Ask HN: Is Russia winning the war in Ukraine?

1) they've "held" the south-east (and donbass etc.) for a while, now

2) nukes were never really on the table, that was just some tedious "russia strong man!" nonsense

3) Sanctions are starting to bite

4) Morale among Russian troops is (allegedly) basically non-existent

The Russians are clearly not even the second best army fighting in Ukraine. They will likely attempt to turn this into a prolonged event which seems to be their only advantage. However the longer this goes on the more domestic resistance will materialize. Putin is worried about this since he did not increase troop numbers by conscription. The sanctions are beginning to affect the average Russian so that is a problem regardless of their propaganda.

It is doubtful that nuclear weapons used for their psychological effect could weaken the Ukrainian resolve. The tactical advantages would be negligible, and Ukraine would end up gaining more support from the world.

So far as the news is concerned they work on a 24 hour cycle and on a lot of days there isn't much news. Ukraine is disciplined about information so you aren't hearing anything about the Kherson offensive right now. On the other hand, Russia has been astonishingly undisciplined about information so every time the Antonovsky bridge is hit we see ground level cell phone video where you can count the holes. Historically preventing the enemy from knowing what the outcome of a bombing campaign has been a central concept in counter-intelligence as bomb damage assessment is pretty hard.

Russia's best hope for a "win" would be to keep the territory it has occupied if Ukraine is ready to give up. That's only likely to happen if it gets cut off from Western weapons. The most likely scenario I see is that Germany decides to throw in the towel since Germany is highly consistent in pursuing short-term economic goals to the exclusion of anything else in foreign policy. Other European countries including the UK are under high pressure too (the UK is talking about possible 22% inflation) but some will never give up (Poland.) I think the US is also unlikely to give up because the US is not feeling that much pressure and it's a very good situation for us to send weapons that can be used by highly motivated local troops.

Russia's wildcard possibility would be an attack on Odessa which would cut Ukraine off from the Black Sea and cripple Ukraine's economy (very limited industrial and agricultural exports without Russian cooperation). One of the reasons why the Ukrainians are fighting hard to take back Kherson is that controlling Kherson makes it much harder for the Russians to attack Odessa.

As for tactical nukes...

Robert Jastrow wrote a book titled "How to make nuclear weapons obsolete" in the 1980s which focused on Reagan's SDI initiative but at the same time there was a movement to replace tactical nuclear weapons with advanced conventional weapons that I later got some insight into when I was talking to a former defense contractor who retired to become a chicken farmer.

Back in the 1970s there was an expectation that a Russian invasion of Europe would be countered with "neutron bombs" that would kill tank crews effectively. The idea that infantry could counter tanks was barely developed at the time and the early weapons like the Dragon were probably more harmful to their users than their targets but once you've got systems like the Javelin tactical nuclear weapons seem less attractive for that role. Similarly precision guided munitions are orders of magnitude more effective per pound and sortie than what we had before so conventional weapons have grown in power.

Thus, a handful of tactical nuclear weapons would not be decisive in the war. Mariupol was flattened with rocket artillery, tactical nuclear weapons could accomplish this more quickly, but it's not really a new level of destruction.

Stated would be something like:

- "denazification" - debatable meaning, but destruction/capture of Azov probably meets it.

- "Liberation" of ethnic-Russian-majority areas from Ukraine - This won't be settled until the fighting stops, I think it's far too uncertain at this point to call in either direction, but if Putin can hold what he currently has he may be able to claim this. I suspect Russia would suffer if they try to take too much, hubris often seems to lead to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Unstated: - Destroying Ukraine as a viable country/functioning economy, and/or installing a puppet government

- Damaging American global authority and accelerating the push towards multipolarity

- Gathering domestic public support and distracting from domestic politics by uniting against an external enemy

Ukraine has failed to make significant headway in driving the Russians out, but I don't know if that means they're losing or if their strategy just needs more time. As the defender, most successful scenarios require great sacrifice and possibly territorial concessions, so the line between victory and defeat is blurrier than for the attacker, who presumably has defined objectives before moving militarily.

UA still has great public and institutional support in the West, and in a fight for survival will undoubtedly push harder for victory than RU. They still have far greater total available manpower - AIUI, as long as Putin does not formally declare war he is greatly restricted in the number of troops he can field. The Ukrainians seem to lack in equipment and haven't been able to destroy enough Russian artillery to push them back, but sabotage operations may change that.

Longer term I think Russia loses no matter what, the question is how, exactly; and what rises from the ruins.

The energy crisis in EU and UK is becoming unsustainable. Energy bill price rises are going to see huge numbers of people plunged into absolute poverty. Every day there are tales on the news of people's gas and electricity bills going up by 100s of percent.

This is only going to get much, much worse, as we head into winter. When the dead bodies of pensioners who died of hypothermia, because they couldn't afford to turn on the heating start piling up. When businesses [already barely recovering after Covid] start going to the wall in their thousands [their energy costs are not capped, so their bills are going up by astronomical amounts]. Those same western governments are either going to have to reach into their coffers and pay out billions to subsidise gas and electricity prices to help their economies [and populations] survive ...or they're going to have to back-pedal on this suicidal sanctions war with Russia.

Since we know how governments hate having to give money out, I predict that the rhetoric on the war in Ukraine is going to change over the next couple of months. I've already seen a couple of opinions expressed in the media along the lines of 'Ukraine should negotiate a settlement, as they can't win' and I expect this opinion to be expressed more frequently as winter draws near.

In fact, this could explain why the Ukrainian side seem to be mounting a bit of an offensive at the minute. Maybe their leaders also realise that their supporters in western governments are starting to lose the will to keep up their self-harming sanctions.

It's funny really; we hear a lot bout how Russia's battle plans are a huge failure because they thought they'd steamroller Ukraine into submission in a couple of days. But the same could be said about the western response. It seems clear that western nations thought that this massive sanctions campaign would destroy the Russian economy in a few weeks and force their withdrawal from Ukraine. In fact Russia seems to be weathering the storm and now the sanction-imposers themselves are starting to suffer the backlash.