Evaluating Moscow's Third January Of All-Out War On Ukraine
The ruscist winter campaign of 2025 is stuttering; talk of a ceasefire remains extremely premature. Ukraine is also dismantling the enemy's war economy, piece by piece.
This year’s orc winter campaign is visibly slowing, despite the fall of Kurakhove and Velyka Novosilka since the start of January. Though the weather often imposes limits on drone operations, Moscow’s battered forces remain unable take advantage in a systematic way.
That’s part of what makes all the speculation in the press about a ceasefire so fundamentally silly. This would represent a major victory for Putin; validating his choice to sacrifice upwards of 50,000 bodies every month - half or more killed or maimed - to this inane crusade.
The sheer scale of the slaughter is difficult to comprehend. For most of us in the English-speaking world, where individuals are held to matter on some level, it’s troubling to contemplate how easily the machinery of State can justify throwing away a chunk of the population for so little material gain. Every month ruscist officers are sacrificing as many of their own people as Ukraine loses in a year of fighting - and for virtually nothing of long-term military value. Small wonder people prefer to pretend it isn’t happening or won’t affect them. It already has.
The obsession most American journalists and politicians seem to have with portraying Ukraine as doomed to suffer what it must at the hands of allegedly superior ruscist power has little grounding in material science. This is an ideological position divorced from the critical facts, much like ignoring global-level threats that can and eventually will force a radical reordering of the entire global economy. The steady degradation of the biosphere that the world economy ultimately depends on is one. Pandemics are another.
The latest wild influenza strain that keeps jumping species may well be following the same trajectory that led to the 1918 flu pandemic. Compared to a novel flu like that, a new coronavirus really is just a particularly nasty cold. Not to downplay the already serious fatality rates with a coronavirus, a bad flu strain will kill healthy people as readily as the older and immune-compromised. Real fun to contemplate the ripple impacts of that kind of shock.
Luckily, despite the presumptions of the chattering classes that think they rule the world - until some new virus hits New York City and they run for rural places, blaming China - the dangled lure of Putin finally cowing America’s Vichy-minded leaders is inadvertently killing off his miserable empire, at least. Ukraine is now mounting intensive raids deep into russia to strike critical economic nodes that Moscow cannot easily protect or decentralize. Moscow’s revenge attacks on Ukraine are reduced to largely inaccurate terror raids. If this were mid-2022, Ukraine’s progress would be hailed by much-cited think-tank academic entrepreneurs as evidence that mighty NATO anything even in diminutive quantities has magic power.
On the ground, most of Moscow’s military operations will go down in history as case studies in how not to wage war. Over the past three years in Ukraine, footage has accumulated which allows anyone with the stomach to witness what it looks like when a bureaucracy tries to manage a fight. There’s no evidence of a viable strategy that could power operations leveraging cumulative tactical victories to generate a crisis the enemy can’t cope with. Throwing bodies at a problem is a disastrous approach when an explosive drone costs less than a thousand dollars. If nine out of ten fail, that’s a bargain - meat still costs to recruit, train, and transport.
Everything that Putin has tried in his bid to destroy Ukraine has failed. Even pulling in North Korean and Iranian aid has only prolonged the life of his genocidal assault. His only hope is to bluff Trump into pushing Ukraine into a ceasefire that removes the urgency from foreign backing for Kyiv and allows Moscow space to recuperate.
More on that in the geopolitics brief. First, a look at the fronts now and how they’ve changed since December. This week there won’t be a dedicated science section - instead I’ll do a more in-depth look at the fronts, both over the past week and across January. So lots of graphics in this post.
2025, Week 5: Front Brief
One of the horrible paradoxes of any war is that so much effort goes into draining fights that will never be conclusive, skirmishes testing each side’s strength at various points far from the main action. Yet soldiers can’t just let the enemy advance at will in ancillary areas. The work done across the seemingly quiet, typically unnamed fronts is essential. They are also where Ukraine appears to rest personnel to the degree possible.
What should be apparent looking at the fronts in Ukraine from a high level is just how little Moscow’s progress of late matters. The land bridge to Crimea remains vulnerable, and Moscow can’t even kick Ukraine out of Kursk. Yes, ruscist troops are creeping forward in select areas, especially southern Donbas. But the pace just isn’t rapid enough to lead to Ukraine’s defeat any time soon. This has to be factored in to any projections about the possibility of a ceasefire or peace talks.
I still evaluate Ukraine’s basic strategy for 2025 as a deliberate effort to drain and weaken the orcs across the board ahead of a determined, focused counteroffensive aimed at a critical front. In the future I’m planning to publish some prospective campaign plans to offer a sense of all that goes into deciding where and when to strike. The urgency of arming Ukraine fully remains; any bid to get more than a brief ceasefire deal done only stands any chance of success if Ukraine is able to dictate most terms.
