How could that be unclear, and how could that be considered a fully processed idea?
What are your assumptions, those that would enable a scenario in which the invader decided to retreat? It seems like a scenario that cannot just spawn from the current chessboard.
Putin could simply accept that he's made a mistake and order to stop fighting. I know it's unlikely because he's stupid or whatnot, but sane people reconsider what they do or have done and change based on that.
We come from very many years of analysis spent on the case, especially in the past three years. They do not draw the picture with that brush or detail.
I suggest you elect a few important commentators and check their writings.
You should make an idea of the motivations that brought to action, and read the future possibilities in view of the motivations (still playing actively in the game) and the current results on all sides, including the military, the political and the geopolitical.
Care to explain? You do not seem to have got the point of my post, which suggests you may have also have greatly misunderstood the content.
> called sunken cost fallacy
So you seem to believe that the "existential concerns" that were identified as the motives behind the action are now retracted. But your guess clashes with that of specialists, so (also since that) your assertions cannot suffice.
Edit: Incidentally, <curses>, in view of your «does not want to look extremely stupid», how do you read my «political [results and factors]»?
No, I call it sunken cost exactly because the "existential concerns", if they even made any sense before, now make none. Because the current situation is 10x if not 100x worse existential risk to Russia as a state vs whatever was before 2022. Because the war will eventually be lost, and with the loss of the occupied territories some internal territories might be lost as well, or the whole thing might fall apart even.
Might not happen right away, but with 100k+ killed and many more wounded + the brain drain of probably even larger number of highly educated people + all the secondary effects of these two will definitely do that. And the longer this stupidity lasts, and the more losses are accumulated, the higher grow the chances of the total collapse of the state. At this point, it already looks worse than USSR in late 198x.
UPD. looking into history, Russia basically fell flat on its face in what would be USSR's "Prague Spring" moment when Kiev kicked out their puppet, now you could say events rush toward the new 90s, except instead of being a superpower Russia looks pathetic, especially considering involvement of low-lifes, e.g. North Korea.
I have been to Russia recently. It is nowhere close to the collapse of the state. The brain drain was high, but its still 140-something millions of people there. Quality of food is so-so, but entrepreneurial energy and resilience is very high. There will be a post-war economic crisis due to a massive drop in government spending (which may be deferred due to the need of reconstruction of annexed territories), but businesses are preparing for it and gambling on the timing. Russia will certainly survive and this war is not the end of it, its fate will be sealed by the internal politics.
I left in 2012 and already back then it was a slowly collapsing state. Since 2012 its IT giants collapsed, and space industry was overtaken by SpaceX. The former you could already predict in 2012 as a techie seeing the initial grip on the Internet, the later was still unthinkable.
Now a decade of progress in non-carbohydrates development might destroy its only income source. In 10-15 years the education will falter because of the today's brain drain, and with the next generation it will turn into complete irrelevancy not unlike the North Korea.
Entrepreneurial energy and resilience are useless without brains. Stupid people can be very excited and determined to make an app where you can type in the parking lot number to remember where to find your car later.
You are talking about different Russia then. Yandex, VK, Sber, Wilderries have firm grip over Russian digital economy and apparently heavily investing in new technology, including AI. Thanks to sanctions they have to worry even less about competition (AliExpress and Chinese electronics are notable exceptions). Banks and telecoms are doing well too.
> In 10-15 years the education will falter because of the today's brain drain
I don’t see it. The education system on average is degrading quickly, but it’s the inequality rising, not loss of capabilities. Top tier schools remain very competitive globally — better than e.g. in most of Europe including Germany. Top tier universities remain very competitive in STEM. This is not path to irrelevance, but rather to a specialization.
It is essentially forced use, on the large scale they are getting farther and farther behind.
> investing in new technology, including AI
If it was still 2010 I could see Yandex having a model somewhere near the top of https://lmarena.ai/?leaderboard but today I'd be surprised if they can compete at all.
> Top tier universities remain very competitive in STEM. This is not path to irrelevance, but rather to a specialization.
I was talking about 10-15 years from now. When the old profs have to retire, who will teach if the majority of students are gone abroad? Of my MSU CS class basically everyone left, definitely the ones who could teach. And that was waaay before 2022 happened.
"Essentially" is carrying a lot of weight in that sentence. NATO _personnel_ (not necessarily soldiers, but officers and staff) have been active in Ukraine since 2014-15.
Well why don't you estimate the number and compare it to the total size of _personnel_ so people could judge if that number is indeed essentially zero? (spoiler alert, it is)
Trouble is, if he does that, his life expectancy is probably measured in hours. Dictatorship produces unfortunate incentives; declaring defeat becomes extremely personally dangerous for the dictator.
>What are your assumptions, those that would enable a scenario in which the invader decided to retreat? It seems like a scenario that cannot just spawn from the current chessboard.
You mean, the chessboard on which we gave up our nuclear weapons under the promise from the US, the UK, and Russia that our territorial integrity will be respected?[1]
The "chess move" that directly led to this invasion, according to the US president that pushed for it?[2]
Dare I suggest, the scenario in which Russia retreats is the US holding up to its own promises, for once. For nuclear-non-proliferation's sake, if anything.
Even setting that aside, the war is not sustainable for Russia.
