There's a lot of chatter about yet another “peace plan” for #Ukraine from #Russia and the #USA, which now seems to be just a repetition of old maximalist demands with no room for compromise.

Before I say any more, I want to make one thing clear: We should not cry betrayal when Ukraine eventually agrees to a ceasefire on terms that will please no one. This simply means that Ukraine's defence capabilities have been exhausted, and the only option left is harm reduction.

Russia's strategy here is hundreds of years old and very simple: it imposes attrition on its victims until they surrender. They've done that with the Circassians, the Chechens, the Poles, and so on. Their methods are very dirty, but they work because too many leaders still want to shake hands with the Russians.

This strategy has one fundamental weakness: in the first place, Russia made a huge mistake by engaging with an enemy of comparable strength. It's not 1:100, as with Afghanistan or Chechnya for example; it's more like 1:3. Russian is not, and never was, good at fighting comparable enemies.

At the same time, Putin has bet everything on one card: his maximalist goals. Moreover, he has set a trap for himself by publicly announcing his maximalist goals (annexation of four regions). However, attrition affects not only Ukraine, but Russia too. Because Putin has bet everything, he risks losing everything: the economy and social consensus.

Putin has built an entirely dysfunctional system of governance, the main weakness of which is a positive feedback loop of natural cognitive biases. 'Positive' here does not mean anything good — it means they reinforce themselves in the process. Russia lacks the European practice to be cautious and discuss everything, -a feature that is annoying, but helps to reduce cognitive biases. Putin's apparent decisiveness only reinforces these biases, as we saw in 2022 and still see today in his persistence with maximalist goals, despite the growing number of military experts warning that the Russian army is also close to collapsing offensively.

As one historical figure said (I read this in a book, but I've forgotten who it was), it's not that Russians are entirely unable to resist government abuse; they just have a very high threshold and poor communication skills in this area. In practice, this means that their protests take an unexpected, large-scale and violent form, as Arkhipova, a sociologist, has also stated. That's pretty much what Putin is risking.

However, he is literally and personally fighting for his survival, and this, combined with the traditional perception of Russia as the Tsar's private property, is putting the whole country at risk. It's a case of “if I'm going to die anyway, I'd better die with a bang”.

Russia is one part of the equation. The other part is Ukraine. Europe can and does support Ukraine's economy and defence capabilities, but it can't help one thing: manpower. The state of Ukraine's military reserves has been one of its key strategic uncertainties — few people really know how large they are.

We are in a period of high uncertainty, in which the attrition curves of each opponent are approaching the point of no return. We just don't know where either side is on that curve. Russia is likely to walk into that state of no return without noticing, due to the aforementioned cognitive biases and general political culture.

Ukraine, on the other hand, is much more cautious and rational in this respect. So, if one day we hear that an ugly ceasefire has been agreed, that will simply mean the Ukrainian leadership made the best choice given the resources at its disposal.

To be clear, even in the worst-case scenario, I don't think full occupation or political control over Ukraine is possible, nor a reduction in army forces. It might mean de facto losing the whole of the Donbas, for example, which would generate endless infighting and a blame game inside Ukraine. But dealing with such traumas is something that any society has to deal on its own.

However, the worst-case scenarios for Russia outlined above are much uglier, and I don't think there's any appetite — or even perception — among the Russian elite that they may be imminent. After all, the famous Russian prayer of self-delusion is “they see better from the top”.

— Paweł Krawczyk https://krvtz.net/ Fediverse @kravietz@agora.echelon.pl