Moscow might just wind up there by late summer if it keeps on wasting resources as aggressively as it has to date. Whether Trump is foolish enough to give in to Putin now, earning him a place in history right alongside poor Joe Biden, remains to be seen.
Northern Theater
The northern fronts are usually the most frequently impacted by bad weather, on the whole, but all in all this has been a very warm winter in Ukraine. Aside from making any attempt to knock out heating infrastructure in civilian regions less effective, it also renders the fighting almost like a perpetual fall-spring season.
Kursk and Kharkiv have both been quieter than usual lately, but not so much because of the weather. In Kharkiv, fighting is generally limited to skirmishes over portions of the Vovchansk ruins - no reports of any more drone-only assaults, but I’m sure they’re being developed. Kharkiv is a major tech hub in Ukraine, and if there’s one thing the Iraq War should have taught occupying forces everywhere forever, it’s that you shouldn’t pick fights with engineers and scientists on their home turf. Lot of folks don’t realize just how many Iraqis had advanced degrees. Same is true of Ukrainians.
In Kursk, Moscow’s offensive has all but ground to a halt after the dismal failure of North Korean troops to appreciate the contemporary battlefield. From the video footage I’ve seen, the North Koreans are actually far more disciplined and effective than their hosts. They actually seek cover when under fire and maintain a degree of cohesion, even when winds up harming them. But no amount of training in small unit tactics can offset poor strategy that fails to appreciate tactical level realities.
Muscovite attacks have continued near the base of the Ukrainian incursion by the Snagost river and Guyevo, now and again pushing a few troops across the international border, but they’re mostly distractions and probes. Ukraine did a good job anchoring the flanks of the defense on water barriers that restrict easy orc movement. Both sides are intensively using wire-guided drones, making armored vehicles very difficult to employ when there’s less vegetation to foul their control wires and obscure visibility. Interceptor drones offer a partial remedy, but some will always get through - hard kill defenses are required.
As far as a forecast for Kursk goes, recall that I expected Ukrainian forces to be pushed back to a tight perimeter around Sudzha by now. Yet despite wave after wave of North Korean attacks, raw firepower has proven superior once more. American media is of course reporting the total withdrawal of North Korean forces from the field, something Ukrainian sources contradict. I’m not sure why the New York Times is still considered a reliable source of information at this stage. After a month of heavy action, any deployed force will come off the line to recuperate. They’ll be back.
Until Moscow can actually demonstrate the ability to conduct a proper counteroffensive that integrates different forms of firepower at the right scale, I don’t expect Ukrainian troops to leave Free Kursk. The whole campaign remains a slow-motion Battle of Sedan in a strategic sense, a demonstration of unforgivable weakness that daily erodes Putin’s credibility. That’s why he doesn’t talk about it much any more. Sudzha is no longer any more part of russia than Ukraine.
Southern Theater
In the south, where I usually divide the vast expanse into the Kherson and Orihiv fronts for convenience, Moscow is still more or less trying to feint as if it has the resources to threaten a serious offensive. In neither area has substantial ground been gained, but Ukraine is still forced to contend with the possibility of operations that could slowly grow into a real threat.
Kherson is defined by the ongoing struggle to control the Dnipro delta, where numerous islands host rolling skirmishes. Drones against boats is a common sight around here - as common are the orc drone attacks that explicitly target civilians in Kherson. While Moscow’s relentless assault doesn’t spare civilians anywhere, Kherson is one of the few places where it is standard for drone operators to go after civilian vehicles and individuals who happen to be in range.
The Orihiv front, in southern Zaporizhzhia, remains an enticing target for both sides, Ukraine desiring to reach Melitopol to the south to sever the land bridge to Crimea and Moscow aiming for the eponymous district capital on the Dnipro. But neither side is at present committing forces large enough for an offensive operation, and though attacks happen all across the front, they aren’t sustained. Drones make crossing rivers or broad grey zones with few settlements very difficult, especially in winter. And creeping gains don’t usually secure a lasting bridgehead.
It remains entirely possible that Ukraine will mount a surprise counteroffensive here this spring or summer, as Moscow is slowly draining the area of quality personnel to sustain operations elsewhere. But Ukraine would have to mass a lot of soldiers in secret - no small order these days.
I don’t forecast any major developments on the ground in the south any time soon. Overall, the entire area is a strategic liability for Putin’s war, much as Crimea is now a strategic liability for his empire. Ukraine’s naval drones and strike campaign is slowly cutting off essential supply lines.
