I also don’t know why they keep saying it’s going to be a stalemate, Russia is already taking kilometres on the north which is more than Ukraine managed to take during the whole two months now.
Once the offensive burns itself out, it’s almost certain that Russia will start a serious offensive of their own.
Putin and Russia are now claiming what I saw several people mention as a possibility many months ago, namely that Poland will intervene once the Russian offensive gets started.
The US will probably let them do so because Putin said he’s cool with it and it will guarantee they can seize some Ukrainian assets and space to subject to neo-liberal hell to try and pay off all the money they spent.
The claim being that Poland will invade (with or without Zelenski’s approval) and annex a part of the the western country that they consider historically theirs (realistically more than that really because why not). They’ll probably send in NATO units after a time and basically carve the country in half. The question is, if this happens how soon and will they push to take a larger chunk of the country that might place them in direct conflict with Russian troops just to get that border closer to Russia (NATO’s goal or one of them afterall) or will they happily just occupy the western half, militarize it and let Russia have the current eastern annexed territories plus maybe a bit more? And will there still be a Ukraine, like with Kiev and this weird slice of vertical land sandwiched between areas occupied by Russia and Poland/NATO? Or will it entirely be dissolved into new Polish lands (whether they formally do this or claim they’re just holding onto it for them while in practice ruling it with no intent to ever give it autonomy)?
Poles are a bit unhinged to be honest in the things they say. The anti-communism reactionary fever they have has made them deranged and I honestly worry they’ll try something like invading Belarus or fighting directly with Russia. US doesn’t want this as it kiboshed their claims that stray Ukraine air defense missile that landed in Poland was Russian really quick but if Polish troops are eyeball to eyeball with Russian ones or on the border of Belarus they might not be able to stop them. Especially if Wagner decides to go on the offensive (RT recently reported that Lukashenko has said he worries about them) and I still think Wagner is mercenary enough that if someone were to pay them to stage an attack to allow a response that they might do so.
If this plays out, it will be interesting to see how reactionaries talk about NATO annexation after reducing Russia’s motive to a land grab. I say interesting. What I mean is, it’ll never come up unless an anti-Imperialist brings it up. And then they’ll misuse a logical fallacy to avoid admitting that NATO is a fuck.
Oh they’ll claim NATO had to do it, that NATO intervened to save the poor Ukrainians, that they now live under glorious Polish/NATO rule instead of evil Putler rule and how much better their lives are and how actually they should have pushed further in and pushed the Russians out entirely.
And then they will get back to mentioning 17.09.1939 with straight face again.
Same way they talk about Germany or South Korea being occupied, probably - pretend it’s something else
I’m not sure about that, but we are right now in the phase of manufacturing consent for intervention. Not sure exactly how that intervention would look since it’s rather unspecified now, but grabbing part of Ukraine is probable. No idea if it will work, up to last year i would say that revanchism for “kresy” is dead and officially opposed by every government since 1945 including the bourgeois ones but here we are again. They can also just go and do it regardless of popular support.
On a side note, Russia recently warned Poland that acts of hostility against Belarus are acts of hostility against Russia, so they might suspect something more?