How Will the Ukraine War End?

Two powerful political-military leaders definitely thought that Russia's February 2022 armored and airborne invasion of Ukraine would end quickly. The two isolated elites believed Russia would seize Kyiv. Ukrainian forces would capitulate. NATO would confront oil-rich Russia's crack armored divisions on its Polish and Baltic eastern border.

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The names of those absolutely wrong February 2022 global big shots?

Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden.

I'll deal with Biden first. In the early hours of Feb. 24, 2022 (the day Putin launched his grand offensive), Biden urged Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to flee. Like, bolt Ukraine, dude, and run west.

All public evidence indicates Biden and his less-than-astute foreign policy team of Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan (think Afghanistan bugout) had concluded Russian invaders would swiftly defeat Ukraine.

So what did Biden tell Zelenskyy? In February 2026, Liga.net asked the Ukrainian president that precise question. Zelenskyy told the news outlet: "I heard: 'Mr. President, there is a threat, you need to leave Ukraine immediately. We are ready to help you with this.' And I replied that I needed a weapon, not a taxi."

Hollywood-influenced media reported this reply as "I need ammo, not a ride." But that tough guy lingo also works.

As for Vladimir Putin. The Russian dictator thought the war would be a walkover. It might last three weeks, at most. The Russian attack plan struck Ukraine from all axes -- from the eastern Donbas, from northern staging areas in Belarus. Special forces and airborne infantry attacks would isolate Kyiv and delay Ukrainian defensive responses. Assassins would kill Zelenskyy or force him to run (per Biden's offer?).

Numerous press sources (presumably supplemented by diplomatic and trade sources) swear Putin believed Ukrainians would welcome Russians as friends, if not liberators.

He was dead wrong. At the time, I argued he believed his own propaganda. Between 2014 and 2022, Putin's Kremlin had created two so-called secessionist enclaves in the occupied Donbas, Luhansk and Donetsk. When he launched the 2022 grand offensive, Putin called his forces "peacekeepers," entering Ukraine to protect ethnic Russians threatened by Ukrainian genocide.

No one sane believed it. Putin was using the same fraudulent imperialist script Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia used in the 1990s to justify invading Bosnia and Croatia.

Ancient history? No. Bloody current history. Milosevic's war of Yugoslavian devolution left some 250,000 dead. How many have died in Putin's continuing war of Russian imperial conquest?

The Russian military forces have suffered an estimated 1.5 million to 2 million casualties (killed and wounded). Ukraine has suffered an estimated 1.4 million total casualties (400,000 killed).

Three-week war, Vlad? We're at 58 months and counting -- 12 1/2 years if you start from February 2014 when Russia invaded Crimea.

March 2014: Russia annexed Crimea. This was and remains a big event. For the first time since World War II, military aggression in Europe by a major European power had led to formal territorial annexation and expansion. Moreover, Russia violated the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, a multilateral diplomatic agreement guaranteeing Ukraine's territorial integrity. Guaranteed by the Clinton administration.

So much for paper guarantees.

What about my estimate for the war's duration? In midsummer 2023, Ukrainian local combined arms attacks had forced Russian retreats. Successful mobile operations require well-trained infantry eyes and infantry weapons to protect the tanks from cheap shots and help tankers identify targets.

With the infantry support, tankers can concentrate their vehicles' enormous firepower and maneuverability on cracking enemy defenses. Ukrainian troops showed they understood that. I noticed and thought it might lead to Victory 2023/2024.

Ukraine, however, didn't have the air power (in terms of deployable manned strike aircraft) successful tank-infantry-air combined arms offense requires. Ukraine didn't have enough F-16 fighter-bombers. Promised F-16s were slow in arriving. (Why? Ask the Biden administration.) Drones (at the time) weren't able to provide timely, integrated fire to support a Ukrainian mobile breakthrough.

So. September/October 2026. A peace scenario.

Situation: Since the Russia-Ukraine War began in February 2014, the key strategic issue is this: In the 21st century, how does an aggressive, imperialist, nuclear-armed nation wage territory-seizing, city-destroying warfare when even its megalomaniacal leader knows the conflict he has provoked threatens nuclear-armed adversaries who possess far superior economic, cultural, diplomatic, media and conventional warfare capabilities?

Facts: Russian oil income powers Russian war. America is the world's leading oil producer. Venezuela is a U.S. protectorate. Iran's experiencing economic strangulation. Russia faces similar economic isolation.

Russian oligarchs want to keep their billions. As long as Vlad runs the Kremlin, those billions are at risk.

Will the oligarchs conclude a Kremlin coup makes sound economic policy?

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To find out more about Austin Bay and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

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