Underestimated the Russians

The Russians, after all, could quite easily attack and seize huge swathes of Ukraine via high-speed maneuver. The Ukrainians have a thousand kilometers of lightly-defended and barely-fortified left flank running from Kharkov to Lvov. The Russians could crash through it quite easily if they actually wanted to and they’ve always had forces in reserve that could do it – these days a huge mass of them. As things currently stand Russian special forces roam at will in Sumy and Chernigov, preying on the thinly-stretched garrisons.

But, no, the Russians have consolidated their position in Ukraine into a convenient stretch of highly defensible terrain in the country’s east and then just sat there, for over a year now, killing Ukrainian soldiers at horrifyingly lopsided ratios. When they can defend, they defend. When they must attack to keep the pressure on, they find some Ukrainian salient and turn it into a shooting gallery. Where they don’t want to push the front up, they just mow the lawn and pull back – they have to have taken the same line of strongholds east of Kupyansk a dozen times by now, each time pulling back and letting the AFU flood the same old trenches with new recruits again.

Ukrainian casualties have been so astronomical they’re now deep into desperate measures trying to keep soldiers in the ranks, drafting women and looking at emptying out the small pool of privileged young students to feed the front. When the war is over, Ukraine will be a broken society in which most of the people willing to fight for an independent Ukrainian state – and a Western-oriented Ukrainian national identity separate from Russia – will be dead.

What if that’s the point? Objectively speaking, if the Russian plan was simply to kill as many Ukrainian combatants as possible, as efficiently as possible, with as little risk to themselves as possible, then they’re doing it. The Russians know full well that the current iteration of Ukrainian national identity is implacably hostile to Russia and they cannot coexist with it – and they’re very coldly killing anyone and everyone willing and able (or coercible) to bear arms in its defense on the battlefield. In their manic drive to expel the Russians and fight for every inch of their land, the Ukrainian leadership is facilitating this.

Is this genocide? No. The Russians are fighting armed combatants. It’s no violation of the law of war to inflict horrific casualties on the enemy, and any comparison with the ongoing war in Gaza will show that the Russians have been meticulous to avoid civilian casualties. Will it have the effect of breaking the Ukrainian nation at the end of the war? Yes.

Is it an ugly thought that the Russians may very well have planned it this way? Very.