How Will The War in Ukraine End?
There are three major scenarios - two of which are horrible (especially the nuclear option)
Kherson (roughly the same population as Buffalo, NY) just became Ukraine’s first major city to be overrun by Russia.
It will not be the last.
The question on everyone’s mind is: How will this war end?
Will NATO put boots on the ground?
Will Ukraine pull off a stunning upset?
Will Putin steamroll right over Ukraine and a dozen other countries to restore the ancient empire of Rus?
Will Russian billionaires continue to sell their soccer teams to help Ukraine while others post million-dollar bounties for Putin’s capture?
Today we’re going to look at the three most-likely scenarios.
The first two are awful, and the third option is the least likely.
But first, a word for those who defend Putin’s invasion
No, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine isn’t “NATO’s fault.”
Sure, America is a horrible war-mongering nation, but Russia could’ve been the bigger man. No one “forced” it to invade Ukraine.
Sovereign nations like Ukraine and Finland and a dozen other neighbors of Russia have every right to join a defense pact that could eventually save their nations from becoming part of USSR 2.0.
Because remember, Russia stole the east of Finland.
And the east of Moldova.
And the east of Ukraine.
And all of Belarus.
These neighboring countries are rightfully scared, and it drives them West.
Let’s not forget that Russia is also currently threatening Finland and Sweden with “military and political consequences” if they choose to join NATO to defend themselves from their nuclear neighbor. That’s like an abusive husband threatening to murder his wife if she takes self-defense classes.
Meanwhile, NATO has never invaded Russia.
Nations aren’t stupid. Russia wants Ukraine and others to “demilitarize” so they can re-absorb defenseless former USSR territories.
Morally speaking, there is no acceptable excuse for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. None.
Secondly, a word for manipulative people who don’t have any sense of proportion
Yes, there is a war in Ethiopia and it’s not getting enough attention.
Yes, Palestinians are under attack and it’s not getting enough attention.
Yes, America was wrong to invade Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.
But these false dichotomies are embarrassing.
Millions of us believe that all war is a sin and a crime.
Yes, there is [X conflict] in [Y region], and Surviving Tomorrow tries to cover as much corruption as we can. So either donate a million dollars and we’ll hire a boatload of writers, or stop wasting your judgy fingers and write some articles yourself.
And yes, there is absolutely some racism involved.
But there are far more Europeans concerned about Ukraine than Middle Easterners and Africans… why? Are all Egyptians and Moroccans racist? No. It’s because people still tend to care about folks that look similar to themselves. We’re all working on it.
But here’s the major difference between this fight and all the other conflicts that are raging right now:
This one involves the world’s largest nuclear power.
It also involves an area of the world called Europe, which is a bunch of little countries that historically like to kill each other.
The last two times Russia got involved in a war in Europe — 1914 and 1939 — it ended in a global war.
Sure, the Ethiopia fight might spill over into Eritrea, but it’s not going to spark WWIII. Israel/Palestine have been at war for three millennia and the world has learned to let them do their thing, awful and barbaric as it is.
So stop trying to guilt people into thinking they’re raging racists because they care about Ukraine.
It’s not working.
We’re thinking proportionally.
We understand the stakes.
Okay, finally to the question at hand: How will the war in Ukraine end?
There are three major possibilities.
Two are awful, and the third is extremely unlikely.
1. Russia wins
Even if the EU and NATO donate billions of dollars to Ukraine…
Even if 200,000 hackers take Russia completely offline…
Even if Ukrainians rain down grenades from their personal drones…
Even if Ukrainians fight to the death with Molotov cocktails….
Russia will capture Ukraine and Transnistria (eastern Moldova.)
This is the most likely scenario, by far.
It is important to remember that Putin has never lost a war.
And he’s not going to start now. You think if Ukrainian resistance is fierce he’s just going to call it quits? No chance. It would make him look weak, and he has huge ambitions that will not be thwarted at this stage in his life.
Like his forebears who threw millions of Russian bodies at Stalingrad and Leningrad, Putin doesn’t care how much human suffering it takes. As we speak, some Russians are surrendering in Ukraine and saying they aren’t even soldiers, but that they got called up last week and were forced to fight. In other words, Putin is sticking with the time-honored Russian tradition of using his own people as human shields in the initial onslaught, followed by the professional soldiers in the coming waves.
If Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy doesn’t surrender, he will be killed when a bombed building collapses on him. Or when one of 400 hired private militia mercenaries assassinates him. Or when he dies guns a’blazing in a heroic last-stand firefight when they try to arrest him. Or when he is captured alive and quietly executed back on (real) Russian soil.
In the words of Gideon Rachman, Chief Foreign Affairs Commentator at the Financial Times:
“Western security services believe that Putin intends to overthrow the government and install a puppet regime. This “decapitation” strategy will also take in local governments. Lists have been drawn up of Ukrainian officials to be arrested or killed.”
A few months from now, Ukraine will likely be Belarus v2.
The only upside to a brutally-won victory in Ukraine is that it will give Putin serious pause before invading other targets on his To Conquer list, including Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and nearly a dozen more.
2. World War III
“No matter who tries to stand in our way or create threats for our country and our people, they must know that Russia will respond immediately, and the consequences will be such as you have never seen in your entire history.”
— Vladimir Putin, Feb 29/22
The most dangerous rat is the cornered rat.
When Adolf Hitler was in his Berlin bunker at the end of WWII, he fantasized about being able to drop nukes on the Allies.
