{"id":1916,"date":"2022-03-25T18:41:40","date_gmt":"2022-03-25T18:41:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/linksus.net\/the-bad-news-and-the-good-news-on-ukraine-national-review\/"},"modified":"2022-03-25T18:41:40","modified_gmt":"2022-03-25T18:41:40","slug":"the-bad-news-and-the-good-news-on-ukraine-national-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/2022\/03\/25\/the-bad-news-and-the-good-news-on-ukraine-national-review\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bad News and the Good News on Ukraine – National Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

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On the menu today: Yes, President Biden delivered the State of the Union Address last night, but no one is going to remember much of what he said in another day or so. Russian forces are now hammering Ukrainian cities — and new Western intelligence assessments conclude that those cities will fall, probably in another month to six weeks. But those same assessments also conclude that Russia will never truly control Ukraine — and that the military forces under Vladimir Putin are soon going to face a truly hellacious insurgency, one that will last for years.
Near Term: Ukraine Loses. Long Term: Russia Loses.
From a geopolitical perspective, Putin\u2019s Russia is inflicting upon itself a wound that will never heal and is ensuring that Russia will pay a price in blood and treasure for many years, likely long after Putin is worm chow.
From a human perspective, Putin has inflicted a terrible cost upon Ukraine, his own country, and the rest of the world — and no one knows just how high that cost will grow.
First, the bad news.
From the Ukrainian claims of close to 6,000 Russian casualties<\/a> and the sights of fierce Ukrainian resistance, it would be easy to erroneously conclude that the Ukrainians are \u201cwinning.\u201d Alas, the Russian approach is to overcome their errors and disadvantages with sheer numbers — with nearly 200,000 Russian troops in or approaching Ukraine.<\/a>
The Ukrainians can maximize the price, in blood, of every inch of territory they lose to Russia, but over time, the Russians are going to wear down the Ukrainian resistance. For every Russian soldier who is killed or captured and every Russian soldier who surrenders, the Russians can still send two more. And Putin is signaling that he\u2019s willing to pay a jaw-dropping toll in lives and money to live out his dreams of a Russian return to glorious conquest.
The assessment of the United Kingdom’s secretary of state for defence, Ben Wallace, is horrific<\/a>:
\u201cWhat you are seeing now are those heavy bombardments at night. They won’t come into the cities as much. They will, I’m afraid as we’ve seen tragically, carpet bomb cities indiscriminately in some cases,\u201d Wallace said.
\u201cThey will fly at night rather than daytime because what we’ve seen is they get shot down in the daytime. And they will slowly but surely try and surround the cities and then either bypass them, or bombard them.\u201d
\u201cThat is the brutality that I’m afraid we are witnessing, and it’s going to get worse. I’ve warned before, the Russian doctrine is to get harder and tougher and more indiscriminate.\u201d
Overwhelming numbers, coupled with indiscriminate carpet bombing in urban areas, mean that at some point, Russia will technically \u201ccontrol\u201d those Ukrainian cities — cutting them off from the outside world and either bombarding them or starving them into submission. The most recent U.S. intelligence assessment points to Russian \u201cvictories\u201d in April or May<\/a>:
A U.S. official tells CBS News that a tactical seizure of Ukraine is possible within the next 4-6 weeks, based on the assessments of what is currently taking place on the ground with the Russian military.
As David Martin has reported, it is expected to take one week before Kyiv is surrounded, and another 30 days could elapse before Ukraine’s capital is seized. This U.S. official says it is not clear whether Russia would gradually strangle the city or engage in street-to-street fighting. These scenarios were laid out for members of Congress Monday as the initial battle to destroy the Ukrainian military and government. It is also not clear whether Russia would then decide to go west toward Lviv or as far west as the Polish border.
But as I have noted before, taking territory is not the same as keeping territory. Russia is setting itself up to experience a furious, bloody insurgency that will make Iraq look like an afternoon at Chuck E. Cheese. U.S. and U.K. intelligence points to this war going on for years — maybe many years — and that in the end, Ukraine will prove itself impossible to subjugate:
Given the durability of the Ukrainian resistance and its long history of pushing Russia back, the U.S. and Western powers do not believe that this will be a short war. The U.K. foreign secretary estimated it would be a 10-year war. Lawmakers at the Capitol were told Monday it is likely to last 10, 15 or 20 years \u2014 and that ultimately, Russia will lose.
To the extent that there is good news, it is this: Russia will never truly control Ukraine — or more specifically, Russia will never truly control the Ukrainian people.
Ukraine has roughly 44 million people, and they will never forget what Putin and the Russian military have done to their country. Bombing university buildings<\/a>. Bombing city-council buildings<\/a>. Bombing apartment buildings<\/a>. Killing doctors<\/a>. Causing maternity hospitals to be hit with shrapnel<\/a>. Yesterday, the Russians bombed a Holocaust memorial<\/a>, during an invasion that was justified as \u201cde-Nazification.\u201d
We\u2019ve seen a lot of evil in recent years — al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Taliban, the Uyghur concentration camps of China, the horror stories coming out of North Korea. But this is something different, something even more indiscriminate on an even wider scale.
Russia can send all the troops that Putin wants — he\u2019s never going to get a compliant or obedient population. Too many Ukrainians have lost too much to ever accept Russian authority. If a Russian strike kills Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in the coming days or weeks, that will just turn him into a martyr and a legend.
The question now is: Is there anyone in Russia who is willing to put a stop to this madness — which probably means putting a stop to the pulse of Putin<\/a>?
My worries about the long-term consequences of a bitter, angry, economically crushed, and deliberately impoverished Russia<\/a> feel like a second-order concern in the face of Russian forces shelling and carpet-bombing cities. Every Western institution is communicating as loudly and clearly as possible that these are the colossal consequences of the abominable decision of one man. Change the decision, change the man, we don\u2019t care which option the Russian people choose. The Russian economy will be permitted to bounce right back as soon as the brutality and bloodshed are halted.
The Moscow Stock Exchange remains closed and Russia is effectively defaulting on its government bonds that foreign investors hold<\/a>. The ruble is now worth less than a penny<\/a>. Russian airlines may soon stop flying internationally<\/a>, from a combination of being banned from other countries\u2019 airspaces and financial and insurance problems.
Putin is willing to pay any price to possess Ukraine. The West, finally, is united and declaring, \u201cFine, we\u2019ll make sure this aggression costs you everything<\/em>.\u201d
The question is: How many other Russians are willing to go along with this mad fantasy?
ADDENDA:<\/strong> The Texas primaries feel like small potatoes at a time like this, but U.S. domestic politics stop for no man. In the race for state attorney general, incumbent Ken Paxton will face current state land commissioner George P. Bush, the son of Jeb Bush. Paxton finished with about 43 percent, Bush with about 23 percent.
Nine-term incumbent representative Henry Cuellar will also be headed to a runoff against progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros in Texas\u2019s 28th Congressional District — but after a hard-fought primary, Cuellar finished with about 800 more votes.
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Follow UsNational Review China’s Covid-19 Outbreak: Hugely Consequential, Barely Discussed Red-Tsunami Warnings Should Worry Democrats Are ‘Profound Sanctions’ Having Any Effect on Putin? The Problems with a Ukrainian ‘Iron Dome’ Why the Russian Oligarchs Won\u2019t Defy Putin On the menu today: Yes, President Biden delivered the State of the Union Address last night, but no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":869,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1916"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/869"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1916\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}