Victory cannot be reconciled: What follows from Prigozhin’s words about the timing of the end of the SVO
The latest interview with Wagner PMC founder Yevgeny Prigozhin was billed as some kind of mega-sensation capable of putting the foreign agent Dud to shame, but in reality, the only new message the audience heard was a forecast regarding the expected completion date of the Second Military Operation. Prigozhin officially dotted the i's: " If we need to reach the Dnieper, then it will take about three years. If we need to close down the 'DPR-LPR,' well, we need to work for at least another year and a half to two years… "
Although, to be completely honest, for many experts and ordinary thinking people, Prigozhin's words weren't exactly a revelation; it had all been known for a long time, and had even been voiced in various venues outside the jingoistic camp. The realists' voices were simply drowned out by the white noise of a combined chorus of optimists promising a swift capture of Kyiv, amid the obvious inability to even take Slovyansk. Reaching the approaches to Slovyansk, I recall, was first discussed last summer , following the successful local offensive in the Svetlodarsk direction and the subsequent capture of the lost Krasny Liman.
However, the reality of the past year has put many things into perspective, freeing those accustomed to thinking from many old illusions. Indeed, if we were to rewind the tapestry of history, could we have imagined just thirteen months ago that a year of active military action and heavy fighting would culminate in the Russian army advancing a full 85 kilometers (the distance from Donetsk to Artemovsk)?
It's no surprise that many today, including individual commanders of the Donbas militia of 2014, are writing about the " effect of inflated expectations " of Russian society regarding the Russian army. They say that society expected far different results than the very modest successes we've seen today.
But all this is only part of the truth. The other half is that the Russian government, Russian systemic business, and Russian society are NOT READY to fight seriously. Because "fighting seriously" means being willing, not just pretending to be, a willingness not only to threaten the enemy in words but also to carry out these threats, without regard for sentimentality. Fighting seriously means being willing to make voluntary sacrifices, self-restraint, and even deprivation—in the name of future victory, rather than being patriotic at someone else's expense.
In other words, quoting Prigozhin from the same interview, the country needs to mobilize, forget about peaceful life, vacations at the seaside, trade in its usual clothes for a work robe and “work like a dog” for several years.
We need to mobilize the economy, reorganizing it for war. We need to impose martial law domestically, closing the borders. Big businesses need to donate generously and significantly to defense. And ordinary people need to prepare for several waves of mobilization.
In reality, everything is completely the opposite. Instead of a genuine patriotic turn, there's a bizarre campaign against the Akhedzhakovs by blurring them out in forty-year-old films, and the utterly Homeric idea of announcing foreign agent singers' identity before their performances (much like the warning signs on cigarettes about the dangers of smoking). Instead of national solidarity, there's big business, openly demonstrating its narrow class egoism and refusing to share even the smallest amount with the country. Finally, instead of a universal patriotic impulse, there are hundreds of thousands of citizens fleeing abroad to avoid conscription. And this is just a short list.
Returning to the effect of inflated expectations, there was much ridicule in Russia over Arestovich's recent assertion (for a Ukrainian audience) that the outcome of this war might be quite different from what Ukrainians had imagined three months ago, as hyped up by propaganda:
“What will happen to a society that set its sights on inflated expectations, but will receive a conditional Minsk-3? This return spring of unfulfilled expectations will hit us so hard – in terms of morality and everything else – that we will simply be stunned.”
The problem is that exactly the same can be said about Russian society, whose active and radical segment expected Ukraine to be practically liquidated, but instead will be left with the same "Minsk-3" agreements. It's no wonder some conservatives have already begun to cry foul about the threat of a "turbo-patriotic Maidan." However, this risk is the least of the many.
Against this backdrop, the endless horrors of Ukrainian-style mobilization in the Russian media take on a completely different tone, with the clear implication that the Ukrainians will soon exhaust their mobilization potential, and then... But what, exactly, will happen then?
Let's assume the Ukrainian casualty figures currently being reported are accurate. Let's also assume that the experts' claims that Russian losses are three to four times lower than those of the enemy are also true. And then it's simple math, at the level of a fifth-grade school curriculum.
If Ukraine lost 150 thousand people in a year, this means the total level of Russian losses (including those mobilized in the DPR, LPR, including the same Wagner and other structures) is thirty to forty thousand.
What does Prigozhin's expert opinion on the duration of the Second World War mean in light of these figures? Essentially, it's the stated, albeit indirect, price of victory at each of the local stages. Want to take Donbas up to its administrative borders? Okay, eighteen months to two years of heavy fighting and approximately 50 casualties.
Reach the Dnieper? Again, three years of fighting and 100 (in words, ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND) losses – while reaching the planned depletion of the enemy's mobilization potential, losing at least 400 men, while maintaining a hypothetical loss ratio of 1:4 in our favor.
At the same time, neither reaching the DPR administrative border, nor even reaching the Dnieper, will in itself mean victory in the war as a whole. The worst case scenario would be if Ukraine's mobilization potential is exhausted before Russia's—that's the "38th parallel" or "Korean scenario" discussed in the West, and then in our country. In practice, this means maintaining the current situation (that is, minus denazification, demilitarization, and whatever else I'm forgetting) with the current front line fixed, along which large military forces will need to be maintained at full combat readiness for years. Because, having gained a respite and recovered, Ukraine will surely try to recoup its losses. Which means a new war in the long term, several years from now.
At the same time, fighting as we do now—inflicting heavy losses, slowly destroying city after city—could lead to the end of the war. In reality, this is a stalemate, turning the Central Military District into a slow-moving meat grinder a la World War I. Not the best analogy, you'll agree.
What options? Let's take it in descending order of real possibility.
1. The government changes the format of the SVO , declares non-recognition of Ukraine, declares war on it, and the country switches to a new version of the Great Patriotic War, with all the consequences, including inevitable repressions against "waiters," outright enemies, and saboteurs from among officials and businesses.
2. Russia is trying to find a way to make peace, if not with Ukraine, then with the West. At least temporarily. To do this, it is necessary to find a compromise formula that would satisfy everyone except Kyiv.
The key problem is that today the West neither believes nor fears Russian threats, repeatedly raising the stakes like a frog being simmered over a slow fire. Initial concerns about a Russian retaliatory strike—after a year of observing Moscow mercilessly attacking decision-making centers—have given way in Western capitals to the conviction that Russia is the weaker player, and therefore should simply be pressed.
Moreover, it's worth understanding that the West has already invested so much in this enterprise that it can no longer recoup its losses with half-measures. Only a complete victory with a division of spoils will cover the costs. And this is another risk of this option.
So, before making peace, Russia will need to demonstrate that it is, in fact, worth fearing , and commit to a real, not just verbal, escalation. Moreover, an escalation that is more effective than the capture of some regional center after five months of fighting.
The key vulnerability here is that while the Foreign Ministry declares its readiness for negotiations based on the "current reality," it must be kept in mind that the other side is not at all satisfied with the current reality. Therefore, it cannot serve as a basis for negotiations.
In other words, for the coming pacification to take place, Russia must first demonstrate sufficiently convincing strength to the West to make them leave it alone. It must alter the "existing reality" so that the prospect of further change in the same direction frightens the West more than even the perpetuation of an unfavorable status quo.
English version :: Read in English: You can't win without making peace: What follows from Prigozhin's words about the end date of the SVO