It annoys me when people bounce around from thinking Ukraine is losing to thinking that Ukraine is winning based on short term factors. But my last post on the “One New Aspect of Warfare That The War In Ukraine Has Revealed” could have appeared to fall into the same trap of group think and going with the prevailing winds. Currently it is quite fashionable to be pessimistic about Ukraine’s chances due to short term issues and my post on long range fires (a military term I am appropriating and using to cover more systems then the US military typically does) could be seen as contributing to it. So to correct that unbalance let me elaborate on a throwaway line in my last post where I said “The West can easily give the long range tools to Ukraine to cause Russia a lot of pain but then they have to worry about Russia going to nukes.”

In absolute terms, the Russian strategic position is extremely weak. To be sure, if you measure Ukraine alone against Russia, Russia has the advantage. But Ukraine was a basket case before Russia invaded so saying they have the advantage does not mean much. I predicated that Russia would fall apart years back and nothing that has occurred since then has caused me to think that prediction was wrong. It remains one of my biggest fears.

People who are gloomy about the future of the West as I am often seem to fall into the trap of thinking that the West’s enemies are better off. But that just goes to show how much their view of the world is based on mood affiliation and not on facts. Some enemies of the West are worst off then the West is and Russia is certainly in this category. One of my biggest fears in the near term is what the collapse of Russia would mean for me and those I care about. In this fear, the ruling class of the West and I have a lot in common and that is why they don’t really want to see Ukraine win.

I am not going to go into detail in this post about all the long time term factors that make me expect the collapse of the Russian state (although I will note that in Russia’s case it is even worse than the lack of babies). Instead, I want to make a simple point about how the logic of my post about the new nature of long term precision fires means that Russia is a hair’s breadth from losing this war overnight. The only thing that is keeping them in the game is the West’s fear of their nuclear weapons. But West’s calculations about what they can get away with are constantly changing. All that has to happen is for their perspective to change slightly and Russia will have face the choice of complete collapse or getting out the big bombs.

To understand why Russia is in this precarious position we first need to understand that Russia has no real allies. Often countries like Iran or North Korea are referred to as allies but really they are nothing more than trading partners. Russia has to pay for everything it gets. If Russia has nothing to pay with, nobody will be giving them anything.

The second thing we need to understand is that the bulk of Russia’s abilities to pay for things depend on seaborne trade of fossil fuels. Most of its pipeline income has disappeared because they were based on selling stuff to Europe. The Russian oil being bought by Indian and China is coming in by sea.

But unlike America, Russia has very limited options as to where they can ship stuff out to sea. They a very few ports in the Baltic and they have a very few ports in Black Sea. That means they have a limited set of shipping terminals that can load these ships up with oil. These terminals are vulnerable to precision weapons and there is not a lot that Russia can do about that. Take those things out and Russia has all kinds of economic problems. And as it happens, both sets of ports are in range of already available precision long range attack methods from Ukraine (in other words, there are models of drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles that could reach those targets that the West could give to Ukraine).

Now Russia can try to defend these with air defense weapons but I have already explained why those who are defending from precisions weapons are at an economic disadvantage. And since Ukraine is fundamentally dependent on economic aid from the West, Russia can’t balance the scales by attacking Ukraine’s economic targets if the West is still willing to fund Ukraine (plus, the have pretty much already been trying to hit every economic target they can right along anyway). So in the event that Ukraine had significant long range precisions fires available, Russia would have only two choices. Deal with economic collapse and lose the war in Ukraine or take the fight to the West in an attempt to stop the pain.

It is because the West does not want Russia to come to that point that the West has steadfastly refused to let Ukraine have long range fires that can hit Russia even to the extent downgrading or messing with the programing of weapons that they give to Ukraine. But as the pressure on Ukraine grows, the temptation for them to ignore what their allies want and to strike Russia where it hurts will only grow. And since the technology to make long range attacks is getting more common by the day, Ukraine does not need the West to give them this ability. If Iran can build it, they can build it. The only question is if they can build to necessary scale and if their allies will force them to stop.

The first steps along this path have already been taken. This week Ukraine has hit Russian fuel terminals on the Baltic.

Now one such attack like the above is not going to bring the Russia oil trade to a halt. Most likely, Ukraine’s short term goal is only to force Russia to redeploy air defense systems. But these are early days for Ukraine’s long range drone program. As they ramp up production the scale of attacks they will be able to launch will only increase as long as they continue to get the economic backing that they have been getting. It is possible that Ukraine could have a long range drone program with strategic significance in a year’s time.

With such a drone program, Ukraine could threaten not only the oil trade, but much of Russia industrial capacity. Because of the centralized nature of Russia’s economy, lots of critical targets can be hit that would be absolutely devastating to the Russia war effort. Of course, this all depends on Ukraine being supported by its allies. Ukraine’s biggest weakness has always been that it is dependent on outside support to have much of a chance. But Russia is a glass house vulnerable to even small thrown rocks with only fossil fuels keeping it from failed state status.

It is the fact that both Ukraine and Russia are in a strategically precarious state that makes this war so hard to predict. Battle field victories on either side mean nothing to long term calculus of this war. Even if Ukrainian is winning, the West can cut off support. Even if Russia is winning, the West can give Ukraine weapons that will cripple Russia’s abilities to operate. For me at least, the outcome of all of this is still not clear at all.