My 2 cents on Putin’s decision today:

This is a strategic defeat for Putin and a full-scale war is even less likely after today then before.

Let me explain in this thread. The primary goal of Putin has been to subjugate Ukraine and especially its foreign and defense policy 1/

To Russian interests and priorities..

In essence the goal was to make Ukraine into a vassal state, a la Belarus where Russia retains full political control and leverage and which is currently in the process of soft annexation 2/

The primary tool to achieve this goal have been Minsk protocol 2 which were signed in 2015 after a Russian-military-led offensive on Debaltseve, a small town in Donbas but a major railway juncture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_Protocol

3/

This agreement achieved a cease fire, a pow exchange and basically stopped the active phase of the conflicts. The protocol aimed at reintegrating the separatist part of Donbas into Ukraine proper but on the conditions drafted by separatists’ Russian handlers 4/

More specifically, Putin’s focus on Minsk 2 was on the part that would require Ukraine to conduct a constitutional reform that would give the separatist region a special status that would allow it to veto any foreign and defense policy decisions 5/

Since separatists are just Russian puppets and their leaders are in fact Russian citizens ( the current one is even a member of Putin’s party ), this would essentially give Russian government a direct political control over Ukraine, essentially eliminating its sovereignty 6/

for all intents and purposes.. additionally, the protocol envisioned full amnesty to separatists many of which engaged in outright criminal activity and human rights abuses that would be on par with Hamas.. it also stipulated that the separatist militants would be renamed 7/

and remade into a local police with potential jurisdiction over the whole country, and it also put the region in charge of appointing its own judges and prosecutors, that of course would be drawn from the ranks of militants with the implicit advice and consent form Kremlin 8/

You can imagine the kind of Justice that would be practiced by such judges and courts.. there was 0 chance that Ukraine was going to accede to giving up its sovereignty, as it has had 0 political and civic support for obvious reasons 9/

The confidence game put on by Putin that involved the massive show of force aimed at compelling Ukraine or compelling the west to force Ukraine to abandon its sovereignty via this backdoor maneuver.. 10/

Putin’s calculus was that the west is divided and weak, Biden Administration is weak especially since he canceled sanctions on NS2 in may and practically agreed at the Geneva summit in June to do Putin’s bidding on talking Ukraine into Minsk 2 https://tass.com/world/1303871/amp 11/

Putin also counted on destabilizing Ukraine politically by keeping the threats of force, potentially leading to the fall of government and divided country that would lead to a friendlier regime that he could either control or even potentially install 12/

All of these assumptions of Putin were proven wrong.. the west is united, and even Putin’s attempt to send separate letters with same demands/proposals to different countries in a gambit to try and pick some off didn’t work 13/

Instead he got one response from the EU directly basically telling him “buddy, why you wasting your time and printer paper sending your silly letters around when you can just send one directly to Brussels which is where you gonna get a single response from” 14/

His progressive escalation also didn’t work on rattling Ukrainians.. there was no panic in the country, the political leadership was united and showed amazing resilience and resolve and the army was disciplined not to respond to military provocations 15/

Putin kept escalating because intertia took over and because he assumed that credible threats of war ( culminating with nuclear drills over the weekend ) would scare soft Europeans who don’t want war and who are visiting the Kremlin like never before 16/

At the same time, the US has turned up its own info war which basically meant to say that a) we are not going to honor your ultimatums and b) we have seen your war threats and are ready for war if that’s what you intend 17/

The reaction from the Ukrainian government was similar a) your demands to give up our sovereignty are unacceptable; b) we will talk about our aspirations to join NATO louder because its our sovereign right to chose alliances we sign up for and c) 18/

c) we see your troops on our borders and hear your threats but we won’t panic and we are confident in our army that acquired a lot of combat experience since 2014 ( I’ve seen a number of 400,000 of Ukrainians with active combat experience ) and is highly motivated 19/

Meanwhile, the UK, Canada, the US and a number of other NATO countries have been sending plane loads of weapons to Ukraine for weeks, on some days up to a dozen planes - to either help deter Putin or help Ukraine army defend the country more effectively 20/

In the end, Putin’s confidence game has failed, since he never planned on the actual war which would be costly in resources and lives and very risky since given Ukraine’s resolve he wouldn’t achieve political aims even by military means, he doesn’t have enough troops to 21/

to control the country which is the 2nd largest in Europe by territory and has a large population motivated to kill an invading force, and this adventure might even cost him his own regime at home 22/

