WRT the idea that Russia has already been stymied and so no worries about "not letting them win", etc, I'm curious what your thoughts are on the Manafort/Kilminik "Mariupol Plan" that supposedly had basically the land that Russia now occupies as the goal for a now-defunct deal that had been in the works during the first Trump term? If that's the case, and what Putin's original realistic goal was was to take "Novorussya" and leave the rest of Ukraine as a puppet-state of Russia a-la Belarus, then the current state of things becoming reality would mean that those goals are actually fairly intact, and this kind of deal would in fact be a mostly-win for Putin.
Yes, he still would have paid a high price for it, but I feel like if this was in fact his main plan all along then he will have secured much more of it than the above calculus suggests.
This is the first I'm hearing of this plan. Did the first Trump administration think it could simply give Ukrainian territory to Russia, without Ukrainians having something to say about it?
Even if that were Putin's original goal, he's only achieved the smaller of its two tenets. He's taken Novorussya, but the rest of Ukraine is not a Russian puppet state, and is probably so fiercely hateful of Russia that it would never become one except by subjugation. Putin's early 2022 efforts to take Kyiv ended in an embarrassing retreat and logistical nightmares, so that's at least a partial defeat.
Also, as I said in the post: we shouldn't care so much about arbitrary definitions of winning and losing. If the best thing left for Ukraine, the United States, and the world is for all sides to declare victory and go home, they should do that. And if Putin comes away thinking that he got most of what he wanted, that only means that he accurately assessed what he had the power to seize in February 2022.
Other adversaries in other places face a different balance of power, and may have different values than Putin that would cause them to decline the same trade of gains and losses, so it shouldn't have much spillover effect on the likelihood of conflict elsewhere. We behaved about as expected, and the outcome was better for us than expected.
Thanks Andrew. The "Mariupol Plan" was supposedly something that was cooked up by Manafort and Kilminik while Manafort was acting as a consultant to Viktor Yanukovych, and was apparently unearthed as part of the Russiagate investigation. As described by the NYT piece that came out in 2022:
"Known loosely as the Mariupol plan, after the strategically vital port city, it called for the creation of an autonomous republic in Ukraine’s east, giving Putin effective control of the country’s industrial heartland, where Kremlin-armed, -funded and -directed “separatists” were waging a two-year-old shadow war that had left nearly 10,000 dead. The new republic’s leader would be none other than Yanukovych. The trade-off: “peace” for a broken and subservient Ukraine."
Obviously since it is linked to Russiagate some people are going to be pretty skeptical of any of these claims, but seen in hindsight it doesn't seem to stretch much credulity imo.
You're right that the remaining parts of independent Ukraine are now likely lost to Russia forever, both in practice and in spirit, but I wonder if Putin really understands/accepts that.
Then Ukraine will have to hold the line indefinitely until those aims change. As my last post made clear, I'd support a funding package commensurate with that aim. If Trump will not contribute, Europe should be able to cobble together the required resources, given the defensive advantage in the war so far. Either way, Ukraine's best strategy is to focus on defending the territory it still holds, both during and after the war.
That's not realistic. The well is truly poisoned. There will be no settlement with any concessions now that Russia has activated a war economy. There is no reason to expect anything other than a Saigon/Kabul moment. The time to deal was in Istanbul 3 years ago. The Ukrainians should accept whatever they can get, but the current incumbents know their personal outcomes won't be good, so they'll put it off for as long as they can. Which, by the looks of it, isn't very long. If supplying arms was the cure for national collapse, neither of the above would have happened.
Russia has been mired in foreign wars before, and had it's own "kabul moment", withdrawing after 15k soldiers lost their lives and a bunch of angry Russian moms protested at the border because they didn't want their sons dying needlessly. The death toll for Russian soldiers in Ukraine is now many times that of the loss of life in Afghanistan, and while the Russian state has done its best to keep the lid on the pot, I don't see how much longer it can suppress resentment for sending more and more young men to the meat grinder.
You could be right. I very much hope not, but the European security order is clearly changing quickly, and the range of possibilities is wider than it had been. I will note that Saigon and Kabul were different circumstances involving the prolonged fighting and then sudden withdrawal of U.S. troops, which have not fought in Ukraine. If supplying arms were useless at preventing national collapse, Ukraine would have collapsed already.
