With this latest little victory for Putin's forces on another forum this question was asked...
Will Putin stop when he has the Donbas, or will he carry on de-nazifying Ukraine?
Just my musings on the question...
- If he got the Donbas in some worst case frozen war stalemate way, or stops the war once he's got to the borders and retains it though peace negotiation, he has some major issues;
- Rightly or wrongly, there will be people who still want to be Ukrainian, or at the very least independent. That will start a little civil strife that will have to be repressed. Repression though incentive hasn't been a tactic that is in the Russian playbook. It's going to fester badly.
- Ukrainians themselves are going to bear a huge grudge about the loss. It isn't going to make for good neighbourliness.
- The west are going to see it as a loss and despite relief at the ending of a hot war, there's not going to be much goodwill towards this. Roll back of sanctions and return of foreign investment will be, at most, sluggish.
- The peoples of the place will not have much joy. Russia's own economy won't be able to make it a focus to repair for years and more importantly, international investment won't touch it. No business is going to throw money into a place that has an exceptional chance of being a war zone again. Even the Chinese, who are nothing if not pragmatically unsentimental, won't go in there. The images of destroyed factories and malls is too strong.
- If we take Putin at his word, winning the Donbas doesn't solve his major gripes - NATO threat and westernisation of Ukraine. You can bet that Ukraine will make every effort to court the west in everyway possible to secure themselves after this.
In a way, getting the Donbas, given what has now happened doesn't solve anything for Putin other than a moral victory. In huge ways, it's made his original position far worse.
He wanted to Russify Ukraine but pushed Ukraine irretrievably more European.
He wanted to split the European Union but united it.
He wanted to destroy the transatlantic partnership but gave it new life.
He wanted to put NATO in the history books, but it has found a new sense of purpose.
He wanted to to keep countries like Finland and Sweden out of NATO, they've now booked and confirmed their tickets to join.
He's become a pariah to many.
With "peace", sanctions will remain mostly in place, oil will instantly half, maybe more, in price. He will have highly antagonistic neighbours where even the slightest aggression will be instantly met with economic and military reactions.
2. If he carries on; The further west he goes he loses literally swimming pools of Russian and Ukrainian blood for every meter made. He's already destroyed a third of his total mechanised arsenal, every day he continues with this war, he's eating into that stockpile. Ukraine has at the moment, a relatively untapped supply of arms and if Putin isn't careful, bodies too.
Never mind that, he physically won't be able to keep the territory he wins. The insurrection and guerrilla war that will come with it would need more than his entire army to suppress. The global reaction will intensify. There is zero chance that he's going to win that war. Ukraine long ago became undigestible to the Russian appetite.
His finest option that is fast receding, is to stop the war and bargain his way out of his economical dilemma trading Ukraine land he holds for a rollback of all the sanctions.
The Donbas would be a moral victory for him to hold, but strategically its just a serious liability given the above. If he truly wants what's best for their peoples he will trade it back to the Ukrainian fold in return for recognition that Crimea is his, plus lifting of sanctions and Ukrainian neutrality. Doing this, he could still survive.
(Donbas being independent is not great for Donbas. Being in the Ukrainian fold given the enormous goodwill that will flow to them once there would be prudent. Wait for 10 years until rebuilt, economically viable and self sustaining and then look for independence if need be.)
The thorny issue of the land bridge bit to the Crimea, he'll have to give back too.
He's an authoritarian who's lived way too long in an information bubble of Kremlin yes men who haven't, and now can't, advise anything other than to his whims at the threat of their livelihood. He's blown his illusion to the west that he's the leader of a superpower, he's just the leader of a regional power with nukes who has a flaky, badly led, corrupt army with very vulnerable tanks. He has a virulent state propaganda machine pumping out zero "make nice" noises. He's not yet made one strategic or tactically right decision that's not brutally blundered him from one pyrrhic victory to the next. On latest form, there's low hopes for him doing something sensible or statesman like.
If he acted like the regional power that he is and negotiated his way through his world, he and his peoples would be far better off. If he carries this on, he will lose everything he's won in Ukraine including Crimea, at great cost to everyone and maybe even his own seat in the Kremlin.