The deal purposely involves provisions that Ukraine would find unacceptable. Russia isn't particularly interested in negotiating while it's winning, though funnily enough I'm a bit disappointed in Putin that he wouldn't go for much more maximalist demands. I guess he still wants to give it a veneer of "reasonableness".
The War in the Ukraine
- Thread starter SampanViking
- Start date
plawolf
Lieutenant General
While on the face of it, it might look like a bad deal for Russia, but in reality it’s actually a potentially interesting play.
Of course the US and rest of NATO will want to re-arm Ukraine. But can they?
Minsk 2 only worked out to Ukraine’s advantage because the US and EU supplied them from their existing Cold War left over weapons stocks. Those weapons and munitions stocks are now utterly depleted and western arms manufacturing output is pitifully slow. And that’s before Chinese RE chokehold kicked in.
With Minsk 3.0 in effect, Russia can buy Chinese arms in whatever quantities they want, China will be happy to also throw in ToT and production lines into the deal.
In 3 years time, Ukraine might add a few hundred tanks and fighters to its inventory, while Russia can have a full new army and air force that can take on NATO directly rather than just Ukraine.
If Putin does swallow this peace deal, it means he is taking the big picture approach to trade short term concessions to buying time to re-equip for WWIII so that Russia can be the Russia of WWII again rather than Italy.
Considering the fact that Russia can draw on non-mobilized reserves who are in different parts of Russia and rotate out their troops, it really isn’t. As for the missiles, since Russia is able to hit Kyiv easily and beyond, Ukraine losing the missile capability is basically crippling itself. All in all, everyone is going to lose something, except for the US who just wants the cash.
Given the fiasco with the CR929, I very much doubt that would happen. Id imagine that they would take the opportunity to expand military industrial plants for their domestic weaponry instead and expand their drone production capabilities. They have a saying in Russia from Tsar Alexander III: “Russia has only two allies: the army and the navy”. I strongly doubt that they would want to rely on a foreign nation for weaponry.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
The only thing stopping Russia from buying Chinese weapons is Russian pride, and I think the Ukraine war has knocked a lot of that unwarranted pride out of them these last few years.
Russia is winning on the battlefield. Slowly and at higher cost than it was bargaining for, but not so slowly and costly it cannot afford to just grind out a win through sheer stubbornness. And if Russia really cannot master its pride even now, then that’s what they will do. There is no need for a Minsk 3.0 break, which works against the Russians if they want to grind out a solo win.
But accepting Minsk 3 and doing what Ukraine did during Minsk 2 has a nice ironic twist that I think would appeal to Russians.
And it’s not like they need to buy the whole Chinese arms catalogue. Just a few key purchases could really turbocharge their combat effectiveness, and the best part is that if they really wanted to, they can buy Chinese platforms with legacy Russian/soviet roots and just paint them the same if they really wanted to downplay arms purchases from China.
How many people can tell a J16 apart from a Su30? Or KJ2000s from A50s? Those two purchases alone would be a massive force multiplier for the Russians. But they can also do a radar and avionics upgrade for their home built flankers and they are on a completely different level. Throw in some J35s and drones and they are not afraid of taking on the rest of NATO if America can be prevented from making a meaningful contribution.
It’s largely the same with the army. The Russians spent the lion share of their budget on the big toys and neglected all the support assets and paid heavily for it. But a modest number of key systems being brought up will plug those gaps and allow the Russian army to fight like a modern army again.
You read it incorrectly. Russia does not get any of their money back. $100 billion goes to Ukraine and the rest goes into what is basically an US slush fund. The Russians will need US permission to use their own money.
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Zelensky has not outright turned down trumps 28 point plan and is instead agreeing to negotiate on it. That should tell you something about the progress of the war at the front.
Putin on the other hand went to army group west's HQ to hear them report the good news of capture of Kupyansk. Gerasimov is reporting that 15 AFU battalions are now trapped in the Kupyansk pocket on the wrong side of the river. That they're doing this very publicly now should give you some insight on how Russian leadership is feeling about the peace plan.
Putin on the other hand went to army group west's HQ to hear them report the good news of capture of Kupyansk. Gerasimov is reporting that 15 AFU battalions are now trapped in the Kupyansk pocket on the wrong side of the river. That they're doing this very publicly now should give you some insight on how Russian leadership is feeling about the peace plan.
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Adding on top of that, according to this article:
“
Behind the scenes: Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff is leading the drafting of the plan and has discussed it extensively with Russian envoy , a U.S. official said.
- Dmitriev, who runs Russia's sovereign wealth fund and is also deeply involved in diplomacy over Ukraine, told Axios in an interview on Monday that he spent three days huddled with Witkoff and other members of Trump's team when Dmitriev visited Miami from Oct. 24-26.
- Dmitriev expressed optimism about the deal's chances of success because, unlike past efforts, ’we feel the Russian position is really being heard.’”
Let’s wait until this is confirmed via Russian sources, western sources always like to present this in an extremely optimistic light
Had Axios cited an unnamed Russian source, I definitely would agree. We have seen that time and time again. However, Dmitriev literally got interviewed by Axios, and that means they were close to each other like Trump and Bubba.