Clint Ehrlich Profile picture
Clint Ehrlich
Follow @ClintEhrlich
Twitter logo
6h • 19 tweets • 5 min read
SITREP - Day 8: Most analysts think the odds of a ceasefire are increasing in Ukraine.
They have it exactly backwards.
We've actually moved closer to the nightmare scenario where Kiev is simply leveled. 🧵
The Russian military is still in a strategic position to win the war.
They've already surrounded Azov Battalion at Mariupol, and they're on their way to encircling Ukraine's forces in the Donbas.
If this were a strategy game, you'd really want to play as Russia.
The fall of Kherson today, a city of 300k people, will mark a turning point in the war.
The Ukrainian forces barely put up any resistance, and the city was spared.
The message to other cities is clear: Fight and be leveled or surrender and be treated kindly.
Image
It's not just the psychological impact of Kherson's fall that's important though – it's also the geography.
Ukraine is now almost entirely cut off from the Black Sea.
The Russians only have to take Odessa in order to transform Ukraine into a landlocked country.
The goal of the Ukrainian forces in the Donbas will now be to "punch out of" the attempted RU encirclement.
But even if they can split the blades of the near pincer, the Russians can spring a second and third pincer on them.
They have multiple paths to bisect the country.
Image
If the Russians had accomplished all of this quickly and with low casualties, maybe they would be in a mood to negotiate.
But the humiliating struggles they've experienced, which have been broadcast around the world, change the political calculus.
Russia no longer has the option of looking like a magnanimous victor by accepting a negotiated ceasefire.
If President Putin accepts something like a conditional surrender that preserves the integrity of the Ukrainian government, that will be spun as a defeat for Russia.
It may sound paradoxical from the outside, but Russia's tactical defeats now make strategic victory imperative.
To preserve Russia's aspiration to be a superpower, there must be no doubt at the end of the war who the victor was.
It must be Russia. By a crushing margin.
It's critical to remember the domestic messaging that was used to introduce this conflict to the Russian people.
President Putin framed it as the sequel to the Second World War – a new struggle against Fascism on Russia's border, which threatened the country's very existence.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1499282699323797505.html