Category: Politics

It’s been four long years of war in Ukraine. Who ever thought it would get this far? The last time I posted my thoughts on the war was at the end of 2023. Very little has changed.

Russia has kept on grinding on the ground. North Korea and other countries have sent troops to support Russia. Iran has sent drones. Also Ukraine has been supplied by new category of weapons, one by one. Tanks have been taken over by drones, and their power and number just keeps on increasing. Videos from the battlefield speak of almost Terminator-style apocalypse. Ukraine started to hit Russian targets inside Russia with drones and long range missiles. The line of combat has moved towards west but in the grand scheme of things it has been slow and costly. Ukraine is still holding the main lines of defense in Donetsk and right now even gaining some ground again.

Over the past year or so there has been expectations of some kind of peace deal to no avail. When Trump came in 24 hours passed and there was no deal. It seems obvious Putin has no interest to settle the war. After all he started it all with the aim of taking all over Ukraine and he is still there reigning. — Just the other night I watched Metallica’s Moscow concert from 1991. That is the same Russian society out there in the audience. You get a very different picture. Peace is an option once the regime changes.

Zelensky and the Ukrainian heroics are also still there. Zelensky has been touring the world like before and getting back from any momentary setback like what he had one year ago in the Oval Office. While US support has come into question, Europe is still in the middle of getting its act together. Frozen Russian assets remain locked. Hungary keeps on messing around. Not all weapons are available. Security guarantees are at the level of loose talk. Meanwhile Ukraine has built the strongest and most experienced army in Europe. And their own weapons systems. It looks like Ukraine can join the EU one day and will be as close to NATO as any non-member can be.

Overall, we have become so used to the war. The news don’t anymore make the headlines here. And the same seems to apply to those at war. Most notably Putin does not really care. Russia has lost 1M+ troops total out of which reportedly 300k+ as dead but who cares? When Putin started the war he postponed the day to cross the line over the Olympics 2022 just to finish the gold medal match in hockey. Now after the full four year Olympic cycle he didn’t get his team in the games in the first place. What more can he lose?

There is no end in sight to this war as we speak.

Little did I know some four years ago that this day would come. We have Trump re-elected as the US President. Quite a historic comeback.

Some thoughts:

1. Character didn’t matter in the end. History was all forgotten and past political sins forgiven. This election was all about the usual political back-and-forth wave, dissatisfaction to the democratic Biden government.

2. Trump is still a very good, energetic talker at 78. He kept his form. He aced most of his interviews and there were many. He didn’t chicken out or over prepare. He was his authentic self whom everyone knew beforehand. And it did make a contrast to Harris.

3. Trump made a solid VP pick with Vance while the democrats made a poor pick with Walz. Vance was really sharp in every interview I saw him. He represents the next generation. That guy has potential if he just keeps his rhythm.

4. Polls predicted on average like 2-3% points wrong in favor of democrats. The latest had Trump and Harris neck to neck. Harris would win popular vote for sure. Nothing like that happened. The betting markets by contrast knew it all along.

5. While GOP got also the senate and house will go down the wire I don’t expect any major tectonic shifts in US politics. It will be interesting and unpredictable for sure, especially at the start. But Trump 2024 is no Trump 2016. He is today an experienced politician. At 78. He also doesn’t have a team. Very few key people from the previous term will carry over. He needs to recruit all new people who will have a say and influence how to move forward.

Christmas is coming and Zelensky is back from a tour in the Americas and Europe just like he did one year ago. Putin also held his annual press conference, the first time after he started the war in Ukraine. Here’s my wrap up of what we have learned about the war in the past one year and what’s ahead:

1. Russia didn’t advance much in the spring and Ukraine’s much-awaited counteroffensive hit the defenses without any major breakthroughs. That does not mean the war would be stuck. Intense fighting is continuing all across the frontlines as we speak. We are in a situation where nobody is winning and nobody is happy. Men and machines burn on daily basis.

2. It seems clear Russia’s goal remains Ukrainian capitulation and complete takeover. We have seen the pattern. Now Putin says Odessa belongs to Russia. He doesn’t mention Ukrainian officials by name just like his political opponents who have been taken out. He is on a mission to punish Ukraine like Prigozhin just because they fight back. It looks very unlikely Russia would ever settle this war as long as Putin is alive and there are Ukrainian soldiers standing.

3. For Ukraine most of their territory occupied a year ago is still under Russian control. Ukraine will continue to defend Russian attacks over the winter and hopefully get into counteroffensive again when its resources allow. It is not conceivable Ukraine would settle and surrender any parts of its territory no matter what others say and how much support they get. Otherwise all the fighting and nation build-up project up to this point would become tears in the rain.