Eastern Theater
The east is where Ukraine’s fight continues to be toughest, though all in all the situation is trending in the right direction. Moscow’s effort to cut Pokrovsk off from the southwest is weakening. Centre for Defence Strategies suggests that evidence points to Moscow attempting a frontal assault in the near future, with a gradual shift in the primary axis of attack shifting north towards Kostyantynivka.
Always fun to see Moscow revert to a smarter plan about a year to late. A major part of why last spring I forecast that the fall of Avdiivka could lead to an all-out push on Kostyantynivka rather than Pokrovsk was that this posed the biggest threat to Ukraine. It was a smarter use of scarce resources to bypass Toretsk to the west rather than launch a costly direct assault as the orcs eventually did when the advance on Pokrovsk was deflected south. Moscow may now attempt exactly this, nine months after Ukrainian forces began digging in north of Ocheretyne, where they’ve been harrying the northern supply route to the Pokrovsk front.
Taking a closer look at the fronts, Southern Donbas - what official Ukrainian reports are calling the Novopavlivka and Huliaypole directions - remains tense after the fall of Velyka Novosilka. The lines haven’t moved much yet, however as Centre for Defence Strategies points out, the town sits at a junction of paved routes and offers cover for orcs accumulating in basements, so Ukraine will likely have to pull back north a bit.
Both CDS and I agree that the enemy will now attempt to strike north, towards Bahatyr, keeping east of the Mokri Yali river. To the west of it the orcs might take a shot at Huliaypole, but this would disperse efforts more than even orc generals are usually willing to tolerate these days. I expect the jaws around Ulakli-Andriivka-Kostyantynopil to clamp shut over February, barring Ukrainian forces making a very tough stand that I’m not sure the situation warrants.
However: the lengthy defense of the Dachne pocket despite orc pressure may suggest that Ukraine judges the cost worth enemy troops tied down. Preventing Moscow from moving people to the Pokrovsk or Kostyantynivka fronts could be worthwhile - I don’t have hard numbers to prove my suspicion that it isn’t. Here a certain bias from training as a scout way back when likely plays a role in my disliking firm stands without a very good reason. I just want to know where the enemy wants to be. Moment that is revealed, what do to next is usually a function of how much firepower is on hand.
The arrival of reinforcements on the Pokrovsk front - namely 42nd Mechanized, which had formerly been fighting in Toretsk - has, along with the predicted stiffening of elements from 155th Mechanized after their painful first exposure to the battlefield, blunted the orc assault between Udachne and Kotlyne. By no means is the fight over, and Ukraine is likely to be pushed back a few kilometers yet, but no rapid orc breakthrough is to be expected.
Part of the problem for Moscow here is that though the orcs have seized the crest of a ridge, they’re being hit from three sides. With Pokrovsk so near, Ukraine can organize local counterattacks on the right flank of the orc bulge with near impunity. On the opposite flank, 59th Assault Brigade has been holding the line with skill, preventing further movement down the Solena river that would make it more difficult for Ukraine to defend Udachne.
There is a small chance that the balance of power is shifting quickly enough here to let Ukrainian forces mount a more substantial counterattack aimed at eliminating the threat to Pokrovsk’s western flank. With the enemy still unable to secure positions on the highway between Pokrovska and Kostyantynivka, cutting Pokrovsk off looks very improbable. That could lead to the enemy launching costly frontal assaults on the Pokrovsk-Myrnohrad urban zone.
With Ukrainian-held districts full of concrete high rises just five kilometers away with a strip of lowland forest between, the approaches to Pokrovsk in particular should be a vicious killzone. 68th Jager and 25th Airborne have spent the past year marching backward from the outskirts of Avdiivka - they’re experienced, probably annoyed, and fighting near their supply base. Moscow’s 50km march from Avdiivka this year represents the deepest penetration of Ukrainian lines since 2022. And it’s also just about the most senseless place to make such an extensive effort, as the thing would always be prone to running out of steam at the wrong moment.
And sure enough, in January what looked like a real threat of Pokrovsk being partially surrounded has been totally averted. To me, this looks like a trap for the orcs. Time will tell.
Up on the adjacent Kostyantynivka front, Moscow appears to be inappropriately encouraged by having soldiers finally stand in the ruins of Chasiv Yar and Toretsk, gateways to the first city in the chain of urban Donbas. One of the subtle shifts over the past year of the war has been the increasing importance of large urban areas located near wherever you want to keep a lot of soldiers. Powerful as drones are, it still takes a lot of time and effort to destroy every basement. The bigger the settlement, the tougher it tends to be to surround it.
The laws of warfare haven’t changed, and cutting off the enemy’s supplies is still the best way to beat them in the field. That’s why Ukraine’s slow retreat towards urban areas has to me seemed a gain rather than a loss. However: this depends on Ukraine finally making good on the energy stored up as a result of not fighting too hard by unleashing it at a critical moment and place.
