian mentors in graduate school taught me to do -- I went and read Clausewitz, free for the browsing on the web. Just for starters, "culminate" didn't really mean for Clausewitz what the retired generals thought he meant. But let's go farther:

[T]he moral forces are amongst the most important subjects in war. They are the spirits which permeate the whole element of war, and which fasten themselves soonest and with the greatest affinity to the will which puts in motion and guides the whole mass of powers, unite with it as it were in one stream, because it is a moral force itself. Unfortunately they seek to escape from all book-knowledge, for they will neither be brought into numbers nor into classes, and want only to be seen and felt.

. . . Even if the theory of the art of war does no more in reality than that it calls these things to remembrance, shows the necessity of allowing to the moral forces their full value, and of always taking them into consideration, then it has in fact extended its borders over the region of immaterial forces, and by establishing that point of view, has condemned beforehand every one who would endeavour to justify himself before its judgment seat by the mere physical relations of forces.

The moral forces in Ukraine are making monkeys out of people like Gen Petraeus, whose predictions of stalemate have been as bad as his hairpiece. This man was head of the CIA? Just yesterday I saw him on YouTube, well after the revelations of executed civilian bodies left on the streets in Irpin and Bucha, asserting that the Russo-Ukraine war would end with a negotiated settlement.

I wouldn't count on it. On the other hand, Petraeus made a monkey of himself well before Ukraine's moral forces did.

You Saw It Here First!

On Thursday, I asked:

But someone also should be asking questions about 2018, and indeed, what services the Secret Service is now providing for Hunter, who has adopted a new, very low public profile, at Joe's behest. This man is an addict. Does Hunter now have permanent 24/7 minders? What do the minders do for him to keep him happy but out of trouble?

Apparently I'm not the only one to wonder about this. This morning, reports were making the rounds about just these questions:

Hunter Biden is renting a home in Malibu, California, for $20,000 per month — and the Secret Service is paying $30,000 per month to rent an adjacent home to provide him with 24/7 protection, according to a report Monday by ABC News.

The president’s son is living in the exclusive location and pursuing his art career, even as critics call for a special counsel to take over the investigation into his alleged influence-peddling, which is documented on his infamous laptop, now verified.

. . . The home in which Hunter Biden lives appears to be a secluded location, listed at one-tenth the value of neighboring homes, though other real estate sites put the value of the home above $3 million.

The Secret Service has been accused of covering up Hunter Biden’s allegedly wild lifestyle, as well as an allegedly unlawful gun purchase. During that purchase, Biden filled out a form declaring that he was not a drug user, during a time when he has admitted elsewhere that he was abusing drugs, thus violating the kind of law his father has vowed to enforce as a means of gun control.

I speculated at the time that Hunter, with a record of cocaine addiction and frequent visits from prostitutes, would likely need to be kept under conditions more restrictive than even ordinary house arrest. It's noteworthy that this rental follows a move from another in Venice Beach, probably at the recommendation of the Secret Service. I went to the web to get a satellite view of the property, listed at a link in the story as 20779 Big Rock Dr, Malibu, CA 90265:

It's on a cul de sac. I would imagine that the Secret Service rental is the larger house with the tile roof to its left, with a commanding view of the corner, the access road, and the driveway. I suppose I could drive by there today, and crewcut guys in Brooks Brothers casuals, sunglasses, and ear buds would be out shooing me away.

On one hand, the ordinary point of Secret Service protection would be to prevent attacks from crazies, Islamist assassins, and such against a member of the presidential family. But in Hunter's case, I'm sure there's a much wider range of undesirables that Hunter himself would seek out if he had the opportunity, drug dealers, pimps, hookers, old cronies, and such, among whom a good many would also be on the alert for ways they might blackmail Hunter and even get to the Big Guy himself.

Not to mention the potential for a high-profile DUI or even an accident where Hunter crashes into an innocent all-American family. I would bet that a key duty for the minders is to be sure the guy never, ever gets behind a wheel.

There's no mention in this morning's stories of whether his current wife, Melissa Cohen, ever pays a visit, nor the current whereabouts of the toddler Beau, which I've got to assume are not in that house. Another question is, if Hunter is held under such super-secure conditions, what sort of favors the agents have to do for him to keep him on cloud nine. I would assume there are at minimum doctors who can accommodate this with prescriptions written for names other than Hunter Biden. There have got to be at least several violations of federal law in these arrangements.

