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Ukraine is in a hard but sustainable position right now. Indeed their position may be improving. With Trump's brilliant geopolitical and economic movements, China is more dependent than ever on European trade. This makes them less likely to ever militarily assist Russia (as that'd be a red line for Europe and prompt them to actually consider joining Trump-Bessent's project of isolating China), and all but ensures that Ukraine will keep getting a steady supply of Chinese materiel required for their accelerating drone warfare machine, which is currently claiming 50-80% of Russian lives on the battlefield (depending on how direct a contribution you count) and is growing less vulnerable to Russian EW. Combined with deep strikes on Russian infrastructure from radars to refineries and depleting stock of Russian armor, this means that deep offensive operations are very hard for Russians, and claiming more territory or even holding on to these gains is increasingly costly. Europe, de facto deprived of the American shield, is also quickly militarizing (see Rheinmetall stocks and so on) and commits to support Ukraine, including advanced drones. I think people don't appreciate but this is pretty bad for Russia, my friends get push notifications about rocket danger instead of heavy wind now.
In light of this, vague defense promises inferior even to ones already proven unreliable (Budapest Memorandum anyone?) from an unstable and untrustworthy and also declining actor (the US), which is threatening long-term allies and itself losing an economic war at the moment, do not seem so enticing as to violate Ukrainian constitution and de facto admit defeat, enraging the electorate. Zelensky is rational to demand better terms, which he won't get, in large part because Putin won't agree to them either. Both Ukrainian and Russian states have atrociously high tolerance for losses and their citizens will keep dying for the foreseeable future.
Wait, an ironic interpretation of this statement makes no sense in light of the argument you're making here, so are you saying it was 5D chess all along? I'm getting whiplash here.
It's a harder brand of Russian sarcasm, applied in inherently absurd circumstances.
I think some win-win can be had, especially considering that Trump's platform is incoherent. He said he wanted Europe to spend more on defense and be more independent, and he'll get it. Did he want it ho happen like this? And strengthened EU-China trade too? Probably not. But he'll definitely have something to report as a win to his electorate.
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This seems plausible to me, but much of the rest of your comment I think is subject to criticism.
I wouldn't rule out this possibility, but on the other hand it looks like Russia is sending back 20 Ukrainians in bodybags for each Russian body they get back from the Ukrainians. This almost certainly reflects who is advancing as much or more than actual casualty ratios, but it is still not great for Ukraine.
The Chinese are supporting Russia's military industrially. Not only have they been criticized by NATO and European leaders for this, but Chinese firms have been sanctioned. Reporting from last fall indicates that Russia actually established a facility to build military drones in China.
If Europe is unwilling to break from China it is for other reasons, not because China isn't helping Russia.
Europe is not "de facto" deprived of the American shield. The Americans have done some saber-rattling to convince the Europeans to open their wallets. They might cut half of the extra forces Biden sent to Europe in 2022, since which time Sweden and Finland both joined NATO, bringing more manpower to Europe's defense than said extra forces. Reducing US forces in Europe by 10% is not the same as pulling out of NATO or anything like that.
And China has also cut off Europe's access to drone components which makes a European pivot to China for defense purposes...fraught. Particularly considering that Ukraine's new and very transparent attempts to link China and Russia together in their invasion are...unlikely to increase the supply of drones to Ukraine. I really doubt Ukraine and Europe can match China and Russia's drone production, so if this is a stagnant war that will end only when the last infantryman is killed by the last FPV drone, I think Russia is still favored here.
A non-legally-binding document that contains no security guarantees is hardly worse than "vague European security guarantees" if those are actually on the table.
However, with all of that being said, I do agree with you - I suspect that either Ukraine, Russia or both will not agree to this deal. (I do agree with Lizardspawn that it might be smart for Russia to accept it, banking on Ukraine refusing it.)
Russians cannot pick up bodies, there are too many drones attacking retrieval teams, so our corpses rot in the fields. This may affect exchange rates.
Typical Baltic yapping. These people are too used to American backing and have failed to become cognizant of their weak position. There are hundreds of different attempts by both sides, so all kinds of things happen, but I know that it's actually hard for Russia to procure even components in China right now, regiments have to use drones very prudently, while Ukrainians spam them by the thousand, and seem to have no issues in procurement. But China itself doesn't need to rely on these garage techniques and could make better loitering munitions by the million; with actual support, Ukraine would fall in a few weeks, and Estonia probably too. I almost wish to see it happen because racist arrogance of peoples incapable of defending themselves inherently begs for punishment. Morally though, I have to support the status quo to the detriment of my people.
Americans are delusional as well if they don't understand how much the credibility of their defense commitments has suffered from Trump and Vance's posturing with regards to Denmark. This has nothing to do with withdrawing some US troops or asking for higher defense spend by other NATO members, though this part doesn't help either (and there are many more parts).
Europe is not entirely deindustrialized, they can make their own drones, in addition to Chinese-Ukrainian ones.
Is Germany considered a Baltic state now?
This is a fairly common perception in wartime that needs have no bearing on actual procurement numbers.
Perhaps, but that has no bearing on whether or not there are still American troops in Europe - and there are, tens of thousands of them. One of the linked articles said there were about 100,000 Americans in Europe - that's larger than the entire German army.
I believe this is technically true, yes.
I mean the first link. But Annalena Baerbock is even worse than Baltic.
So do you have numbers? I consulted with a person who does procurement for Russian troops, the impression there is that Ukraine out-drones us by at least 2x in terms of drones that are actually combat-capable and not just advance the counter for the responsible bureaucrat, sitting in some warehouse.
Not any recent. But the older numbers I have seen or recall tended to indicate either parity or a Russian advantage - maybe with exceptions were Ukraine had a localized advantage at a certain front for a time. There was much moaning about China providing Russia with many more drones than Ukraine. If Ukraine has surpassed Russia in drone deployment I would sort of have expected to hear about it, although I don't know any Russian procurement officials.
Now, with all that being said - didn't Russia ration arms in periods leading up to offensives in the past? I would not be surprised if they were stockpiling drones for an offensive. But who knows.
If China is actually weaning Russia off of drones then I think they are making a hubristic mistake. Or, possibly more likely, they actually are stung by European whining about their assistance with China and are attempting to do an about face. Which would be interesting if true - perhaps they are rattled by 20000000% tariffs after all.
It's not strategic. Factories that sell to Europe want to keep selling. The most powerful move the EU could do would be to build a domestic Russiatech Drone industries and rrun it on the same components as RU.
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