Blog #3 - March 5 of Russia’s Invasion: Correspondence to an ex-Kremlinologist Classmate--What Can

I returned (to Moldova) via California and Bucharest (b/c Moldovan airspace is closed until mid-March, transited for 24 hours through Romania) and have resumed studying the current Ukraine situation.

I’ve heard Stent, Hill and McFaul’s opinions on what Putin is thinking/wants generally, and I’ve heard Kasparov, Michael Faigin and Piontkowsky on the costs/consequences/possible outcomes of war as of day seven, but would like to hear your viewpoint on what will happen next and why.

Here’s the framework-- I’ve got friends in the Ukraine from working there, and one of my grandfathers grew up in Kharkiv, so I have sentiments for the country and really feel for the Ukrainian plight, but I’m also a cold realist with Latvia’s survival remaining my priority… most importantly I must start projecting possible outcomes—can our May adventure week in Moldova take place. I mean have you tasted their Cab?

But seriously---

Premises:

My understanding is that the Western countries cannot “win” a nuclear confrontation against Russia outright. A “win”—in this situation—could be defined as the partial annihilation of one major city in Europe and one in the U.S., while, conversely, all Russian missiles are disabled or detonated in Russia and the Kremlin is reduced to a pile of ash, with you-know-who inside.

Based on the above premise, the war stays conventional; it stays a war between Ukrainian forces (including volunteers/reserves, etc.) and Russian forces.

Putin has a lot riding on a “victory” although what constitutes the definition isn’t clear:

1. He claims that he wants the decapitation and de-Nazification of the country.

2. Someone has heard Putin say he wants to “turn it into Syria” and then let the Western countries pay for the restoration of Ukraine’s destroyed infrastructure.

3. All the above-mentioned experts say the key thing is he doesn’t want a thriving Slavic democracy on his doorstep as this could inspire Russians to demand the same for Russia.

4. He only wants to assure the long-term safety of Russia and NATO didn’t deny Ukraine accession…and neither did Ukraine say (pre-2022 Finnish style) that they will forego being a member of NATO.

5. He wants to restore the “Greater Russia” that existed from 1680 to 1780 (roughly-speaking)

6. He doesn’t want to “occupy” Ukraine or feel the need he has to.

It’s a bunch of contradictory statements.

Facts:

• The Russian forces have sufficiently powerful/destructive weapons at their disposal to win a short war, based on a demolition of all major cities of the country. In other words, Russia could never “lose” a war with Ukraine if it is willing to ignore the UN protocols on war or several of the Geneva convention rules.

• As demonstrated by the capture of the Zaporozhzhya nuclear plant, the Russians can continually deny Ukraine 80% of their power needs, and if need be, trigger a second Chernobyl, but one perhaps five times stronger, leaving some 20% of the country uninhabitable.

• The Russians would never be able to “keep” the country through occupation, or protect their puppet governments, without a) continually incurring significant losses of personnel, or b) leaving the rest of the Russia’s borders vulnerable to invasion on account of having to station so many troops in Ukraine, or c) resorting to using short-range nuclear weapons to [continually] instill terror…and risk a military coup.

• NATO countries will not step in militarily to help Ukrainians defend Ukraine.

In light of the abovementioned premises and facts, Ukraine stands to lose what—3 million of its inhabitants within a month to war, and another 5 million to flight abroad (beyond the 1.25m already abroad—the line of passenger vehicles to cross the border into Romania last night at 8:00 from Leuseni, Moldova was 1.5km long and most of them were with Ukrainian plates or passengers)?

If, however,

1. As a minimum, Putin feels that predominantly Russian Ethno-linguistic lands should be returned to Russia.

2. Some areas that were never governed/inhabited predominantly by Ukrainians (such as Crimea and Kherson) were handed to them as a bureaucratic gesture by Khrushchev in 1954 and a de facto one in 1991…

3. Zelenskyy wants to stay in power, and the whole of Ukraine and the western world want that too, as he represents the continuation of democracy.

4. Zelenskyy and the government do not want to lose a fifth of their population in the medium-term…

wouldn’t one possible “offramp” the Ukrainian govt [alone] could offer Putin be to sell those lands to Russia[1] and pass a law that Ukraine would not seek entry to NATO for say, 20-25 years (until that question dies a natural death…after Putin does)? I mean, not tomorrow, but by the middle of next week Zellenskyy will probably be staring into the abyss of massive casualties and Kharkiv reduced to rubble, while BP and Exxon Mobil join Shell in buying deeply discounted Russian oil, etc., etc.

Both maps I’ve seen that encapsulate those Ukrainian areas are the Harland map of Europe in 1938 and the Soviet Etno-lingvisticheskaya karta Ykraini of the same year. In both cases the maps included—in the “Russian” category the area north of Crimea as far as the Kherson port, Melitopol and Berdyansk, as well as Donetsk and Luhansk.

Inguna [Latvian national] and I argued a long time on that one. She wasn’t sure, that if Nazi Germany had handed lands to their puppet Latvian government in 1941, extending 50 km to the east beyond Latvia’s 1929-1939 border (oblasts which were 95% occupied by Russians, BTW, in 1991), that Latvia shouldn’t have confronted Russia in 1991 to retain them (Full disclosure—I considered that absurd. In fact, Moldova tried that in 1990-1992 with Transnistria and ended up losing a few hundred soldiers and civilians in the process for naught, as you may recall.)

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the matter... perhaps after you’ve had a glass of good bordeaux.

[BTW- My grandfather from Kharkiv fought in the [Russian] White Army as captain of a machine gun battery, used only Russian with us at home in CA, was an archdeacon in the [Russian] Orthodox Church and only occasionally spoke Ukrainian—but read Shevchenko’s poetry. I wish he had spoken Ukrainian more.]

[1] Just as a point of reference with regards to international law/European approval of such transactions, were you aware that an Angolan ex-general/recent MP and Dos Santos’ daughter together own over 25% of Portugal’s real estate/land?