Projections for a Long Ukraine War

In September of 2014, Putin boasted that if he wanted to, he could take Kyiv in 2 weeks.

As of tomorrow, thanks to February being the shortest month and 2022 not being a leap year, it'll have been 1 month since the Russian invasion began, with an early offensive against the capital (located close to the Belarusian border) having providentially stalled after a short time.

I'm no military strategist. However, ideas are arguably as powerful as bullets. Now, Zelensky could decide to capitulate tomorrow. But assuming this doesn't happen, and depending on how long the Ukrainian army can keep dragging this out, this is a timetable spelling out some of the implications of a long war:

March 31: The Ukrainian army and government will remain yet unsubdued at the end of the same length (35 days) that it took Nazi Germany to seize Poland, despite 80 years of technological and warfighting doctrine advancements.

Granted, the Nazis actually found Poland to be a difficult foe and they might not have won had the Soviets not invaded from the east at the same time, but popular culture imagines Poland to have been a pushover with outdated cavalry charges against German tanks. As such, expect negative comparisons between the Nazi and Russian war machines to flood the internet beginning around this time.

April 7: The Ukrainian government and army will remain yet unsubdued at the end of the same length of time (42 days) that it took the US to conquer Iraq in 2003.

On the eve of Russia's invasion, one of the biggest risks was that a 21st century "lightning war" against Europe's poorest and most dysfunctional country would serve to promote the Russian military as hyper-competent, and indeed, somehow superior to the "decadent" American forces that recently lost a 20-year counterinsurgency in Afghanistan.

If Kyiv holds out until and ideally past April 7, that notion will be much easier to dispel. And with that, the risk that Russia might grow drunk in its newfound sense of invincibility and feel emboldened to soon attack another neighboring state will also be minimized. Whether Ukraine lasts another 2 weeks could help decide the future of Europe.

April 24: The observance of Easter, as the date is calculated in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

If the global orthodox community outside of Russia takes the opportunity to condemn the ongoing war and formally take a stand with Ukraine, it'll be a major challenge to Moscow's credentials as the head of Orthodoxy and serve to ecumenically isolate Patriarch Kirill, hopefully putting serious pressure on Kirill to rehabilitate his image by turning against the war.

Given that more than 3.5 million Ukrainians are refugees abroad, including in majority-Orthodox countries like Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, and even Serbia, and given that this number will certainly rise or even double in the next month, the presence of these sympathetic refugees who've lost everything because of Russia could sway these countries' Orthodox churches to finally issue statements condemning Russian invasion.

At Easter, expect high profile statements against Moscow's war by dissenting priests inside the Russian Orthodox Church as well.

April 29: On March 12, it was reported that Russian military equipment losses amounted to more $5 billion dollars. Assuming that rate of loss can be sustained, then by April 29, or Day 64, that figure will have risen to $20 billion dollars. Of course, this doesn't count the combined daily operational costs of 64 days of war, which by this time will likely stand around $30 billion dollars.

In comparison, Russia's annual military budget is around $70 billion dollars.

May 9: The celebration of Victory Day in Russia and other post-Soviet countries.

Putin likely hopes to end the war before this date, so that on it he can celebrate the fresh "de-nazification" of Ukraine that's supposedly analogous to the de-Nazification of Eastern and Central Europe at the end of WWII 77 years ago. This opportunity will be missed.

Outside of Russia, Victory Day implicitly celebrates the role of Russian leadership in defeating German aggression. However, the ongoing 2 and a half month war of aggression against Ukraine by Russia will cause many to question why they're still celebrating this holiday.

If some countries remove the holiday's official status afterward, or do so before May 9 so that it's not observed in 2022, this'll mark a visible unraveling of the very ideal of a post-Soviet sphere.