Russia is begging Iran and North Korea for help, getting both ammo, weapons, and people to fight the war with from them. Russia relied on NK artillery for a year, Iranian drones for two years. 10K North Korean soldiers are already on the battlefield, 100K more to come.
Ask yourself what price Russia is paying for that.
Realize that Russia ran out of resources to get that ammo and cannon fodder (and cannons) in Russia.
So, one assumption that enables the scenario is actual, real, enforced SANCTIONS on Russia.
- Cut off Gazprom from SWIFT. The share of Russian gas in the EU dropped to as low as 8% last year, the EU doesn't need Russian gas specifically. That share has since doubled. Put a stop to it.
- Make anyone who's helping Russia pay more than what they can get from Russia in exchange for it.
Iran is sending rockets and drones? Iran gets its nuclear weapon research facilities destroyed. Israel is gladly doing that task already. Would be neat if the West got its head out of its collective ass and stopped dunking on Israel in the UN for its own survival's sake.
NK is sending soldiers? Oops they're all dead (getting within Tomahawk range was unwise). Also NK gets a blockade, and any entity that helps them break it gets sanctioned to hell and back. China can feed them at that price.
Speaking of China, any entity that deals with Russia or NK there should be eliminated from participating in global markets. Simple as.
The West has one leverage over that Dictators Anonymous club: ECONOMIC OUTPUT. They have more people, and they don't care about lives. They have more nukes, together, and they make more artillery shells, together.
But on their own, they don't have the resources to fight that war. All the resources went into sustaining autocracies.
The CRINK (China, Russia, Iran, NK) are waging a war because they got fat on beneficial relationships with the West, that they've been rewarded with on the expectation that they would appreciate access to the global economy and the benefits that come with it, and don't do anything to risk losing it -
- like invading a European nation, say.
The expectation didn't pay off. The solution is simple: take that access back.
Stop rewarding bad actors. The West paid them upfront, they didn't hold up their end of the deal.
Russia can go back to its Iron Curtain planned economy. The West was fine without Russia then, it will be fine now.
China can go back to its Cultural Revolution planned economy. The West was fine without China then, the West can manage now. Doesn't need to happen in a day either. Start with cutting off any individual entities in China that touch Russia or NK.
North Korea can go back to figuring out how to feed its own population, rather than making ammo and meat waves for Russia.
Iran can go back to pre-Trump-presidency days. They're the only ones in the club that were pre-emptively punished, which gave the Ayatollahs all the excuses. Bring Obama's deal back, on the condition that all ties with Russia and Arab proxies are cut. Should they reject it, more FO will be delivered as a consequence of the many instances of FA they committed in the past years (including their role in Oct 7th attack).
So, that's some thoughts, for a start.
That's before we get to getting Ukraine some real military assistance. Not even talking "boots on the ground".
Look at what Poland got since 2022. Now imagine what Ukraine could do if it was able to put orders for thousands of HIMARS launchers instead of a dozen it got in 2022. What Ukraine could do with hundreds of F-35 jets instead of a dozen of F-16. What Ukraine could do with hundreds of ATACMS rockets.
What Ukraine could do with the thousands of Abrams tanks, designed to fight the Russian tanks, that the US has rusting in storage and will, in all likelihood, never use, nor have a need for - instead of the dozen it eventually got.
Ukraine could have had all of that in 2022. And if it did, the war would've stopped then.
Ukraine was given none of that gear over the fears that it would push Russia to use nukes. The reality shows that bullies are emboldened by appeasement, and reconsider when met with strength. Military assistance to Ukraine, even in modest amounts, kept the Russian nuclear threat at bay.
So, plenty of scenarios.
The collective will to make them happen isn't plentiful though.
Sure, Romwell. But of course, the various proposals made in order to have some part retreat are not (what was in context) answer to the original (possible interpretation) "Oh well, they could just retreat". In the current chessboard, proposing the idea that some part "just retreated", defining «a scenario in which the invader [spontaneously] decided to retreat», requires quite some justification. It is not the framework in which you are, but it seems to be that of the original poster. (For clarity.)
Look at the root post I replied to...
Edit: again for clarity: consider if somebody came and said "Well, Beijing could just forget about Taiwan". It does not stand up alone, right? The poster should be requested what assumptions made such expression seem plausible.
You are correct, my interpretation of "they could just retreat" is overly generous.
Being: "they have a choice to stop the bulk of ongoing costs of the war to Russian Federation at any moment, a choice that Ukraine does not have" - with the implicit assumption that the costs of the war to Russia are understood by everyone, and that the cost of withdrawal is significantly smaller.
Of course this ignores the cost of withdrawal to Putin, whose citizens (80% of whom want the war to continue) will have a lot of questions in that case.
Like, what did all the people die for. And why did you withdraw when we were winning, when 4 out 5 of us wanted the fight to go on.
Putin, like any dictator, is beholden to the overall vibe of his populace, because that's the only mandate to power that he actually has.
Democratically elected leaders have the power to decree "do as I say, that's the will of the people; elect someone else next time if you disagree".
Putin can't say that, because there are no elections in the social contract.
Russian leaders only leave the throne by abdication, coup, or death.
The only exception in their 850-year history was Nikita Khruschev, who was officially removed from power after he, himself, dismantled Stalin's cult of personality and brought on reforms that made such removal possible.
What are your assumptions, those that would enable a scenario in which the invader decided to retreat? It seems like a scenario that cannot just spawn from the current chessboard.