by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
While I’m not prepared to give up hope on Kyiv just yet, we have to begin to think of worst case scenarios. It definitely looks like Kyiv is going to fall very, very soon and, as such, the only way to keep the fight alive is to fall back to Lviv.
Lviv is strategic for a number of reasons — it’s very close to the Polish (NATO) border, it’s really far west AND it’s the in the part of Ukraine that is both the most western and the easiest to defend (as I understand it.) As such, just because Kyiv falls, doesn’t mean the war is over, it just means it’s entered a new phase.
The end of the beginning and all that.
Anyone with a passing knowledge of WW2 can tell you that wars have a dynamic all their own. It makes a lot of sense to fall back to Lviv and, for the moment, write off the eastern portion of Ukraine while the Ukrainians regroup and reorganize.
Once they lose Kyiv, the point will be to turn Ukraine into Afghanistan 2.0 for the Russians to the point that what happened to the Soviet Union happens to Russia — it collapses.
I think that’s something we really need to start thinking about — now that Putin has proven he’s bonkers enough to try to take Ukraine, there’s a real chance that things will boomerang on him and the next thing you now, we’re talking about a second Russian Revolution / civil war just as the United States is having it’s own civil war in the 2024 – 2025 timeframe.
Only time will tell, of course. Good luck.
