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Posted on 11/13/2026 10:30:40 AM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
As hopes for a military victory fade, the Kremlin is now betting on Ukraine’s economic collapse and weakening European support
Russian President Vladimir Putin has four bets on how to win the war in Ukraine. Two of them—that Ukraine’s army will break, or that the Trump administration will force Kyiv to submit to Moscow’s terms—are going badly.
But Putin’s other two bets have a better chance of succeeding by next year: paralyzing Ukraine’s economy with relentless missile and drone strikes, and waiting for European support to falter as political parties that oppose aid for Kyiv gain popularity.
This week’s U.S.-mediated talks in Abu Dhabi showed that the Kremlin remains committed to its original war aims: dismembering and subjugating Ukraine while rewriting Europe’s post-Cold War order. “All the objectives we have set ourselves will be achieved,” Moscow’s lead negotiator Vladimir Medinsky told Russian state TV on Wednesday.
Putin will likely wait to see how his stratagems play out in early 2027, most observers say, before deciding whether to stay the course or adjust it.
“The spring is what the Russians will be waiting for. They want to see what this missile campaign delivers,” as well as who wins France’s coming presidential election, said Hanna Notte, Eurasia director at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif. “And then they’ll take stock.”
Even then, Russia is more likely to review its strategy than give up its goals, Notte says.
No Trump card
After President Trump returned to the White House last year promising to end the war in a day, the Kremlin hoped he would...
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
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WSJ - don’t give up Zeepers, there’s still hope!
I suspect, without any hard evidence, that perhaps both sides of the Ukraine-Russia conflict may be closer to some type of agreement that ends the bloodshed than anytime in the last 4 years. Putin made a concession, and he needs some type of agreement from all the combatant parties, but I think he is moving to get out of Ukraine. Yes, I could just all be a mis-read, but economic strain and peer pressure will be a bigger motivator than the dead at the front.
Thank you for the summary.
Simple....the war ends when the Z-man returns to Ukraine.
3/1/2023: Col. MacGregor: Ukraine has been DESTROYED and there's nothing left
Putin cares little for the casualties or economic destruction as long as he is not one of the effected.
Remind us, please: Just what concession was that?
Regards,
Ukraine is arguably the most corrupt nation on Earth. Everybody has their hand in the billions poured into that pit.
There is an ongoing, desperate need for the CIA to cover up the many crimes against humanity they have committed by funding and building bioweapons labs all over Ukraine. The monsters responsible should be hanged for it and THEY KNOW IT AND FEAR IT DEEPLY.
The current situation is much worse than Putin’s worst case scenario from his strategizing before the war. Putin thought that the poorest outcome was that NATO would become involved immediately in the war, and he would then be able to freeze the conflict after taking most, but perhaps not all, of Ukraine. His thinking was that NATO would surely want to negotiate a frozen conflict rather than continue fighting.
Wow! Is that war still going on?
What does corruption have to do with Putin invading a sovereign country by crossing an internationally recognized border in order to seize its land and wealth?
And by every measure, Russia is more corrupt.
Haven't heard of any Putin concession.
Russians are like a disease, once they enter a country they can only be forcibly removed. Russians promised to leave Moldova in 1999 but are still occupying it.
At the 1999 OSCE Summit in Istanbul, Russia formally promised to completely withdraw its troops and ammunition depots from Moldova by the end of 2002.
That’s just one example.
A particularly egregious other example is the Belavezha agreement - drafted by the leaders of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia in 1991.
It is the agreement that formally disbanded AND declared an end to the entire “geopolitical reality” of the USSR (including the occupation of Warsaw Pact countries).
It’s the agreement that forced Gorbachev out of power.
The Accords are within Annex 2:
They confirm that the three “contracting parties” had acknowledged, and pledged to respect, the unqualified right of self-determination by “sovereign states”. They confirm the borders of those states are inviolable.
They confirm that no state had dominance over the others.
And, finally, they confirm that all three states were signing up to the reduction of nuclear weapons. Of course we now know Belarus and Ukraine, Khazakhstan and others were honoring that element while, under Putin’s direction, Russia has done the polar opposite.
Pretty much every principle embedded in the Belavezha Accords has been violated - systematically - by Russia, year on year, for over two decades.
The attempted assassination of Yuschenko was a violation of the Belavezha Accords. The SMO in Georgia was a violation. And pretty much everything Russia has done - intentionally - to Ukraine since 2012 amounts to a repudiation of this agreement.
Even the so-called abortions that are laughably called peace arrangements (like Minsk 1, Minsk 2, and Istanbul) are acknowledgements in writing, from Moscow, that they have absolutely no intention of upholding a single principle embedded in the Belavezha Accords.
To Putin and his followers, the goal is a Russian “sphere of influence”, reasserting control over the former USSR and Warsaw Pact countries - ideally through destabilisation efforts and installation of puppet governments, but if that doesn’t work, they’ll use force.
This is a bogus “restoration” of lands to Russia; Russia itself has acknowledged in multiple treaties that these lands are NOT THEIRS.
A virus has an existential hardwired reason to spread - it isn’t sentient. Likewise, a cancer has an existential hardwired motive to metastasize.
If we believe Russia is led by intelligent people, we have to believe Russia is not a slave to its programming like a virus is. We have to believe it’s capable of acting intellectually as well as instinctively.
For that reason, most sensible people conclude that Russia cannot pretend that it has an existential, hardwired, unavoidable excuse for being maximalist on this subject.
Russia is entirely capable of pragmatism. It has the capacity to compromise. It is perfectly able to separate rational thought from basic instinct.
Russia *chooses* to be the asshole here.
Bingo. Ben Browder, who knows Putin and Russia well, believes that Putin cannot end the Ukraine war because doing so would quickly direct political scrutiny and recriminations on him, with fatal consequences.
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