The end of Ukraine and after

While the world is focused on the coup de maitre of the Palestinian resistance on October 7, the war in Ukraine continues. But where will it lead us?

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The war in Ukraine is soon approaching its second year, and with the world’s eyes turned on Palestine, it may seem as if not much is happening on this other major conflict of the early 2020s.

But in truth, very important pieces are now revealing themselves on the global board.

First, we should remember that winter is just now setting in Ukraine, and Russia has been waiting for it for two reasons: 1- it signals the end of the failed Ukrainian counter-offensive (which only managed to take back a token amount of land for an egregious amount of Ukrainian lives) and 2- it is prime weather for Russia to launch an offensive of its own.

Indeed, while winter presents both advantages and disadvantages equally to both sides, it still favors the attacker. Frozen soil means advancing tanks get stuck less. Less foliage means more exposure to artillery and Shahed drones (highly responsive explosive drones that can be guided up to 2 seconds before impact).

Russia knows winter, it’s been their bread and butter for hundreds of years. Ukrainian winters however, while they can get cold, get nowhere near as cold as Russian ones. It will remain to be seen how much exactly this winter will favor Russia and allow their advance, but all signs point to a major Russian advance (either in terms of territory conquered or gains made). Consider this next point.

NATO reserves are depleting

Secondly, on top of winter warfare setting in, it seems NATO reserves are close to depletion. The USA, the prime manufacturer of weapons in the world, is now stretched thin between sending equipment to Ukraine and to Israel.

Already in Israel, Iron Dome missiles are failing to intercept their target and falling back down where they came from. This indicates a hardware failure somewhere on the missile after it was launched in the air from the battery.

Each Iron Dome missile, by the way, costs 60,000 dollars to manufacture. The US is the one footing the bill for those missiles. This is not surprising; the US military-industrial complex is bloated. But beyond that, it is also highly inefficient. It’s a system based on making profits to the industrial players, and that’s how an oil pressure switch can cost over 10,000 USD when it retails for $328.

Remember the dismissals of Russia’s army back in 2022, about how they were running out of missiles or ammo, and how they were sending troops to the front armed with little more than airsoft weapons. Almost two years later though, Russia has a seemingly infinite supply of weapons, missiles and drones to send to the front. The exhaustion of Russia’s war capabilities has not materialized.

Meanwhile, Ukraine is relying on the scraps NATO countries can part with. Simply put, the capacity for Russia to replenish its depleted stock is higher than NATO’s, and Ukraine’s is basically non-existent.

This is a war of attrition for Russia, where they don’t need to take more territory beyond the 1/5th of Ukraine they already control (excluding Crimea) and have all the time in the world to wage this war at their pace. It is NATO that needs to scramble for a solution. Now that the US’ attention is also turned on Israel, how long can Ukraine actually still hold out?

Perhaps that is why the mass media is shifting away from excusing Ukraine’s war crimes and corruption and starting to ditch their former “ally”. The Washington Post itself ran an article titled Ukraine’s supporters need to rethink their theory of victory, in which they said in no uncertain terms that “Ukraine is not reconquering substantial territory, and aid is needed indefinitely to forestall a devastating defeat”, further adding that “The window for a negotiated settlement favorable to Ukraine — if there ever was one — has surely closed, as Russia sees a technologically stalemated battlefield in which it has a long-term advantage in manpower”.

In other words, Ukraine is screwed and the West is preparing to ditch it and let Russia win. It’s not that they want to, it’s that they have nothing left they can give Ukraine and let it come out ahead. Nevermind the fact that Ukraine is misusing its gifts, like continuing to shell civilians in Donetsk when they should be focusing on hitting the Russian Army.

The media is leading the charge to prepare public opinion — which they’d spent an entire year building up to support Ukraine — to make their messy divorce with what they called, up until 2022, the “most corrupt country in Europe”. Time magazine, a serious publication, recently ran a boiling portrait of Zelensky: “Now he walks in, gets the updates, gives the orders, and walks out” [just like Hitler in the last days of the war].