A counterattack seems unlikely here, however. Kostyantynivka’s outlying fortresses may be close to lost, but orcs trying to get closer to the city will feel more pain with each kilometer gained.
The fighting in Chasiv Yar and Toretsk is incredibly brutal: urban fights always are. There’s no way to conduct them but to go slow, block by block, once clearing operations begin. Historically, it’s insane to try these before the area is cut off, otherwise supplies and fighters will filter through. Moscow has lost tens of thousands getting this far - how much more bloody will a march through Kostyantynivka itself be? Sloviansk and Kramatorsk are even bigger.
Toretsk was a nice fortress, but rather close to orc-occupied cities in Donbas. The failure of the offensive on Chasiv Yar in 2024, though the orcs have finally pushed Ukraine back from the town, made attacking Toretsk directly a mistake. The orc forces assigned to fight block by block have been shattered, and to sustain any further advance will require stripping other fronts of reserves.
Hence the need for Moscow to have troops established southwest of Kostyantynivka before an assault on the area. Surrounding free Donbas is the only way Moscow could ever hope to force a surrender from the troops inside.
But with pretty much any successful orc campaign requiring two jaws to outflank the defenders, success on the Siversk, Lyman, Borova, and Kupiansk fronts is required. The Siversk bulge, which arcs from north of Bakhmut up across the Siverski Donets River, has held almost totally intact for two full years. A large built-up area between Topolivka and Verkhnokamianka gives the orcs a base to try and piece Ukraine’s defensive arc, but despite relatively few brigades in the area Ukraine cut them right up.
Moscow finally gave up attacking through the dense forestry plantation north of the Siverski Donets this past year, instead going after Lyman by trying to break through Terny, where a small bridgehead over the Zherebets remains a concern. But not all that much of one, frankly, and it should take a long time to develop into more.
Oddly, ruscist forces from this front all the way up the Oskil river beyond Kupiansk are trying the same basic trick: forge a narrow bridgehead then keep extending and expanding it despite clear difficulty maintaining supply lines. The orcs trying to reach Borova are leveraging a months-long push through Pischane that finally made it to the banks of the Oskil last year. But Third Assault Brigade and company are, without a whole lot of fanfare, barely giving ground.
Kupiansk is the biggest concern in the area right now, with Moscow still determined to secure a broader beachhead over the Oskil around Dvorichna to the north. So far Ukraine has not been able to eliminate it, though there aren’t supposed to be many enemy vehicles on the far side, just infantry teams. Their reach is limited.
The danger here is an orc offensive that manages to push towards Velykyi Berluk, a local hub. A large chunk of the border would be vulnerable, compromising the Ukrainian defense in the Vovchansk area.
While unlikely, the threat must be kept in mind. However, Putin’s dream at this point is to restore the northern jaw of the attack on the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk area defeated by the Kharkiv Counteroffensive of 2022. This objective is best served by cracking the defense of Kupiansk, which the orc Kharkiv campaign in early 2024 tried and failed to do by punching through Vovchansk to get at Velykyi Berluk.
So much for the ground war. I hope this extra map heavy update helps shed some light on why so many media claims about the Ukraine War make so little sense. For all the talk about misinformation and fact-checking in the American media these days, it’s fascinating to see how little attention is paid to anything but whatever one-line throwaway a select academic chooses to utter.
When Putin’s power runs so manifestly thin, and Ukraine was only forced to fight this long at all because the US never gave it the bare fraction of inventory reserves available and required, it’s patently ridiculous to talk about ceasefire negotiations. You may as well politely ask a bear not to maul you.
Air, Sea, & Strike
At this stage, it should be enough to simply cite the ongoing campaign waged by Ukraine against targets thousands of kilometers inside the enemy’s homeland to illustrate the catastrophe this war has been for Putin’s empire. Using various kinds of drones with payloads up to 250 kilograms - the size of bombs widely used by jet aircraft on close air support missions - Ukraine can now launch complex strikes that mimic NATO techniques developed during the Cold War.
Some drones can carry receivers sensitive to the electromagnetic emissions used by radars to track flying objects, allowing them to home in and attack. This creates coverage gaps that other drones can use, different payloads aimed at different targets on the same complex. The net effect has been transforming what were once pinprick attacks on refineries to full-on raids. Ukraine is able to launch a hundred or more drones on these once or even twice a week.
Moscow uses drones too, of course, but Ukraine has developed countermeasures to the Shaheds and their newer decoy companions. They’re mostly random terror weapons now, same as most orc “precision” missiles. Moscow’s latest tactics have evolved in a more complex direction, too, using ground and air launched weapons of multiple types.