Putin actually has that option.
Putin turns seventy this year, which is old for Russians, and if he’s at all honest, he knows how life ends for him — either he gets assassinated by an insider, he secures his Russian Empire, or he takes the world down with him. There is also speculation that Putin’s mindset has changed drastically during lockdown. Out of deep paranoia, he has closed ranks and only communicates with a handful of people, some of whom are even more patriot and apocalyptic than he is.
Paul Hare, senior lecturer in global studies at Boston University:
“Normally we’ve associated Russia’s diplomatic style with a kind of laconic, almost sarcastic manner. The element of emotion and anger that’s crept into Putin’s statements in particular is striking.”
Tom Collina, policy director at the Ploughshares Fund:
“Does he fully understand the consequences of what he’s doing or has he become one of these autocrats that’s so sort of divorced from reality? You kind of get the sense that either he doesn’t care or he’s not completely in touch with reality.”
As crazy as it sounds, if NATO puts boots on the ground Putin will see it as an invasion of Russia. After all, he declared last week that Ukraine doesn’t actually exist and anyone who thinks otherwise is brainwashed.
Imagine being that delusional.
It would be like President Biden saying Toronto has always been part of America, and when Britain comes to Canada’s aid, he decides to nuke London.
Clearly, Putin wouldn’t win a ground war with NATO. He’s having a hard enough time with Ukraine. I personally doubt he would nuke a NATO nation if they put boots on the ground in Ukraine, but if he felt the whole thing is going sideways and Russia itself might collapse, the nuclear option will seem to him like his only option.
(Resist the urge to think rationally here. Because he’s definitely not, and he’s had zero qualms with using heinous devices like weapons-grade nerve agents to murder British citizens in the past.)
Putin would likely start with low-yield Hiroshima-sized bombs in the hopes America/NATO would de-escalate, but if they fired back, it’s well and truly game over for most of planet Earth.
We need to give Putin a way out. (Almost certainly with the help of Ch!na.) If Putin gets cornered or thinks he’s going to die like Hitler, there is a very good chance he will order a nuclear strike.
From there, the best-case scenario is that Britain, France, America, Israel, or another nation with missile defense systems manages to intercept the warhead. (Don’t hold your breath on this one — America’s 44 domestic interceptors simply aren’t up to the task.)
The worse case is that Putin successfully nukes a major city or cities, with prospective targets including Berlin, Brussels, Washington, New York, London, Paris, and others. (Putin has 6,000 warheads at his disposal.)
If a major Western/NATO power gets nuked, expect Russia to be wiped off the map by the United States of America. Even this might not end Putin’s regime, because he has the most protection options to actually survive a nuclear blast compared to anyone else in Russia.
Luckily, the odds of a world-destroying nuclear war are low, especially if Ukraine falls in the next few weeks. Putin’s goal isn’t to start a nuclear war; it’s to swallow Ukraine. If all goes according to plan, no one gets nuked. But if Putin feels truly threatened to the point of personal safety, all bets are off.
3. Putin out
The best solution is obviously for the Russian generals to arrest Putin, withdraw from Ukraine, and oversee a free and fair Russian election.
It’s an extremely difficult task, but all options are better than war.
Putin is a major threat to global peace:
He will continue to invade territories he feels belongs to him.
He can’t retire as the president of Russia because he’ll be killed by any number of people who hate him.
If he is truly cornered he will lash out and nuke an untold number of targets.
That leaves just one option for removing Putin from power: Arrest or assassination by one of his generals.
But the chances of one of his generals arresting or assassinating Putin are highly unlikely. It would be nearly impossible for his inner circle to form a coalition against him, because who can you trust? If just one general turns you over, you’re getting tortured to death. So even if the majority of the generals want him out, they all feel as though they are acting alone.
Also: While it appears some or even many of his generals are against the invasion of Ukraine, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are against Putin.
I, for one, am not in favor of assassinating anyone, Putin included.
Nor am I in favor of the death penalty under any circumstance, Putin included.
(I would even go so far as to offer him amnesty in a neutral nation like Switzerland if it would generate a peaceful resolution to this conflict.)
Coups of major military powers are notoriously difficult, and it might take a near-nuclear situation before a smart general realizes the suicidality of Putin’s plan and decides to take decisive action. (After all, if Putin nukes anybody, all the generals are as good as dead anyway.)
The question is: Are all of his inner circle true believers?
If so, we might have Hitler and Goebbels all over again.
In conclusion
I started Surviving Tomorrow with a thesis: That there is no need to fear when we can prepare. So please do not worry about the world ending in a nuclear holocaust. The odds are low, it’s completely out of your hands, and worrying won’t add a moment to your life. (But for those who are curious to see how a USA vs Russia nuclear war would play out, watch this prescient video from 2019.)
In addition to personally supporting on-the-ground refugee efforts with my financial resources, I’m praying for a radical change of heart for Putin.
Failing that, I’m hoping for his arrest as a usurper of Russian democracy, followed by free and fair democratic election in Russia, restitution to Ukraine, and the denuclearization of a democratic and free Russia.
Because Russia is not the enemy.
Russians are not the enemy.
They are our brothers and sisters.
It’s the same as everywhere else — elite powers believe lies, and then they lay waste to the world around them. We need to start doing a better job at combatting the lies that allow people like Putin to rise in the first place.
The ultimate goal is lasting shalom among our global family.
More war won’t get us there.
We need the prince of peace.