Even more recently, the Washington Post ran an article indicting Ukraine for blowing up NordStream — when just a year ago, the same paper happily quoted European officials and blamed Russia without any critical input of their own.

Nothing left to give does not mean they have nothing left in stock, however. The USA is still eyeing China and was “forced” into Ukraine and ‘Israel’ against its will. They are still keeping a necessary supply for themselves, and they are still manufacturing equipment — albeit not at the same rate Russia or China are able to. This depletion, however, is undoubtedly concerning for the NATO bloc who might have even thought at one point that they could actually win against Russia by just giving vehicles and weapons to Ukraine.

Peace will be in favor of Russia

The question now will be when peace negotiations will finally take place. Russia has tried peace negotiations since the early days of the war, and their stated goals were always clear: to protect the Donbass, who had been embroiled in a bloody civil war since 2014, from military and fascist actors in Ukraine.

Two agreements (Minsk I and II) were signed over this issue before the war — with Russia acting as a mediator and guarantor of peace for the Donbass — and then quickly ignored by Ukraine who continued to shell and carry out massacres against civilians in the ethnic Russian and industrial bastion of Ukraine.

Whether this was always the intended goal or Putin was expecting to repatriate some of this industrial base to Russia is irrelevant, because the goals have now shifted through Ukraine’s actions.

As for the peace negotiations Russia attempted in the early days, they were summarily ignored by Ukrainian High Command.

Two years into the conflict, it is unlikely that Russia will simply walk away with just the Donbass. Ukraine has become dangerous. They now have NATO equipment and experience with which to carry clandestine attacks in the Donbass (or other parts of Russia) were a peace treaty signed.

Ukraine has also struck at Crimea with their new missiles provided by NATO, which undoubtedly worries Russian command. Prior to 2022, Ukraine simply did not have the capabilities of attacking Crimea from afar — a province which has been under Russian control since 2014.

Peace will favor Russia, who will get to dictate their terms. This is simply because the point of war is, as Clausewitz correctly deduced, “to render [the enemy] powerless to resist the victor's will”.

No more, no less.

However, we can infer that demilitarization is still on the table and will be non-negotiable to Russia, as leaving a militarized Ukraine would mean a repeat of the same conflict in the future, likely as soon as NATO believes they can exploit an event that weakens Russia, if only slightly.

As Ukraine’s equipment is being depleted faster than it can be refilled, and as the average age of the army is increasing (the average age of a UA soldier is now 43 years old, which is deeply concerning), we see that Ukraine does not have much resistance left to offer. There will come a point where they will be reduced powerless to resist the victor’s will, unfortunately accepting their state too late after countless deaths, that could have been prevented, were sacrificed to save Zelensky’s face and fortune.

Ukraine has two choices for its peace deal: either negotiate now, which is becoming increasingly clear (Zelensky has said he’s the only one who still believes in victory — remember he’s originally an actor, not a military officer), or wait until you are utterly defeated.

In the first case, Ukraine may still walk away with something left. In the second case, Russia will be able to make any demand they want out of Ukraine with no one to oppose them. Certainly the US will try to meddle in the peace deal, and the question will be how seriously Russia will take the United State’s threats after the latter has shown, throughout this year and a half, that they are unwilling to directly fight against Russia, who is coming out of this conflict stronger than before it.

I have always been saying, since day one, that Ukraine should enter peace negotiations as soon as possible even if they are not conclusive or don’t lead anywhere. It’s a normal part of warfare (because without peace negotiations, warfare would only ever drag on until eradication of either side). Ukraine refused, for two reasons:

1. Zelensky is actually a patsy for the fascists controlling the country, he has no actual power to enter negotiations.

2. The fascists themselves are patsies for the USA/NATO, who funded the Euromaidan revolution and installed Porochenko in 2014, after which the ethnic cleansing of the Donbass truly began.

They are now reaping what they sowed because they sincerely thought themselves to be important to the US; they thought that aid would keep coming forever. As noted war criminal Henry Kissinger said, “it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal”.