But there are signs of mounting physical stress across Moscow’s aviation force, and key bases keep getting attacked. Overall, Moscow’s ability to reliably strike targets in Ukraine has been substantially affected by a combination of Ukrainian strikes - including US-made missiles - and the slow improvement of Ukrainian air defenses as modern gear arrives. F-16s have been defending Ukrainian skies for half a year, with more jets and pilots joining the fight, if only a few at a time. It marks another major embarrassment for Putin that his forces haven’t destroyed one yet.
Ukrainian attacks on ruscist command centers also continue to take a toll. Of late Ukraine seems to have returned to prioritizing these, and the impending arrival of Mirage 2000 jets capable of rapidly targeting Storm Shadow missiles should make that easier. Part of me actually dares to hope the French have managed to integrate the Swedish Meteor long-range air to air missile to throw some orc jets who think a Patriot radar well out of firing range is tracking them a nasty surprise.
Not too much to report in the Black Sea of late. Winter can be rough in those waters, so drone operations may be limited. Or perhaps the threat they now pose to helicopters means that the enemy is having a tougher time tracking them. Ukraine is almost certainly working on new surprises.
Leadership & Personnel
The debate in Ukraine over how to handle ongoing issues with leadership and training continues, with Kyiv having a choice of less than ideal options. So far staying the course in terms of moving personnel who haven’t been to the front into combat roles continues, and nobody seems to think drafting under-25s will fly.
But despite being so heavily committed to repelling the endless orc assaults, it does appear that more Ukrainian troops are catching a break as Moscow is forced to prioritize certain areas. Extended training cycles, the ability to transfer to a new unit, enforcement of soldiers’ rights - all are essential to making the best possible use of personnel. You want to fix that before drafting more people if at all possible.
Ukraine is officially adopting a corps-brigade system, which I strongly suspect is actually evolving into a corps-regiment structure. What I’ve been calling a “battlegroup” is, in many countries, simply termed a regiment. I’ve tended to avoid this because the term regiment can be used a lot of different ways. Some regiments are intended to be autonomous in their area of responsibility, with their own assigned support elements. But the Soviets also had regiments that lacked formal or informal independence.
Whatever you call the thing, it’s a telescoping structure meant to help organize a mobile community thousands strong. It has to include a limited number of sub-elements to avoid becoming unmanageable and also be member of such a grouping. Above all else, it must serve its functional purpose.
I doubt that anyone has a firm answer about how this should look now that drones have democratized fire support in such a big way. Ukraine is a natural experiment, with many lessons yet to be learned, because each side is adapting along a unique and very likely irreversible path. Moscow’s style of war is to wield a giant machine that reduces all its essential parts to disposable components; Ukraine’s seeks to induce so many points of failure that no matter how many components you have, they’re never properly assembled and made whole.
In ecological terms, the latter is the superior strategy in most cases because it better preserves adaptive capacity. When the machine encounters an environment it was not suited to endure, it’s often done. Meanwhile something less visibly organized can wind up surviving. Moscow aims to be the machine: Ukraine makes the machine behave.
Geopolitical Brief
North America
The political situation in the USA these days is perhaps best described as tragic black comedy. If anyone wondered whether Trump or his crew actually cares about the Constitution, the naked attempt by the Executive Branch to tread on powers unambiguously accorded to the Legislative Branch for almost a quarter of a millennium should put paid to all lingering doubts. Though his illegal executive order has already been rescinded after a Reagan-appointed judge slapped it down hard, damage has been done.
I am absolutely fine with labeling the Democrat side of the partisan coin a threat to the Constitution - plenty of Democrats want to quietly go along with whatever Trump does, knowing that they’ll wind up back in power eventually and able to enjoy the benefits. That’s how the business of American politics works. Moderates make their coin by ensuring that when push comes to shove and a serious deadline approaches there’s always an eleventh hour deal. The diehard partisans like AoC and Vance get to rally the masses, ultimately betraying their trust but always able to avoid accountability by blaming the other side. Rinse and repeat every electoral cycle.
But right now it’s Team Trump abusing federal power, so they’re the ones who deserve ruthless and relentless criticism. They’re fake populists, a club dedicated to boosting the power of fellow celebrity CEOs. The latter censor Team Red partisans when Team Blue is in power, but happily shift modes as the times demand. How anyone can identify with these clowns will always be beyond my understanding - I get it in a scientific sense, but on a personal level it’s alarming. Useful agents perhaps, but heroes?