The story doesn't mention what sort of arrangements must also be in place for the Second Addict, Joe's daughter Ashley. I would assume they're equivalent.

Let's Talk Unanticipated Consequences

I was finishing up yesterday's post with a remark about unanticipated consequences of the Russo-Ukraine War, and the image above came to mind. It's a photo of the French army occupying the Ruhr district in Germany in 1923 as a result of German defaults on reparation payments after World War I. Ukraine President Zelensky has

called on Russians to learn the words ‘reparations’ and ‘contributions’. He stressed that Russia would reimburse Ukraine for everything that was destroyed during the war.

Something like this must inevitably occur if the world is to avoid a circumstance where Russia simply withdraws from Ukraine, rebuilds for some period of years, and tries the same thing again. The same applies to war crimes. The evidence of large-scale executions of civilians in the liberated Kyiv suburbs Bucha and Irpin is an indication that such massacres are probably even more widespread and will need full investigstion and prosecution.

The problem is enforcement. Ukraine already has a restraining order against Russia from the UN Court in the Hague:

Russia was ordered to halt its invasion of Ukraine by the United Nations’ top court Wednesday, in a preliminary decision that appeared to have largely symbolic significance.

Ukraine initiated the case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague to contest President Vladimir Putin’s official explanation for entering the country as an effort to end a “genocide” of pro-Russian separatists.

Any further orders from the UN will either be vetoed by Russia or simply disregarded. Neither the US, the EU. NATO, nor Ukraine will be able to push enforcement measures through the UN like those enacted for Iraq in 1990-91. This was the same problem France encountered after Versailles, and the only way it could collect was with its own military intervention forcing renewed supranational negotiation whose result nevertheless "proved unworkable", even though its US author received the Nobel Peace Prize.

I don't think a Versailles type solution involving reparations will work any better this time. On the other hand, war crimes trials like those of German and Japanese leaders after World War II were possible because the Allied victories were complete, their territories were occupied and under martial law, and the relevant authorities were able to lay their hands on the war criminals directly. After World War I, Germany was not directly occupied, and matters like collecting reparations were never satisfactory.

Reparations and war crimes tribunals will never be possible, and certainly never enforceable, in a negotiated settlement of the Russia-Ukraine War. Nor will any UN based settlement be effective as long as Russia remains on the Security Council with veto power. They'll simply establish conditions for renewed Russian aggression like the conditions after World War I.

However, I do see problems with gaming the end of the Russo-Ukraine War out this way. The biggest is overestimating Russia, which has been a characteristic of Western strategy throughout. To paraphrase a wise community organizer, never underestimate the ability of Russia to [mess] things up. This has been my guiding perspective as I've followed the war, but the extent of the Russian collapse around Kyiv surprised even me.

Mikhail Gorbachev is reported to have said the Chernobyl nuclear accident led to the collapse of the Soviet Union by bankrupting it. I suspect that an estimate I've heard of the Russians losing $10 billion so far in destroyed and abandoned military equipment from the war is wildly lowball. The impact of sanctions will likely be far lower than the impact of sacrificing immense national treasure in this great military potlatch, with the additional disaster of lost military credibility worldwide.

Even now, this has been enough to suggest the Japanese can challenge Russian possession of the Kuril Islands, and I definitely would not rule out the Poles challenging Russia in Kaliningrad.

I think an unavoidable outcome of the war will be an increase in Ukraine's prestige, an equivalent decline of Russian prestige even without potential war crime tribunals, the emergence of Zelensky as a European power player, and the decline of a three-poled theory of world politics with the further disintegration of the Russian state.

I'm still wondering what else this could lead to, but again, I would not underrate the effect of schism within Orthodoxy.

Overtaken By Events

The suddenness of the Russian collapse and retreat around Kyiv is just another illustration of how consistently Ukraine has outperformed the conventional wisdom throughout the war. Just a few days ago, reports that the Russians were digging trenches in the Chernobyl radioactive area were taken as a sign that they were going to stay there and use it as a base to reconstitute their forces, at minimum to keep Ukraine's army tied down around Kyiv while they shifted their efforts to Donbas.

