Nancy Gomez26 said:What does Putin actually gain by pulling out of all of Ukraine right now?
A State crippled by sanctions, stripped of Crimea, mourning 50,000 dead and at least twice as many wounded. Any talk of lifting those sanctions will inevitably be tied to massive reparations. NATO is positioned on his borders in ways never seen before, and Kazakhstan is steadily drifting out of the Russian sphere of influence. Weapon stockpiles have been gutted, conventional military capacity is severely depleted, and the military—the State itself—has suffered a massive blow to its prestige.
For him, this simply isn't a viable path. It either ends in a total battlefield defeat for the Rus, or a regime change at the White House. I don't see any other way this war stops.
And how exactly do they plan to handle that?
A magic wand?
Gregory Ramos3 said:Look, Russia is going to keep spinning even after Putin is gone, since he's definitely not the first leader to act like the whole State revolves around him.
Honestly, I feel like Putin's story is pretty much written at this point, and there really isn't any scenario where he walks away with anything resembling a win.☕
The real headache is just figuring out how much of Russia and its people he's going to drag down with him, because every single day that passes just makes the fallout even harder to deal with down the road.🙂
If he were actually a Good sport, he'd just admit he lost, step down, and apologize to his people for all the hardship they're facing for years to come... but obviously, that's not happening, because he'd probably end up stuck somewhere in Siberia at best.
He’s going to end up just like Slobodan Maddox—and his successors will be nothing more than miniature versions of him, only they'll spend all their time berating him for folding when it actually mattered.
Quincy:
Resurrected Asks:
Looking at the map around Kazakhstan, you can see exactly how much trouble Russia could cause just by choking off shipping and flights over the Caspian Sea—something they’re more than capable of doing if they feel sufficiently slighted. Unlike Ukraine, which functions as a NATO-aligned nation, there is no sustainable corridor here. I expect Kazakhstan will continue playing both sides to maximize their own profits, but let's be realistic: they aren't about to become part of the Western bloc. |
Kazakhstan is gravitating toward China—not the West.
Regarding February—the West should have acted sooner to shut Putin down before he even considered such moves, rather than just sitting around negotiating.
Bryan Jackson12 said:It feels like Putin’s comments from Uzbekistan flew right under the radar. The media is busy reporting on how he smirked while "threatening Ukraine" regarding their counteroffensive, but if you look closer—and assuming our news outlets actually got the quote right—the most significant thing he said was that "the main goal remains taking over the entire Donbas."
Honestly, I think that’s the only realistic, revised goal the Russian leadership actually has left. At the start, they were hoping to turn Ukraine into something like Belarus, but now? They might just settle for the Donbas. They seem obsessed with those areas; everything seems to be trending in that direction. To them, the whole Luhansk and Donetsk region makes up this mythic Donbas territory. If they can seize it, they get way more than what they grabbed back on February 24th, which gives them a way to justify this whole mess to their people at home. And obviously, that's assuming Crimea stays exactly as it is.
That feels like the most likely outcome to me. All we really know is, we'll have to see what the Americans decide to do about it.
Not quite.
The Ukrainians have made slight inroads into Luhansk—pushing toward the edges and putting pressure on them near Liman.