The decision to recognize the separatist part of Donbas today is probably the worst outcome for him and the best for Ukraine: it buries Minsk protocols, getting Ukraine off the hook politically and preserves the status quo by freezing the conflict but in a 23/

favorable state: full responsibility for the area is shifted to Russia, Russian troops that are already present there would now merely operate actually wearing their uniforms and as such holding Russia more accountable for what happens there 24/

while accelerating military and economic aid for Ukraine as well as needed domestic reforms that would speed up the eventual path to the EU.. for Putin, this is a strategic defeat because he lost Minsk protocol as a tool for potential political leverage over Ukraine, 25/

Ukraine is now more united,more anti-Russia and on a faster path of spinning out of Kremlin’s “sphere of influence”. Why did Putin go for this option ? Well, faced with western and Ukraine’s resolve in response to his ultimatums and what he thought were credible threats 26/

threats of force, but unwilling to make good on these threats ( high five to the boys at Langley for confronting his bluff in the information space ) he also needed to save face and show a win for all his Herculean confidence efforts 27/

The win that he needed for this not so much to show to his domestic audience but to show to his own little circle of strongman that constitute his inner circle.. because coming out of this as a loser in their eyes would basically dramatically shorten his reign 28/

The residual risks right now is that the separatists might want to expand their territorial control since they only control 1/3 of the administrative regions in Donbas and claim domain over the whole admin region 29/

While this is a risk, it doesn’t seem highly likely since it would create a risk of a big war for Putin that he was trying to avoid, since expanding territories controlled by “sovereign republics” doesn’t score anything for Putin politically while 30/

risking far harsher sanctions and bad optics of dead civilians that allegedly he wants to protect, etc.. this is probably a good time for him to consolidate and absorb mild sanctions from the west while doing his best to shift attention from this issue for now 31/

he is likely to come back with another attempt at Ukraine at another time, but for now he knows he lost badly and its better to get attention away from this quickly to make sure the strongmen around him don’t think too hard and realize the same 32/

It’s much better for him to focus on the ongoing soft annexation of Belarus which i predicted a month ago. Russian troops aren’t leaving after the end of planned exercises yesterday, and Belarus is holding a constitutional referendum on the 27th 33/

Part of this constitutional reform calls for allowing Belarus to host nuclear weapons on its territory ( guess whose wink-wink ), and if you followed Belarus elections in august 2020, you’d know that results of the referendum are preordained 34/

So we will likely have permanent Russian military bases and nukes on Belarus territory shortly.. look on the map and you’ll see that Belarus is quite close to the center of Europe.. this would be a legitimate win for Putin 35/

and i think he’d want to focus the attention of his entourage as well as homegamers watching state tv on a legitimate win and away from Ukraine where he lost.. the small wild card is whether anti-Lukashenko protests that were suppressed in 2020 will 36/

will resume if the people realize that their independence and sovereignty at stake in a country where Lukashenko has little support and legitimacy.. mind you, Lukashenko has always been independent-minded on behalf of his country and this is a new development 37/

Some final thoughts: why has Putin decided to raise the stakes now.. i think COVID is partially responsible.. during COVID Putin has been isolated and has narrowed his inner circle and the people he sees personally 38/

Just look at him meeting foreign leaders to refuse to submit to the anal-probe Covid test at the opposite end of a 50 foot long table 39/

My theory is that he is deadly afraid of COVID partly because he has grown more paranoid, partly because he might be immune compromised based on reports of some severe illness he might have had in 2019 ( unconfirmed ), and also 40/

because he is not vaccinated and he has seen the severe death toll of the unvaxxed in Russia.. I am pretty confident that he is not vaccinated because he is too paranoid to allow himself to be injected with anything 41/

Because his inner circle likely narrowed to the hard liners, this also means that his sources of information and advice have narrowed and he likely only receives advice and info that he wants to see and/or that his entourage wants him to see 42/

And he probably miscalculated in his assumptions that his confidence van would succeed because they were based on information that wasn’t representative of reality.. my theory also explains why his speech today was so unhinged 43/

He came across extremely angry, but mainly because he has lost and he had to resort to the option in his arsenal that he wasn’t really planning on using.. 44/

To summarize: Putin played a high confidence game to compel the west to new world order and to compel Ukraine to loss of sovereignty and lost. There won’t be a full-scale war ( though limited confrontation in the east Ukraine is still very much on the table ) 45/

But there also won’t be a big deescalation, though I think we will see some troop drawdown shortly since he can’t keep the troops idle for too long living in tents in the middle of the Russian winter end/

Basically, if Putin was serious about a full-scale invasion he wouldn’t need the theater of recognizing the separatist “republics” first; he also would have had the state prepare the nation for war through months-long war propaganda - which wasn’t happening ..

Putin thought he was going around open-carrying in Massachusetts but realized that he is in Texas instead.. so he had to resort to grabbing a misplaced wallet and retreating to the nearest bar to get drunk