CDR Salamander - The Russo-Ukrainian War Hits Four

Russia’s three-day special military operation is now entering its fifth year (even longer if you consider this just picking up after 2014 unfinished business).

This war has many lessons, but at the top has to be the dangers of a military led by leaders who enable the compounding errors of optimism filters, and having senior political leadership who are not wise enough—or brave enough—to ensure they have a staff that is willing to ask the smart, hard questions before deciding to take their nation into the dark room that is war.

Another thing history will tell us is that the resistance of the Ukrainian people against Russia is a story of the ages. On paper, Ukraine should have surrendered long ago, but here she stands after four years of war with a modestly successful mini-winter counteroffensive that gained territory, and her indigenously produced drones just struck a strategic target well over 1,000 kilometers away in Tatarstan.

What does the next year hold? We will find out…but let’s back away from the tactical details or the operational developments, and look back to see what we have learned.

Let’s look back at the “Salamander’s Seven Points” that I wrote in my quicklook at D+0. That is as good a reference point as any. Let’s do a quote, and then a point-by-point SITREP for FEB26.

1. The remaining delusions about the post-Cold War security arrangements in Europe should be firmly buried. History is back and she has her Festivus pole front and center. She has some issues with us, and we’re going to hear about it.

2. NATO has a German problem. While all the “right people” will not shut up about how wonderful former Chancellor Angela Merkle was, people need to be very clear eyed about what a complete disaster she and the German political class have been over the last two decades. They have starved what should be continental European NATO’s most potent military into irrelevance. Her disastrous feel-good, ethno-masochistic immigration policy weakened European cohesion and fed the worst parts of European political subcultures. Yes, she made a lot of well meaning Germans feel good about themselves, but it was a sugar-high that rotted the teeth and poisoned the national metabolism. While willing to defend Europe to the last Pole and Germany to the last American, she decided to preen in her neo-pagan EuroGreen superiority onomastic politics by ditching clean nuclear power and through the complete corruption of her elite, shacked herself to Russian energy oligarchs and thus the Kremlin. Germany needs to fix herself, and NATO needs to work around her and punish her until she starts to behave like a constructive 21st Century security partner.

3. As our friend Jerry Hendrix pointed out yesterday, the moral leaders in NATO right now are the Baltic Republics and I would add Visegrad nations. You can throw Romania in there too. France will go hot and cold as she fights her desire to do the right thing for European security while at the same time nurse her 1,000 year old drive to be the premier leader of Western Europe. Serious but weaker nations will lean on a reluctant USA and limited United Kingdom … simply because - to be frank - much of the rest of the alliance is not that capable.

4. In line with #1 above, it is time for Finland at least, and probably Sweden, to join NATO. They both have a long and bloody history with the Russians and should see clearly what time it is.

5. Ukraine waited too long to rearm. Weakened and distracted by a corrupt elite, the good parts of her nation could not get ready fast enough. After the first Russo-Ukraine war of 2014 she should have modeled the armed neutrality of Switzerland with a civilian populace trained and armed to the teeth. As we’ve discussed here before with the former Soviet republics and Warsaw Pact nations, every village needs a few ATGM militia teams trained to slow any advance through their patch of land. If Ukraine can, in whole or part, survive without vassalhood, perhaps they could get there. They can only get there if they build a nation people are willing to fight and die for.

6. Remember, the Russians hold the Presidency of the UN Security Council. The UN is a joke. OSCE is a joke. The EU is little more than a nest of rent-seeking, clock-watching grift-fest. NATO is, well, dysfunctional but better than nothing. Nations must take ownership of their own security. Yes, Taiwan and Japan I am talking to you. Study history. Be ready.

7. Is everyone clear what Russia is now? She has a small GDP and apocalyptic demographics, but she is taking what she has and is invading her neighbors, killing people, and taking land. If your nation, company, or neighbor is buying anything from them – they are paying for this military adventurism. If the press wants to do its job, start pulling that string.

It is now D+1,461. The USA was in World War II only 1,361 days.

