Even if the war ended right now, Ukraine has hundreds of thousands of refugees to move and shelter, huge amounts of destroyed infrastructure to repair and work around, most of their army expended, and a lot of civilian losses. They also won't get Crimea back, and they probably can't hold onto the separatist regions either.

Provided that the world continues to rally around Ukraine and gets critical supplies to the population centers they may avoid grievous additional losses, but Ukraine is unavoidably much worse off than it was pre-invasion.

I think that if Russia pulls back its troops Ukraine has a bright future. Even if Crimea and the other two regions are lost it will receive more investment than it would have received otherwise. Both the EU and the US want Ukraine to become a succesful EU country.

The Ukrainian people also seem to have a strong will to build/rebuild and defend Ukraine so they are reliable partners unlike the cases we've seen in other countries.

Russia pulling back is more unimaginable now than a Russian invasion was in January.

The US couldn't manage to wipe out the Taliban in Afghanistan, nor prop up its replacement for more than a couple of weeks after two decades of preparation and $2.3 trillion in investment. Ukraine's insurgency would be supplied by allies with deep pockets and modern tech; Russia's occupation would be funded by a sanctioned Russia and the same army that's already struggling to meet their objectives in the early stages.

Russia leaves Ukraine in defeat in at some point in the future. The question is largely how many innocent dead are left in the wake.

my pet theory that they can't leave ukraine right now because they are stuck. totally messsed up logistics. this giant convoy could run out of supplies/fuel. they maybe literally can't drive out. ukranian drones started to blow up trains with fuel inside russia yesterday and belorusian partisans started to screw with train system in belorussia (for real, they demolished a bunch of control equipment centers. trains can't go anywhere). their communication is shit (https://twitter.com/sbreakintl/status/1498619303717142529?s=...) and some of them simply can't reach command center to get orders

With a change of the regime in Kremlin, it's quite imaginable.

I suppose that a lot of the Russian elites, locked out of their wealth and prospects, would be more than happy to see and even effect a serious change of the leadership. I hope they have a fair chance.

A huge lot of non-elites would support that, too.

How long can Russia hold such a massive country surrounded by NATO allies?

I don't think there's a single scenario where Russia wins.

I am worried they might create an uninhabitable belt on the western borders of Western Ukraine by nuking it with 10-100kT tactical nukes as they don't really care about people of Lviv and around and that would solve also their Polish "friendship" problem. A similar strategy was planned by French in the case of a war with USSR, nuking Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, so that the USSR army couldn't pass to Western Europe. I think all options are on the table, unfortunately.

They cannot hold this territory. They will have to.

They don’t. They’ll happily raze everything just so Ukrainians can’t defend. Then they’ll equally happily lend money on good interest so they can rebuild.

You don't think the EU would be motivated to lend at competitive rates in this scenario? If not, i would love to understand your logic.

Lend to a Russia-occupied Ukraine?

> Then they’ll equally happily lend money on good interest so they can rebuild.

Ukraine agreeing to the loan would mean agreeing to debt slavery.

Precisely the point.

What makes you think that the US and EU have any real interest to see Ukraine succeed? Besides believing their platitudes and propaganda, I mean.

Thinking like a trader: wheat, corn, iron, coal.

Thinking like a person: no more wars in Europe.

If history taught me anything, a retreating army will destroy everything around them just to damage their enemy and make their life hell. Imagine if Russian troops just flood Ukraine with land mines, it would take decades to make the country safe again. It’s been 30 years and Croatia is still riddled with land mines.

To an extent, this has already happened.

https://reliefweb.int/report/ukraine/landmines-still-pose-th...

The wider West is only too happy to pay the price of accommodating refugees and reducing fossil fuel dependency .. and may even be happy to risk all out nuclear war to defend our "way of life" and liberal freedoms.

We now have the perfect excuse to unleash all the decades long pent up hate of Putins regime.

Ursula Von de Leyen seemed to capture the zeitgeist when she slipped up and said "Ukraine is part of us" or words to that effect. Attack on Ukraine is felt as an attack on the West .. even on the other side of the world.

Oh, it will survive. Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, Iraq, Crimea, etc., they all survived. But…

Rebuilding infrastructure lost this week will take billions of dollars and years of time. Some displaced people won’t come back. More of both with every passing week of this tragedy. That’s completely discounting people who died.

Russian people, the normal citizens, also lost, and lost big. The currency and market sanctions have blown up savings and businesses basically overnight. Also, don’t forget that every other Russian family has Ukrainian relatives.

I think you're saying that Ukraine has lost the battle, but I'm saying they can still win the war. Virtually every country in Europe has had to undergo post-war reconstruction at some point in its history. I don't think that means they lost. They're still there, after all.

But lost I mean opportunity cost of waging war (yes I know it isn’t a choice) is devastating. It sets them back 20 years. Basically a generation of development has been lost.

It sounds cheesy, but if they're still a country and have allies and citizens who believe in their future, I don't consider that a loss. A loss would be if the dust settles and, for one reason or another, Ukraine is not recognized as a country anymore (either because Russia declares them as theirs and the rest of the world just forgets about it, or because they simply can't sustain themselves anymore).

Germany took Poland to start WW2. Did Poland lose?

> Germany took Poland to start WW2. Did Poland lose?

Kind of, yeah: After WW2, Poland was part of the Warsaw[1] Pact for forty years. And if Communism hadn't fallen, they'd still be.

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[1]: The name becomes doubly ironic in this specific context.

It's not joining the EU. Its application has been accepted. Bosnia's application was accepted in 2003 and it's most certainly not in the EU.