I take a cautious approach to making sweeping predictions as to what the peace deal could look like. What we know however is that since Russia has accepted the Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic as Russian oblasts following the 2022 referenda, they will likely force Ukraine to formally recognize that they have lost this territory (along with Crimea which has been de facto Russian territory since 2014 but which Ukraine still does not agree to).

New elections will take place — if not at Russia’s command, then at Ukraine’s command (either the people of Ukraine or the military generals) — as Zelensky has outlived his usefulness and can now be discarded.

These predictions are based on the current situation and controlled territory.

Bleeding out of Ukraine and into Europe

This conflict now becomes deeply concerning beyond its own geographical borders.

We are seeing fascist paramilitary groups (Such as Azov or the Kraken divisions) who are armed with rocket launchers and other heavy weaponry, and know how to use them.

When the war is over, where do you think they will turn their attention to? We have seen before in history that fascists don’t stay in one place very long; their ideology requires outward expansion eventually when inwards consolidation has finally happened (in other words, much like how the Third Reich first consolidated their power in Germany and Austria and then invaded Europe: they had no choice but to keep the gears turning for their ideology to survive).

We will likely see, if Ukrainian fascists are not taken care of by Russia, attacks conducted all over Europe by fascist cells and divisions. But this time, they will be carried out against entire residential buildings with Javelin rocket launchers, mortars, grenades and fully-automatic rifles.

On the global stage however, we see a very hopeful reunification with the province of Taiwan in China, and a Korean reunification that will likely favor the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), as the United States, who both set up Taiwan and South Korea in the past, will simply not be able to protect their vassal states. With what weapons could they? The ones that vanished in Israel and Ukraine?

These two events will even likely be peaceful and consensual, at least in the case of Taiwan’s. In Korea, the situation is still blurry and will likely take several more years to materialize. It’s important to note in Korea’s case that both state leaders in the north and south have tried throughout the 2000s to mellow out their relation and start a dialogue, which was always cut short by the US who does not want to see this happen. As the US is plunging deeper into the end of their empire, a peaceful, lasting dialogue seems all the more likely to reemerge.

In Ukraine, we will watch all the pro-Ukrainian accounts on social media suddenly shut up about Ukraine and either disappear as funding dries up (we are actually already seeing this happen), or claim they always knew Russia was going to win and that they never really supported Ukraine in the first place.

What does this presume for war in China

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the USA (who heads the NATO bloc) has been eyeing China for a few years now. Just look at how popular opinion for China has devolved (% notes unfavorable view):

In 2005, 35% of US citizens and 27% of Canadians had a negative view of China. In 2019, that number shot up to 60 and 67% respectively over one year.

The media, who takes their orders from the State Department, is largely responsible for this shift in public opinion. 2019 was the year the “Uyghur genocide” news broke out (I will get into this eventually, but please see this thread I wrote for now). A “genocide” for which there is 0 evidence and plenty to the contrary.

But the announcement was enough. Using shoddy data and strange methodologies (like pointing to random buildings on Google Maps and calling them detention centers), the world became convinced Uyghurs were being specifically targetted in China (the Hui, who are also a recognized ethnic group in China and also predominantly Muslim, were apparently just fine however).

Propaganda plants seeds it will only see grown years later. The point of attacking China on every front, including the mediatic one, is to set the stage for a later war, no matter when that war comes. It could be next year or it could be in ten. But it will pay off when we are being reminded today that an invasion of China will be righteous and deserved.

The US, however, is less and less keen on attacking China. First of all, the defeat in Ukraine has certainly taken down their confidence a notch. Secondly, the entanglement in “Israel” is definitely not helping their plans. While the US is spending a fortune to support their glorified military base in Palestine, China is confidently and quietly building up its productive base.

Thirdly, all wargames the US runs against China ends in their defeat — the latest taking place this month. The mighty aircraft carriers, once fortresses on the sea, are now indeed little more than a giant target for cutting-edge weaponry which China possesses.

The tensions between China and the US will be explored in their own article, but if there is one silver lining to all that’s happening right now in the world, it’s that at the very least we may not yet see World War 3 happen.

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