Despite all the blather about him being so different and norm-breaking, Trump is just Obama’s shadow - and Biden was Obama’s fading echo - all indicators of the rigidity trap that has left the federal government fatally vulnerable to colonization by profit-mongers of either partisan persuasion. For these people, the Constitution means whatever they need it to in the moment. This is mob rule, only in America there are two mob coalitions, both using hostility to the other to justify hoovering up people’s money and time.
These people will never defend Americans or allies from any hazards, foreign or domestic. Keeping the tired game going until the whole thing collapses is all they care about. All federal policy is about these days is pushing tax burdens onto some other group of Americans while refusing to cut the most wasteful component of the discretionary budget - the Pentagon. That’s what tariffs are: stealth taxes. They’ll hurt the very people Trump insists he’s looking after the most.
What Trump is actually doing in the White House is very straightforward, right out of a textbook - and no, not one about Weimar Germany. As a federation, the USA’s structure creates a powerful firewall against outright dictatorship of Hitler’s sort.
Imposing fascism is not what this is really all about. The first step in cracking apart an American corporation seized during a moment of vulnerability by a vulture capitalist is sowing maximum crazy. When the people you really want to push out are worn down from constantly putting out fires, they’re much easier to be rid of. Doesn’t even matter if half of what you order gets nuked by the courts - the goal is to expose vital assets so that allies can ruthlessly exploit whatever isn’t firmly nailed down. To get federal benefits, you have to know who to pay proper homage to. It was much the same as the Soviet Union fell.
American federal politics has absolutely nothing to do with facts, reality, or common sense anymore. It’s a machine that exists to sustain itself - a living organism by any reasonable definition.
Funny thing about organisms is that, being made up of different parts, they can wind up in a situation where some essentially starve others. The USA is not presently in a position where breaking down institutions will unlock free energy - instead, taking a crude wrecking ball to the federal government, however deserved this may be, will generate pure chaos. If people think diversity in hiring is dangerous, consider the fact that in the recent tragic collision between an Army helicopter and civilian flight near D.C., two different data sources are presently reporting the helicopter at totally different altitudes.
The discrepancy will likely resolve when more information is available. But when complex systems become destabilized, the consequences tend to first emerge in a higher rate of strange accidents and glitches. Anyone who has been in the professional world for any length of time knows just how much invisible arrangements between different parts of an organization end up giving it a peculiar structure. Lose a staff member who happened to run an essential piece of something higher level management didn’t fully understand was already held together with tape and wire, and all of a sudden things break for no apparent reason.
America has two choices: reform in a planned manner that embraces decentralization, or get to the same place, but after traveling a much rougher road. Virtually all of American media, and therefore the politicians who use it to communicate to the public, is now being focused on a singular goal: pretend that this historic process isn’t happening. They aim to ignore the natural consequences, trusting that the most vulnerable will suffer and be made invisible.
It’s the same with American policy on Ukraine. People outside of Ukraine don’t hear the true story because it isn’t profitable. If Ukraine wins, the world changes, so better to pretend that negotiating with Putin - dumber than negotiating with Osama Bin Laden - will somehow let us reset the world back to the way it was in 2021. Some in Trump world have been insisting that it’s impossible to reset the situation back to 2013, but 2021 or even 2019 marked an even less stable equilibrium. The assault on Ukraine happened because Putin wanted it, his ruscist empire is obsessed with fighting a forever war with NATO, and there will be no lasting peace until whoever is in charge in Moscow knows they lack any hope of destroying Ukraine.
So good luck finding grounds for an imminent ceasefire that doesn’t actually count as a win for Putin in his book. Fortunately, all the Team Trump talk about ending the Ukraine War remains hot air. Kellogg, the Vietnam veteran that Trump tapped to handle Ukraine, is in an impossible position: Trump wants the issue to just go away, and Putin knows this. So Putin isn’t about to relinquish any territory or give an inch on any issue of real importance. Ukraine can’t either. So any ceasefire would only be superficial and probably violated numerous times in days. Moscow would wait until the time was right to unilaterally end it once and for all - as happened to each prior ceasefire after 2014.
Magical thinking hasn’t won a war yet. Hamas and Israel agreed to a ceasefire because both felt a pressing need to change their strategy. Their confrontation hasn’t ended: Israel simply recognized that it can’t afford to physically occupy Gaza directly indefinitely nor root out every Hamas cell, not now that its unrelenting bombardment has engendered hate set to bear fruit for generations - which might count as win enough for Israel’s hardliners.
Hamas can now claim a major victory merely by surviving, which is exactly why a more surgical campaign with the aim of destroying Hamas as a serious military threat was necessary. But that didn’t benefit Netanyahu’s delicate political situation, so all his promises of destroying Hamas are ignored - or put off, perhaps indefinitely, until he needs a war again.
