The ongoing war is ‘progressive’ in all sense; a country’s expectation has not gone as planned and another country ‘assumed underdog’ is changing the narrative with renewed confidence despite reaching its ‘lows and highs’.
The current state of the war affords us the luxury to take a peep into the the future of the war and what could be eventually.
Let’s consider the 3 fates of what would become of the Ukraine invasion:
1. Military Victory for Russia
The Russian military juggernaut will take over Ukraine. Even though the initial phase of the war saw a very ill coordinated Russian ground attack. The subsequent realignment is showing the Russian intent and their three pronged attacked breaking the Ukrainian formal Army and them capturing capturing major cities.
The likely endgame is going to be Russia absorbing a major chunk of the Eastern Ukrainian territory and installing a puppet regime in the Western half to install constitutional guarantees of Neutrality like the USSR did with Austria in 1955.
Even it would also mean a military win for Russia if Ukraine calls for a truce that stop them from joining NATO.
2. Political Victory for the West
The West led by the US will score a major political brownie point at least for the time being unless Russia decides to choke the European gas and oil supply thereby causing catastrophic inflation which could then lead to a more conservative approach by the West against Russia.
But the most likely outcome will be the Ukrainian military that would melt away eventually in the face of the Russian juggernaut will turn into an insurgent force supported by the West akin to Afghanistan in the 70s.
3. Economic Victory for China and India
In any case China and India will remain neutral and are more likely to maintain business as usual with Russia. With Russia facing Western sactions India and China are going to negotiate better deals for oil, gas, metals, precious stones etc for their economies.
Both will also invest heavily in rebuilding the war ravaged Ukraine to offset and gain political points as the Western economy would be battered after the conflict with Russia and the impacts of the economic sactions. But the biggest losers are going to be the Ukrainians. As thousands will perish and millions will become stateless refugees relegated to abject poverty and exploitation.
