Quick swing by, I'll note that the pro-Russian arguments in this thread are some of the best I've seen, considerably better than the propaganda I've seen out of actual Russian proxies. I am less bullish on US support for Ukraine than I was after looking through this thread, though my biases are already shaped fairly heavily by other sites and public opinion and I'm not dropping my old position right after reading a few interesting arguments.
I have the following thoughts and questions.
1. If Russia does go full North Korea, how hard is it for China to prop them up like they do actual North Korea? I think part of why North Korea works is the geographic isolation from any competing system as well as being pretty small, while Russia has huge security concerns, a large population, and nearby rivals. I'm very unsure how well the metaphor holds, and how close Russia might be to full on collapse.
2. I do feel fairly happy blaming Russia for the conflict. Even accepting the sane arguments of the West being culpable for playing stupid games and Ukraine having acted unwisely, I think Russia still has almost all of the blame for everything that is happening in this crisis. Russia could've just not tried to invade Ukraine and I fail to see any major problems hitting them besides being annoyed and jealous.
3. IMO the sanctions are set in stone as long as the Putin regime lasts. This is honestly a problem, but sanctions have proven historically difficult to unwind. Any projection of the future, no matter what Russia does in Ukraine, has to factor in that Russia's sanctioned win or lose for years or even decades.
4. I really think a Russian collapse in the field is modestly likely at this point. The sheer logistical incompetence, the bad planning, and the casualty numbers all make this look like a clusterfuck. I don't have to take Ukrainian propaganda numbers as gospel to read estimates that suggest Russia has lost ridiculous troops and equipment compared to how pre-war estimates assumed the war would go.
5. I doubt that there's going to be an anti-Putin coup. Putin seems to have coup-proofed his system fairly well and the groups most harmed by the sanctions, oligarchs and common people, don't seem to have any power to overthrow the system.
6. The real question for me is how long can Russia sustain an occupation of Ukraine? Russia seems to have made absolutely no plan for needing to sustain anything more than a quick coup against a neutral population. Russia has serious advantages in raw numbers and stocks of weapons, but the challenges involved with occupying Ukraine while sanctioned seem impressive.
7. I honestly suspect we're in one of the better timeline outcomes here. I think Russia going crazy over a non-NATO member was much safer than if it hit NATO or the EU member states, and the dangers involved with escalation would be much higher if Russia was losing a war against a credible threat instead of apparently running low on spare resources when engaging in a pissing match over Ukraine not liking them anymore. Given the planning appears to have been "sponsor a coup where no one fights back, asking about Plan B sounds like something a traitor would do" I think the Russian leadership was likely to do something roughly like this on one of their bordering countries even if Ukraine was still as quiescent as Belarus.
www.bbc.com
watson.brown.edu
en.wikipedia.org