Power is power, and those who have it act in predictable ways to sustain it. Most talk from Team Trump about ending the war in Ukraine is for the consumption of partisans who aren’t going to punish their cult hero if he one day decides Putin is a bad dude who can’t be trusted after all and starts a war with the guy. Trump hopes that Democrats will start shouting about him being in bed with Putin because this will be interpreted as Trump supporters as suggesting they are Putin’s allies. He might then be able to cast Ukraine as a totally partisan issue, which would help him wash his hands of it at the earliest opportunity.
All in all, for a fantastic take on the illogic driving America’s present position on Ukraine, check out Stefan Korshak’s latest. Dude really has the pulse of the situation. Nothing in diplomacy is every quite what it seems.
Right now, prospects of a viable ceasefire remain very dim. Putin is trying to do a side deal with Trump, pushing the idea that Ukraine’s government will be more compliant if changed in elections. That looks to be a convenient sticking point in negotiations, because Ukraine can say with strong justification that holding fair elections is impossible without a ceasefire, but it can’t possibly agree to one without credible security guarantees. Good luck finding a couple hundred thousand peacekeepers willing to sit between the lines for an indefinite period of time. Or getting unoccupied Ukraine into NATO by summer.
At best, there could be some sort of temporary show truce for a few weeks during the spring mud. But before Ukraine could hold elections, it would falter. Putin aims to destroy Ukraine, and Ukraine aims to survive, which means being too tough a nut to ever hope to crack. Not much daylight between these positions.
Overall, Trump remains stuck with Ukraine - though he obviously doesn’t care about Ukraine or have a strong grasp of the facts, the stain on his legacy and hit to his political capital from an Afghanistan-style collapse of Ukrainian resistance, however unlikely, probably compels him to at least not sabotage Ukraine. He needs to be in a position to throw up his hands and let Europe handle the fight, while encouraging Ukraine and Europe to buy as much American inventory as possible. His new (and temporary) buddy Musk should soon latch on to how obsolete most of it is at some point and encourage divestment of old armored vehicles in favor of something Tesla claims to aspire to make. There will never be a Tesla tank, but I’d bet a whole lot of Tesla stock owners would be excited about the idea. Give me the funds, Elon, and I’ll almost make it happen.
Europe
Thankfully, a badly-needed alternative to American leadership is slowly shaping up. Across the Atlantic, a coalition of European countries within NATO continues to increase the amount of of military aid to Ukraine. Massive industrial projects meant to restore Europe’s collective ability to wage war without the USA are underway - and moving faster than anything similar happening in America, where for all anyone knows policy could radically change in four years.
American defense companies know full well that Pentagon orders are set as much by politics as military sense. Most legacy Cold War projects never died, proponents shifting the explanation for their need time after time, for this reason. This rigidity is largely responsible for everything the Pentagon does costing far more than it should. It’s what happens when a political-economy is captured by a particular social class.
European markets tend to be less profitable in the short run, but more stable. Long term profits thus end up being as high or higher. American inability to self-reflect in economic matters is a major national security vulnerability nobody talks about.
Meanwhile, Trump’s antics over Greenland and trade war threats have shaken something loose in Europe. Unfortunately for Trump’s agenda - and America’s position in the world - it is impossible to be taken seriously as an ally or security guarantor when you publicly latch on to silly ideas like buying Greenland. As if the US can’t already access and exploit whatever it needs, provided it’s willing to pay Greenlanders their due fee.
Most European leaders appear to be well aware of the fact that the Muscovite plague sees itself as locked in an existential struggle with their societies. Sabotage and intimidation campaigns are underway - this is war, even if borders aren’t being actively crossed yet. Putin will do whatever he thinks he can get away with, so until the pain of poking others becomes severe, he’ll keep dancing on the edge of something more than a classic shadow war.
Defense industry partnerships with Ukraine are beginning to bear fruit, and this is a trend that stands to both revitalize the European defense industry but also end any hope any future regime in Moscow may every hold of defeating Europe or even just Ukraine in a war. At this stage for Europe, it’s either a future with Ukraine’s military industry on side, or backing Moscow.
Democratic politics in Europe are as messy as anywhere else, but despite Putin’s ongoing outreach to the hard-right using false claims of caring about traditional values, complexity makes colonization of institutions harder. In the USA, it’s the fact that the federal bureaucracy is trying to balance too many competing structural interests that renders it vulnerable to paralysis.
Middle East
Though the ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon are bound to be shaky, they’ve held for the most part so far. The situation with Iran continues to simmer, but the best indicator of American intentions there are the location of the U.S. Navy’s carrier battle groups. If two start showing up in striking distance, watch out.
I have to give the Israelis credit for this much: apparently ninety Patriot missiles were shipped to Kyiv. They’ll save a lot of lives.
