Following Trump’s threat to start nuclear war by sending US personnel to fire devices that Russia would have to assume were nuclear into Russia, and Putin’s highly effective response of demonstrating nuclear powered nuclear weapons that would bypass the US defences and make them practically defenceless against a Russian Federation attack, the immediate threat of Trump starting WWIII has disappeared … even if 99.9999%n of people hadn’t a clue we were on the verge of nuclear war.

Trump appears to have no leverage over Putin, so Russia is free to continue the campaign in the style that massively favours the Russians. Which is a slow war of attrition, gradually squeezing the life out of the Ukrainian army and economy and thus eventually their willingness to go on.

However, the Ukraine conflict has reached an interesting phase. Pokrovsk, Lyman and Kupiansk are on the verge of being taken. These big towns have acted as “fortresses” preventing the Russians moving west. Beyond them is much easier ground, but also beyond them is the limits of the theoretical boundary of the Russian operation to take the land that voted to be part of the Russian Federation.

Ukraine’s energy infrastructure is now being systematically targetted and without the energy to power fuel pumps, there will be no supply of weapons to the front line, and the already demoralised Ukrainian troops will crumble.

There are also potential signs that the Russians are about to cross the Dnieper into Kherson … in another region that voted to be part of the Russian Federation and is legally part of it.

A purposely slow war

It has long been my hunch that Putin has been deliberately slowing the pace of the Russian advance in order to maximise the economic damage done to the west. I had no way to prove that, particularly as the western media loved to ascribe that slow advance to “Russia’s failure”. But there is also little doubt that economically the war was hitting the west far harder than Russia.

If that was Putin’s strategy, then up to this point, he could easily keep that charade going … except in Bakhmut where the Russians were using a private contracted army and one where the Russian commanders of that army were so frustrated with Putin, that they attempted to stage a coup … and then when that coup failed, they died in a plane “accident”.

But, as the Ukrainian army collapses as does the western willingness to support the Ukrainians, it becomes harder and harder to slow the Russian advance, if that is what Putin has been doing. Thus we are reaching a tipping point in the war. One where Putin is either going to have to reveal his hand and his ultimate intentions, or something new is going to have to develop.

I would suggest some possibilities for the next phase, but I feel I am so hopelessly naive about war than my guesses would be worse than useless. However when has that stopped me in the past?

The options that look possible are:

1. To fully take the areas that voted to be part of the Russian Federation together with a substantial “no-man’s land” as a buffer. The buffer will be “given back” but remain effectively under Russian control.

2. To take all the land to the Dnieper. From a long term defensive view, the Dnieper is a good frontier to have. The problem is that there are several significant cities that straddle the river such as Kiev. Strategically I would take those together with a substantial area around them. That would allow the cities to continue to operate, but the crossings would be controlled by the Russians. It also makes a Nato attack on Russia extremely risky.

3. A variation of that is to take a strip of land along the Black sea including Odessa effectively cutting off the remaining small part of Ukraine from that sea. That removes the possibility of Nato using its control of Ukraine to justify control of the Black Sea. Stopping that is clearly a Russian strategic aim. Removing the Russians from the Black Sea is probably the main reason the “globalists” wanted the war in Ukraine.

4.The final variation is to take the whole of Ukraine, which would be pretty easy once the Russians get to the Dnieper. However, the Russians would be left with the most hostile population constantly in league with the  EU and easily fermented by the US into a regime changing coup as they did before … effectively starting the war.

A minor variation, is for the Russian Federation to take the whole of Ukraine and then to set up a new pro-Russian administration and make it “independent” again. To do that, they may block any Ukrainians returning and instead flood the whole of Ukraine with Russian speakers to create a large majority of Russian speakers. They will likely then adapt the current anti-Russian legislation and “one language” legislation to repress the minority Ukrainian population and encourage them to all speak Russian. And … the Russians won’t need to get any new legislation passed, just a few amendments crossing out “Ukrainian” and putting in “Russian”.

Will the EU survive?

The EU has proved worse than useless, stoking up the Ukrainian conflict without providing any meaningful military support that changed the outcome.

The EU “elite” have proven to be totally incompetent ready and willing to waste vast sums of other people’s money and … basically they were childish. There is no point to the organisation … there is no democratic legitimacy to it. But that does not mean it won’t survive.

I can’t see the disparate peoples of Europe being willing to hand the monsters in Brussels the power to raise armies, given their military incompetence shown in Ukraine. But, I can’t see them wanting to hand over vast sums of money to EU vanity leaders when people now see they are effectively defenceless against Russia if it wanted to attack (which it clearly does not but that is not what the EU elite have been telling them).

But, if Russia doesn’t want to attack them, why all the insane fuss about Ukraine and all the pointless of money supporting a war that any rational person knew Russia was going to win?

And why then did they deliberately provoke the war by reneging on the Minsk treaty? The EU is astonishingly pathetically incompetent … at almost everything except grabbing more and more power to the undemocratic & otherwise incompetent elite in Brussels.

I might be an outlier … the people of the EU might be that stupid, but I really cannot see the EU surviving its handling of Ukraine.