Originally Posted by
jolihokistix
Regarding the stand-off in Kherson, do we see another Berlin shaping up here? Would Vlad feel right at home with another split city, seeded with a fifth column on the west side? Has he found in the river a comfortable dividing line to solidify his hold on the fourth ‘Russified’ province, with a nice water trickle for Crimea? Could it be a potential generous case of: “You can have the west bank, and in exchange everything east of there is now more permanently ours mine.”(?)
Vlad would obviously like that, as it meets his goals that were purported at some time in the general rant between denazification to removing satan. Pretty sure that the answer from Ukraine to that would be continued demolition of Vlad's little helpers, with all of the visor of 9 months of war crimes and criminal acts by the Russians. Ukraine will negotiate when Vlad is removed from the Kremlin, or when Russians are off Ukrainian soil.
Now the mid terms have a potential to place some burden onto Europeans, but having Vlad anywhere other than Russia is an open invitation to be invaded once more. Vlad's working up to a trillion in reparations, I can't imagine giving Vlad all that he wanted is going to temper his behaviour. it would be a poisoned chalice for Vlad, Ukraine can range most of the east of Ukraine, so can continue to mess up Crimea's MSRs, the Kerch bridge remains a future target of opportunity. As Crimea is legally Ukrainian territory, as is the rest of Ukraine occupied by Vlad and his Z team, how Russia assumes there is a happy ending to their action seems out of place.
Every day increases the risk that Russia implodes into revolt, that may be considered optimistic, I don't think Russia falling apart is a great idea, but the potential for that to occur should be getting weighed against the effort to do a heave ho out of a window for the leader that turned Russia's military might into the second most powerful army in Ukraine. Doesn't matter what they do over winter, they have taken their most effective troops, and trainers and squandered them through the foreseeable effects of Vlad's managed corrupt enterprise. They are not going to recover the 1/4M front end that have been 200'd or 300'd in the first 9 months, nor recover armaments that are back to 50's era with a few 1892 vintage thrown in. None of that is coming back soon with an economy that is finally starting to tank even on the pumped up figures given by the Kremlin.