And so, in summary, a war lasting "just" 2 and a half months longer could cost Russia:

-More than the equivalent of $50 billion dollars in military costs alone

-Its cultural influence as head of the historic bloc that saved Europe from Nazism

-Its religious influence as current head of Eastern Orthodoxy

-Its long-held reputation as a military power that credibly rivals the United States

As somebody who genuinely loves modern day Germany, as a country, for its extremely effective left-wing politics and the way it's helped the whole of Western Europe learn to forgive it and learn from its own jaded past, I personally don't understand why the fuck this whole 'remember we beat the Nazis' thing happens every year in the nations that did.

I get it, people died in the war and we need to respect that and remember it. Nazi soldiers died protecting their homeland too and many had no choice in the matter, much like the conscripted military men of UK and France at the time. They are hated for the very same loyalty and adherence to wartime rules that the good guys had the opportunity to live out while being on the morally correct side of things.

I personally think Remembrance days should remind us about Fascism and the harms it brings, not about particular soldiers and a particular war. I'm sorry but I am very similar in this attitude across the board so I am not a hypocrite. For instance, I really get irritated when the first thing somebody does to flex during a conversation about physics, philosophy, chemistry etc is to flex the 'I can name more things about who discovered and said what in this subject than you can and if you don't you're an uneducated poser'. It's much more about the ideas, not the men and women that discovered them.

That's just my take. I obviously don't have an issue with Remembrance day and neither do Germans in general but quietly I am sure quite a few Germans think this and even those in the nations celebrating Remembrance day. People died, remember why they fought and the problems that were in Germany and taken advantage of or suddenly you vote Brexit in the name of Nigel Farage's scumbag movement and forget the kind of false promises and preying on the jaded working class that Hitler himself took advantage of in his own propaganda and rise to power.

Never fall for Fascism masquerading as Populism and certainly never fall for corporatism masquerading as anti-corruption. It's easy to point the finger at the other side, the hard part is defending the plan you have when the other side is toppled.

Perhaps he is taking a long time, because he wants to be precise to limit civilian casualties

This.

It's the plain truth of the matter but we were born into a time where powerful interests make truths not exist or otherwise unspeakable through sheer force of will. People today are morally developed enough to recognize that the murderous acts of the Nazis were immoral but not developed enough to have any sort of nuanced discussion about the people who lived in that time and why they performed the actions and/or supported the organized systems that they did.

I don't think one thing's connected to the other but okay.

When powerful interests won't let an authentic right-wing exist on respectable terms, the "respectable class" will refuse to work with them or represent their political agenda in halls of power. Hence, the rank-and-file will rally behind whoever's offering, even if that only leaves somebody like Donald Trump.

If said interests don't like that, then their press agents shouldn't have spent the last 40 years before Trump tearing down the mainstream right. Because even if they throw resources around to preclude the scientists and technocrats from representing conservatives, conservatives will nonetheless pick somebody to do so no matter what. All the elites accomplished was to pile on some unnecessary bad consequences for when the other side invariably wins at some election cycle or another.

As for accusations of fascism, I don't know anyone who likes fascism or calls themselves fascist, but even if there's some degree of overlap between said "populist" and fascistic personality traits, if the choice boils down to that guy or a completely foreign and hated ideology winning every election and dominating every public institution, no reasonable person could blame them for casting their choice in this binary environment.

Unreasonable people would, sure. But they discredit themselves from the second they open their mouths to do so.

Have you not heard about Mariupol? The whole city's been razed by the Russian army.

Ironically, the UKIP movement in UK uses every single trick in the book of Nazi propaganda. It preys on a disenfranchised group that are bitter over issues that the right-wing has caused them and pretends it's the left-wing EU's openness and protectiveness that's the problem for how authoritarian it is in enabling foreignors to 'infiltrate' the UK and 'take their jobs'. It also ran further in alignment than just who it aimed its propaganda at; it specifically became about loathing Europe being united and negotiating things, preferring UK to be its own great imperialist self of the past the stood on its own. 

Let's ignore the false promises and extremely slimy deception involved, as that isn't identical to how the Nazi propaganda made promises.