How Will The Ukraine War End?
On 30 January 2026, Glenn Diesen and I discussed how the Ukraine war is likely to end, paying special attention to the pressure on Putin to escalate to end the war in the near future. In that regard, we talked about the possibility of nuclear use, which some prominent Russian strategists like Sergey Karaganov are advocating. I argued that I think Ukraine will collapse on the battlefield in the near future, given the balance of forces, the casualty-exchange ratio, and the dwindling material support for Ukraine from the West. But, if that does not happen, I would expect the Russia to escalate in a major way to end the war, although I find it difficult to see Putin using nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, one does not want to underestimate what a great power might do if it is truly desperate. Doubters should consider the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. Japanese leaders were not crazy. They fully recognized that there was only a tiny chance Japan would win, but they were desperate — US oil, scrap iron, and steel embargoes were strangling their economy — and struck anyway.
Post-Soviet era, Russia and Ukraine could have peacefully coexisted indefinitely. It is the infernal meddling of the US & NATO which has caused the issues. The US got its regime change in Ukraine and it is risking WWIII by continuing to seek regime change in Russia. This is happening, of course, primarily at the behest of the globalist bankers who always want war and who control the politicians of the world.
Prof Mersheimer seems to be naive about the US approach to Russia since the end of the USSR. The top echelon of the US government (and the bankers who pull their strings) have never been interested in peaceful coexistence with Russia. The decision in 2008 to admit Ukraine to NATO was not based on a misunderstanding of Russian attitudes and not on the belief that the US/NATO hegemony could be viewed by Russia as benign. It I was all part of the plan to eventually force Putin from power and create another vassal state whose resources could be exploited. As Marine General Smedley Butler wrote in 1935, “War Is a Racket” and that applies to all forms of war.