All of a sudden, the reports instead were that as of Thursday. Russian troops had left the Chernobyl facility entirely, with other reports that the soldiers who had been digging trenches were being treated for radiation sickness. Although most discussions of the developments around Kyiv characterize them conservatively as an organized strategic withdrawal by the Russians to refocus their forces, the report from the BBC below stresses that the withdrawal was forced by Ukrainian attacks and, given the disposition of burned-out Russian tanks with the troops' ordinary effects hurriedly abandoned, it was clearly sudden and unplanned. (Warning: highly disturbing content)

I was always skeptical of prognosticators, including retired generals, who were claiming that the Russians would leave a force dug in around the western Kyiv suburbs to cover their retreat and keep the Ukrainians tied down there while they shifted to Donbas. Consider that a Russian force of size s was stalled in the Kyiv suburbs and resisting Ukrainian counterattacks. If the Russians intended to reduce this force by withdrawing and redeploying r quantity of troops, the amount of troops resisting Ukrainian counterattacks would be s minus r, when s itself was barely sufficient for the job.

Any smaller number would be driven out. (I could figure this out even though they threw me out of ROTC. I'm not sure if the retired generals could do this.) It isn't even clear that the Russians actually intended to make this move, or if their announcements of strategic redeployment were simply a cover for the rout they knew was impending. The issue I see is that the consensus view up at least to yesterday was giving the Russians the benefit of the doubt when Ukraine had clearly won an actual battlefield victory in Kyiv.

Even the map below, posted early yesterday, is probably already out of date, given reports that the Russians have fully withdrawn from Chernobyl and appear to be retreating back to Belarus.

Russian forces around Kyiv are retreating en masse, leaving behind wrecked armour and possibly trapped pockets of troops as the Ukrainian army advances.

This map shows settlements confirmed recaptured today (blue) and yesterday (yellow).

The siege of Chernihiv is also lifted. pic.twitter.com/eINXgPpyJr

— Nathan Ruser (@Nrg8000) April 1, 2022

So what of the anticipated massive battle in Donbas? The Institute for the Study of War was partly right on March 31:

Russian efforts to redeploy damaged units from the Kyiv and Sumy axes to eastern Ukraine are unlikely to enable Russian forces to conduct major gains. Russia continued to withdraw elements of the 35th and 36th Combined Arms Armies and 76 Air Assault Division from their positions northwest of Kyiv into Belarus for refit and likely further redeployment to eastern Ukraine. However, these units are likely heavily damaged and demoralized.

But a few sentences down, their analysis is already out of date:

Russian forces will likely attempt to retain their current front lines around Kyiv and in northeastern Ukraine and will continue to dig in on these fronts; ISW has not seen any indicators of Russian forces fully relinquishing captured territory. However, Ukrainian counterattacks are likely disrupting Russian efforts to redeploy and refit their forces and will continue in the coming days.

This estimate, even if pessimistic about Russian prospects for a Donbas push, nevertheless appears to have conjured Russian resources around Kyiv out of thin air. The photo at right, from the Oryx site and dated April 1, appears to be a more accurate indication of the situation on the ground (Click on the image for a larger view).

Estimates I've seen, with the caveat that they come from retired generals who seem to be reappearing on the networks, are that the Russians have already deployed about 75% of the forces they have available anywhere to Ukraine, including forces in the Far East. An enormous amount of those forces in the 75% have already been chewed up, and it looks as though some number of the 25% remaining will refuse to fight. Color me skeptical about a major Donbas offensive. A few days ago, the experts at ISW thought the Russians would remain dug in around Kyiv.

The Japanese seem to have a clearer view of developments.

🇯🇵The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan will now call the Kuril Islands a part of Japan occupied by the Russian Federation, Kyodo, the Japanese media informs.

— Svidomi (@Svidomi_En) March 31, 2022

There's going to be fallout from this war well beyond Ukraine. What, for instance, will be the long-term impact of schism within Orthodoxy and its consequent loss of prestige? Does Francis Fukuyama still think history is finished? My estimate is that the shooting will be over a lot sooner than the conventional wisdom expects, I think Ukraine will have a clear advantage, and the end of the war will have widespread unanticipated consequences.