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Comment by pydry | Hacker News Reader

Putin is unlikely to be trying to occupy all of Ukraine. The sheer cost of getting bogged down in an insurgency he couldnt possibly win suggests he's going to take an option which plays to his strengths instead.

More likely he will try to cleave off strategically important territory with Russian majorities (forming a land bridge to crimea, maybe all the way to transnistria) and leave Kyiv having extracted a promise to remain unarmed, "neutral" and providing no aid to insurgencies or face another bloody assault.

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His plan is to basically topple the Ukraine government and replace it with something Russian leaning, leaving the Ukraine a zombie state

Direct occupation would be dumb. We live in a century of illusions

>His plan is to basically topple the Ukraine government and replace it with something Russian leaning

Essentially undoing the 2013 coup (or whatever we call it in the US)?

Ukraine might very well be split in East and West Ukraine along the river. This war feels way too ambitious for just the separatists' land claims.

I do wonder why they captured Chernobyl and are fighting their way to Kyiv as we speak, then.

Leverage, I think. He can extract a lot of concessions in exchange for Kiev. I suspect Russia would trade it happily for the Ukrainian coast, which is strategically more valuable and has a plurality of ethnic Russians.

Also they probably want to destroy/capture military central command.

I think he thinks he has nothing to lose at this point. The EU is looking for alternate suppliers for gas, and when that's in place the sanctions noose will be fully tightened. The only thing he can do to the EU is triggering a huge refugee crisis by terrorising the local population. Excluding Crimea/Luhansk/Donetsk 38 million people live in Ukraine. The cost to the EU would be huge.

Easy target near the border, and a symbolic target that people know about.

I assume that both parts would want Chernobyl out of this war and remaining stable.

In principle.

Kyiv was originally the capital of the Russia. They want it back. Chernobyl was just along the path to Kyiv.

I'm not sure why you would think they would leave Kyiv alone when they're fighting there right at this very moment. It's pretty clear Putin aims to replace the government in Ukraine with his own puppet regime and then go along his way similar to how Belarus is, it remains unclear what will happen with western Ukraine, whether they invade "pacify" it and or just split Ukraine into two.

They're obviously not leaving Kyiv alone but that doesnt mean that they want to occupy it and root out a protracted insurgency.

Well what would happen when they leave? I doubt the Ukrainians there (who are very much pro western) are just going to sit on their hands and twiddle their thumbs.

I'm assuming they'll leave after negotiating a very one sided deal with a panicked government on the verge of total collapse.

Theyre already offering to negotiate, but now theyre demanding total demilitarization.

They can negotiate deals all they want but the moment the Russians leave the insurgency will start again, and given that aside from eastern Ukraine most of the population is pro-west, I can imagine it will have plenty of popular support.

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