WRT the idea that Russia has already been stymied and so no worries about "not letting them win", etc, I'm curious what your thoughts are on the Manafort/Kilminik "Mariupol Plan" that supposedly had basically the land that Russia now occupies as the goal for a now-defunct deal that had been in the works during the first Trump term? If that's the case, and what Putin's original realistic goal was was to take "Novorussya" and leave the rest of Ukraine as a puppet-state of Russia a-la Belarus, then the current state of things becoming reality would mean that those goals are actually fairly intact, and this kind of deal would in fact be a mostly-win for Putin.
Yes, he still would have paid a high price for it, but I feel like if this was in fact his main plan all along then he will have secured much more of it than the above calculus suggests.
This is the first I'm hearing of this plan. Did the first Trump administration think it could simply give Ukrainian territory to Russia, without Ukrainians having something to say about it?
Even if that were Putin's original goal, he's only achieved the smaller of its two tenets. He's taken Novorussya, but the rest of Ukraine is not a Russian puppet state, and is probably so fiercely hateful of Russia that it would never become one except by subjugation. Putin's early 2022 efforts to take Kyiv ended in an embarrassing retreat and logistical nightmares, so that's at least a partial defeat.
Also, as I said in the post: we shouldn't care so much about arbitrary definitions of winning and losing. If the best thing left for Ukraine, the United States, and the world is for all sides to declare victory and go home, they should do that. And if Putin comes away thinking that he got most of what he wanted, that only means that he accurately assessed what he had the power to seize in February 2022.
Other adversaries in other places face a different balance of power, and may have different values than Putin that would cause them to decline the same trade of gains and losses, so it shouldn't have much spillover effect on the likelihood of conflict elsewhere. We behaved about as expected, and the outcome was better for us than expected.
Thanks Andrew. The "Mariupol Plan" was supposedly something that was cooked up by Manafort and Kilminik while Manafort was acting as a consultant to Viktor Yanukovych, and was apparently unearthed as part of the Russiagate investigation. As described by the NYT piece that came out in 2022:
"Known loosely as the Mariupol plan, after the strategically vital port city, it called for the creation of an autonomous republic in Ukraine’s east, giving Putin effective control of the country’s industrial heartland, where Kremlin-armed, -funded and -directed “separatists” were waging a two-year-old shadow war that had left nearly 10,000 dead. The new republic’s leader would be none other than Yanukovych. The trade-off: “peace” for a broken and subservient Ukraine."
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/02/magazine/russiagate-paul-manafort-ukraine-war.html
Obviously since it is linked to Russiagate some people are going to be pretty skeptical of any of these claims, but seen in hindsight it doesn't seem to stretch much credulity imo.
You're right that the remaining parts of independent Ukraine are now likely lost to Russia forever, both in practice and in spirit, but I wonder if Putin really understands/accepts that.
Then Ukraine will have to hold the line indefinitely until those aims change. As my last post made clear, I'd support a funding package commensurate with that aim. If Trump will not contribute, Europe should be able to cobble together the required resources, given the defensive advantage in the war so far. Either way, Ukraine's best strategy is to focus on defending the territory it still holds, both during and after the war.
That's not realistic. The well is truly poisoned. There will be no settlement with any concessions now that Russia has activated a war economy. There is no reason to expect anything other than a Saigon/Kabul moment. The time to deal was in Istanbul 3 years ago. The Ukrainians should accept whatever they can get, but the current incumbents know their personal outcomes won't be good, so they'll put it off for as long as they can. Which, by the looks of it, isn't very long. If supplying arms was the cure for national collapse, neither of the above would have happened.
Russia has been mired in foreign wars before, and had it's own "kabul moment", withdrawing after 15k soldiers lost their lives and a bunch of angry Russian moms protested at the border because they didn't want their sons dying needlessly. The death toll for Russian soldiers in Ukraine is now many times that of the loss of life in Afghanistan, and while the Russian state has done its best to keep the lid on the pot, I don't see how much longer it can suppress resentment for sending more and more young men to the meat grinder.
You could be right. I very much hope not, but the European security order is clearly changing quickly, and the range of possibilities is wider than it had been. I will note that Saigon and Kabul were different circumstances involving the prolonged fighting and then sudden withdrawal of U.S. troops, which have not fought in Ukraine. If supplying arms were useless at preventing national collapse, Ukraine would have collapsed already.