1. Russia is the successor of the greatest empire of the 20th Century—the Soviet Union—mostly because the Soviet Union was just the old Russian Empire under new management…juiced by a secular religion underwritten by global-left’s The Smartest People in the Room™ whose self-regard was only eclipsed by their lust for power. It burned bright, but it only lasted a bit under seven decades. Modern Russia at the start of the war inherited not just a huge stockpile of weapons, but the inertia of other powers, soft and hard, of the once mighty Soviet Union. That is gone, blown up, and whisper-thin. On paper, the smaller, weaker Ukraine should not have lasted, but Russia was smaller and weaker than she thought. Make no mistake, Russia is not going anywhere regardless of whether she gets a win/loss/draw from this conflict. Her national character and geography has not changed. Demographics and the second and third order effects of this war are a wildcard of the future, but she’ll be there. This conflict has also underlined the historical friction between Central and Western Europe—but with newer points of friction coming from Africa and Western Asia—that will shape mid-century Europe in ways they won’t like.

2. Germany is having problems fixing itself, still. She still has a significant desire to make-nice with Russia—mostly because she has significant self-imposed internal problems involving access to affordable energy, deindustrialization, and political radicalization driven by their suicidal migration policy of the last few decades. Yes, she is showing a desire to grow the strength of her military, but the real danger to her republic is internal, and her ability to effectively deal with those dangers. Her political class is not showing promise in doing so. The rest of Europe needs to keep that in mind.

3. The Baltics and Visegrad nations have stepped up—led by Poland—but it is not a solid front. The former Warsaw Pact members and Soviet Republics are democracies, and in some nations like Hungary and Slovakia, you have nations who are more accommodating to the reality of living close to Russia than others, like Poland, who have a different reaction to that reality. From large military buildups to leaving the land mine treaty, they have shown—by necessity— a clear eyed view of what may follow should Ukraine fall. I think they can also see that there probably won’t be German, French, or Italian forces standing next to them to defend the Vistula.

4. Hey…they did!

5. Nations should hold no illusion that they can get by without a robust, sovereign military-industrial base. Yes, expensive and inefficient—but less expensive and inefficient than vassal-hood to another power.

6. Spot on there.

7. Sadly, everyone is not clear now on Russia. Old habits, corruptions, or just the desire to get energy as cheap as possible—nations are still trying to play nice with Russia. Her circle of friends, business parters, and supporters is getting smaller and poorer, but still there.

So, what more is there with four years of war behind us and a fifth staring us in the face?

I remain in my position that much of what the USA has done in the last year was to try to create conditions to entice Russia to the treaty table on one hand, while poking Ukraine with a stick towards the table with the other—trying to bring this to some kind of end. It hasn’t worked.

Neither nation has the culture or history to find a peace at this point absent a drastic change in the facts on the ground or their governments. The conditions simply are not there.

With the caveat that an American trying to see the world through an Eastern European lens is blurry, I don’t see an opening for peace at any point soon. Russia has lost so much—burned through almost all its legacy Soviet stockpiles and is running out of people outside Moscow and St. Petersburg willing to fight—that if Putin accepted a ceasefire with what they hold now, the odds of him falling out of a Kremlin window increases exponentially.

Ukraine? This is an existential fight. Either they stay in until they can recapture most if not all that was lost, or if they are lucky, they will be forced into a peace as a rump state centered on former Austro-Hungarian Galicia and a vassal of Russia like Belarus.

How long could they stay in? Ukraine has a history of sacrifice few in the west understand…except for 19th century Paraguay.

By the end of the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1871), a war that lasted five years, three months, two weeks, and two days. Estimates vary, but the conservative modern estimate is that somewhere around 40-60% of the Paraguayan population was killed. After the war, there were 4 women for every 1 man, 20 to 1 in some areas where the fighting was the worst.

Ukraine in 2026 has a population of 39.5 million. 40% of that population is 15.8 million.

Loss figures are all over the place, but are generally in the mid-six figures. There is A LOT more killing that could be done if the national will to fight is there, and if the weapons and money continue to flow.

Do the European nations have the will to continue supporting Ukraine’s fight? Will the U.S.? Will the BRICS and North Korea continue to support Russia?

If so, there is a lot more killing to be done. A lot.

Pray for peace, because all I see is more bloodletting. Were I Ukrainian, I would keep up the fight because I have to. Were I Russian, I would insist that we had to finish the fight we started on our terms.

Such is the logic of war, and why it should be avoided if possible.

When is five years, three months, two weeks and two days from 24 February 2022?

June 9, 2027.

Mark your calendar.

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