4. The Free World’s support has become the subject of political games. This is however all anticipated and expected. There will always be voices in an open society like the US republicans and the current head of the Hungarian government. It does not mean Ukraine would be out of backing anytime soon. Just remember the EU just decided to start official membership talks with Ukraine no matter of one lone opponent.

5. What happens in 2024 is all open. The big picture is very much like in December 2022. The parties are the same and the stakes are the same. Even the frontline is about the same. The default scenario is that the war just drags on and on unless some surprise event unfolds. My wish for 2024 is that in one year from now Ukraine has taken the next steps towards ultimate victory and I don’t have to write again the same projection for 2025.

I have been following the war in Ukraine through Twitter, Telegram and other real time social media channels since the very beginning on daily basis. Right now that Zelensky is giving a press conference with Biden in White House, and we are 300 days from day one, I have the feeling there might be a calmer period ahead but no immediate end in sight. So I thought it could be a good time to gather my thoughts together.

It is still obvious that nobody knows how the war will end. Not Putin, not Zelensky, not Biden, not anybody else. Some patterns and possible outcomes can be however identified:

1. Putin’s mission has been and remains to take over the whole Ukraine and he can be only stopped by a bullet, coup or the like. It doesn’t count a cent what Russia says and lies about their goals, peace talks etc. Their take over can go militarily up to the Polish border or at minimum they want Zelensky gone, Ukrainian surrender and some random puppet government placed in Kyiv. In this sense this war is comparable to WWI or WWII. Putin’s Russia is essentially running an old school conquest mission we haven’t seen in this world in a generation or two.

2. Ukraine will never surrender. They will fight until the last man standing no matter how much they are attacked or how much support they get from the US and EU. Before the war it was unclear to me if there will be genuine, large-scale conflict between Russia and Ukraine or if Russia will just march in like in Crimea back in 2014. This has no longer been the case after the first two weeks of the war or so. Ukraine has kind of reborn as a fully independent, sovereign nation and founding story in the past 10 months. They stand united. Ukraine will not stop until pre-2014 borders are back on the map.

3. EU, US, China, Israel and others were initially just following and reacting to the events as they unfolded. Since then the Free World has step by step increased the absolutely critical military support to let Ukraine defend its territory and stop Russia. But that is not enough. Now after significant Ukrainian gains over the past few months I get the feeling the military support for Ukraine should be still couple magnitudes higher If we want to see Russia defeated and retreat back to the pre-2014 borders in months instead of years. We also need to continue to build up unified political pressure and sanctions against Russia and all the Kremlin agents across the world.

4. Before February it was somewhat unclear to me who leads Russia. Was Putin just a puppet of some of the top oligarchs or vice versa? Now it is clear that everyone in Russia is under Putin who runs some kind of Peter the Great reality show on TV. Pretty many oligarchs and other regional bosses must hate big time letting their country get into this stage. Their capo has sucked all the power and runs a war economy in an unpredictable, dangerous way. Late John McCain has still the best description of what Putin’s Russia is all about: “A gas station run by a mafia that is masquerading as a country.”

5. Russian army is the black horse. They could simply stop the war if there is still some independent command structure left. They could do a quick power transition like has happened in some of the other modern-day dictatorships over the past 50 years or so.

6. Another random rider are nukes. It seems like Putin can at some point simply order Russian army to nuke any target and then we see what happens. In any event Putin is the only known person in this world both capable and even possibly willing to detonate a nuke on people. If they would nuke I think nobody would really respond in kind unless Russia would like bomb Kiev to the ground or something as crazy as that.

7. The default scenario is that the war goes on with conventional weapons until the bitter end. We will have more blood in the snow when the Christmas comes and the year turns into 2023. Where the borders lie next year — nobody knows. In the long term it is obvious Ukraine will take over the lost land, join EU and so on. Right now it feels like this journey will just take a long time.

8. What happens to Russia after the war is another major question mark but it has to be addressed because this kind of wars cannot happen again. One scenario is they follow the North Korean complete isolation model but I have hard times to believe in that because Russia is just too big, diversified and unstructured to be as tightly controlled. At the other end if Russia would succumb into chaos some independent regions could rebel and declare independence. Even if that would happen I don’t think anybody wants to go there, occupy, “peace keep” or grab any of that land with any pretext. They need to somehow sort it out themselves. Like Zelensky said in his address to US Congress: “The Russians will stand a chance to be free only when they defeat the Kremlin in their minds.” They do it either region by region, which I guess would be most likely, or then in some miraculous way as a reborn, unified, democratic nation among other nations.