Avoiding a protracted war

A prominent theme in recent coverage of the Ukraine crisis is that Putin is preparing for a long war (example).  This may be partly bluster -- trying to discourage the democracies by asserting that he's not going to back down under the pressure of sanctions and military failure.  But it would also make sense that this is his actual stance at the moment.  From his point of view, he doesn't have a lot of good options.  He can't score a decisive victory -- after three weeks, his more limited Donbas-centered offensive is as badly bogged down as the earlier attack on Kyiv was -- and accepting defeat by pulling out of Ukraine is too humiliating for him to contemplate.  Dragging the war out in the hope that such a protracted slog will grind down Ukraine and weaken the democracies' resolve is, from his point of view, the least-bad course of action.

It is, however, dangerous to everyone.  The longer the war continues, the greater the risk that some mistake or miscalculation will lead to direct NATO-Russia combat and thus to all-out nuclear exchange that would wipe out both Russia and the West.  All wars involve confusion, errors in judgment, commanders under pressure to make hurried decisions on the basis of incomplete or mistaken information, and suchlike.  The longer the war drags on, the greater the risk of such a case leading to a catastrophic result.  Thus, for the West, the safest course is that which is most likely to lead to a relatively early end to the conflict (so long as that course does not, itself, involve direct NATO-Russia combat).

Since a protracted stalemate is actually the most dangerous option, and withdrawing support from Ukraine so that Russia can win is totally out of the question (it would be a monstrous betrayal of our values, and rewarding aggression would encourage further aggression, including perhaps by China against Taiwan), the least-bad option from our point of view is to escalate our support to the point where Ukraine wins an outright victory, and as soon as possible, with victory being defined as pushing the Russian forces completely out of Ukraine, or at least back to their pre-February-24 starting line.  This would show Putin that a protracted fight is actually not in his interest, since it would merely prolong the humiliation of defeat.

The US government seems to have come to the same conclusion.  It is now providing much heavier weaponry to Ukraine, and the Ukrainians have pushed the Russians back from Kharkiv (the country's second-largest city) -- back practically to the Russian border, according to some reports.  If they can push the Russians back in Donbas as well, it will show clearly that the stalemate is over and Ukraine is winning.

This course does pose one risk.  It's when a nuclear-armed country is clearly losing a conventional war that the temptation to turn things around by using nuclear weapons looms largest.  If Putin were to use nuclear bombs, but only against Ukraine itself, this still would not constitute direct combat with NATO, but it would be such a massive escalation that a forceful response would be needed.  No doubt the leading Western military powers have been carefully considering their options for such a response, and have made it clear to Putin that using nuclear weapons on Ukraine would have consequences unacceptable to him.  And he has said himself that he would use nuclear weapons only in case of an "existential threat" to Russia -- the same case in which any nuclear power would use them -- and merely losing the Ukraine war is not an existential threat.  However, it's an open question what such a promise is worth.

The ideal outcome, of course, would be that other elements in Russia would stop Putin from taking such a dangerous course by removing him from power.  Obviously we cannot count on that.  But the only alternative seems to be letting the war grind on endlessly, which would be too dangerous for the world at large -- and, of course, would also intolerably exacerbate and prolong the already horrific suffering of the Ukrainian people.

Related links:

Russian soldiers in Ukraine are continuing to sabotage their own equipment to avoid combat -- more here.

A new video suggests that Ukraine can now hit Russian forces deep in occupied territory, far behind the front line.

Russian pilots are taping GPS devices to the control panels of their planes because the built-in navigation systems are junk; Russia cannot replace lost tanks because sanctions are crippling its manufacturing; the Russian army is dumping the corpses of its own troops in hidden locations to conceal the magnitude of losses (source links here).

During Russia's May 9 Victory Day events, hackers imposed anti-war messages on Russian media.

On a lighter note, there's this (found via Miss Cellania).