The Syrians look to be on the path to finally escaping the awful trap of being a battleground for other powers. So far, reports suggest that the transitional government is committed to respecting minority rights. Supposedly Damascus has told Moscow that the only way it gets to keep its precious bases is if Assad is expatriated. A lovely condition that all but ensures Moscow is out, and Europe comes in, once sanctions are finally lifted.
In oddly related news, I was actually contacted this past month by a professor who several years ago asked me to revise an encyclopedia entry I wrote on the Syria refugee crisis. After the projects switched editors and the publisher was bought by somebody else, it’s finally set to enter print. It was nice to be able to end the story with Assad’s flight and thousands of Syrian refugees beginning to return home as opposed to what seemed to be the triumph of the Moscow-Damascus alliance.
Pacific
The Pacific is presently fairly quiet as everyone waits to see what foolish thing Trump does next. The clienteleist style of contemporary American politics means that everyone fears getting hit with tariffs, so has an incentive to play nice while preparing for the worst. Japan has proven adept at this in the past. It will be interesting to see how Tokyo’s relations with America unfold.
One slow-moving development to note is the recent launch of some particularly large barges by China. To me, they’re a lot more alarming than the flasher stuff China rolls out because this is the exact sort of boring but practical gear you need to sustain a beachhead in Taiwan. A possible lesson that Beijing may draw from watching the USA’s Ukraine policy is that it can be okay to go big and have it not work out as hoped.
Even if a beachhead was contained, if Beijing were ever able to secure even a foothold in Taiwan and threaten nuclear escalation against any foreign intervention that threatened it, the long-term defense of Taiwan would be in serious doubt. This move is far, far less likely than a more careful effort to split Taiwan’s allies through a maritime quarantine that might morph into a military blockade.
But these days, it isn’t safe to rule much out. What someone else should have learned from events and what they actually learned can be two very different things. Based on the professional publications I run across that cater to American officers, I’m not sure they yet comprehend just how badly drones can mess up their day at every level, tactical through strategic.
Yet another reason why all American defense commitments in the Pacific should be handled by a separate set of institutions. We badly need a dedicated West Coast Defense Force with a minimum $200 billion annual budget to handle this part of the world. It’s just common sense. The rest of America does not understand the Pacific and likely never will. There really is something about geographic proximity that, over time and under the right conditions, can build new nations. In this, Trump may be our unwitting ally.
Concluding Comments
Ukraine’s fight is once more at a stage where the vast majority of coverage from abroad is, on some level, totally missing the point. Claims that Ukraine’s will to resist is cracking or that its soldiers are too exhausted to fight are premature. If Moscow had a viable military strategy rooted in science and a good appreciation of the actual situation, Ukraine could in fact lost control of the situation.
But there just isn’t solid evidence of this happening. Contrary to the claims from last fall, Ukraine’s line didn’t crumble. It’s hard work, and there are still serious leadership, training, and outfitting issues. But the character of the fighting is also shifting, drones filling gaps left by Ukraine’s lack of bodies relative to the enemy. Moscow is conducting a giant experiment to see whether flesh can overwhelm metal, but on a large scale that is even less likely now than it was a hundred years ago.
So I will be very, very surprised indeed if Trump gets his ceasefire in the first 100 days or the first 500. If and when Moscow’s empire starts to crumble, there will be little need - until it comes time to negotiate the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from Kursk, Belgorod, and Rostov-on-Don.
Only lawyers think that wars are about raw territory, that by seizing a few hundred square kilometers here or there you’ve somehow gained or lost in negotiations. And so they’re perpetually shocked when a regime crumbles when enough vital sustaining elements are no longer in place. Putin is a lawyer more than he’s a historian. Assad’s future is likely his own. Small wonder he’s reportedly bartering Assad’s return in chains to Damascus for more time to evacuate Moscow’s bases.
How pleasant can it be to have a reminder of your own probable fate close at hand? Something else to consider: even if Putin does at some point decide he wants to roll the nuclear dice to avert a collapse of the front and try to force Trump into direct negotiations, his own military leaders will likely rebel. Nuclear escalation after all this bloodshed and so many unprecedented hits on holy russian soil would be futile in the extreme, a madman taking his broken empire down with him. Fear of Putin’s wrath is all that keeps anyone from moving against him as it is. But once the naked emperor is revealed, disdain takes over.
The only threat to russia’s future comes from Moscow. Push comes to shove, it’s more likely that a rogue general will nuke the place to put an end to the nightmare than fire one at NATO, guaranteeing the whole country burns.
Defeat beckons - will Ukraine finally be allowed to muster the strength to push Putin over the edge? It could happen in 2025.