Pretend it never happened

Pivot to China

Russia may win this war in the conventional sense. They may take Kiev, install a Russia-friendly government, and even have military forces occupying the country to keep the terrorists from simply walking in and overthrowing them. But the West will do all they can to spread civil unrest in the populace, to get them to side with the russophobes, to fund and arm those russophobes, and to recreate this same model in all of Russia's neighboring countries. I'm not sure you can actually "win" the style of war the imperialists wage nowadays unless the imperialists lose wholesale. If the US and its lackeys keep channeling their propaganda in a region, keep throwing their money in a region, keep arming fascists in a region, then you have an infection you can't control. And if you crack down and secure it, it makes your liberalized population sympathetic to the fascists because they can't see or comprehend the threat to their sovereignty or lives. This is the game the West plays and has played for decades, and I don't think its going to end until the head is cut off the snake and the fascists are cut off from their platforms and funding.

Of course, everyone here knows this. How this is going to turn out for Ukraine, who can say? The terrorists might slip the leash and attack Europe, immediately turning everyone off from the whole thing and giving Russia a needed reprieve. I suspect Russia may win the war, but the peace will be a grueling and draining affair for years, until the US is forced to divert resources elsewhere and the fascists are forced to go underground as their funding dries up.

I expect there's going to be a massive political upheaval in Europe, and possibly in US as well. Losing the war will be the backdrop for the economic crash that western economies are now entering. People were sold on a quick war that was supposed to secure western dominance over the world. There wasn't supposed to be any significant economic blowback in the west, but now people are increasingly connecting the war with their declining standard of living. This is now translating into a political backlash against the people who championed the war.

The west will see itself deeply humiliated, they will have to come to terms with the fact that majority of the world does not stand with the west and actively resents western system. This is going to be a hard pill to swallow for people who've been taught all their lives that they're cream of the crop of humanity.

The big question is where the west is headed once the current system implodes. Unfortunately, all the indicators are that western countries are increasingly flirting with fascism and the right is growing rapidly. Unless the left becomes a lot better at organizing and recruiting, we'll likely see full blown fascism taking hold shortly.

USA accepts the end of their hegemony like a good sport.

Lmao.

USA v. China suicide charge. Maybe some bullying of Mexico. And then the imperialism will have absolutely no options but to turn inward. And this desecrated land will bleed itself until all the toxins are expelled.

I think Russia's fate depends a lot on how they choose to proceed independently of external forces. It really will be a toss up between decaying into an imperialist power, or a reinstatement of the socialist Union.

regardless which side wins, ukraine is going to be THE place to set up industries to exploit cheap labour in europe.

• Like a true loser the US and UK will make it seem like they left of their own accord.
• Half of Ukraine will be a Russian-controlled oblast.
• Europe moves on, and increasingly allies with China and Russia over the US, and accepts the new oblast.

europe going full fascist once again, with the excuse they need to defend themselves from "soviet union"

Combine all the fallout of the collapse of democratic Afghanistan and the seething anger from Vietnam

It really depends on the terms of the loss. There’s the potential for stabbed in the back anger from the Nazis there that turns violent against Western Europe, there’s also the possibility that’s avoided and instead they conduct decades of terrorist attacks against Russia with the west’s continued support.

I’m somewhat doubtful Zelensky will be reasonable, so Russia may have to choose between a costly offensive that takes Kiev and chases the government to the west while degrading it or a frozen conflict with Donbas and other newly Russian regions under Russian control but disputed and not recognized as such in the west or by Ukraine. Because Zelensky knows he’ll have a chopper and a plane waiting for him even if Kiev falls whereas if he negotiates the Nazis there or the CIA will kill him.

We’re already seeing fascists in the European Union and NATO calling for more expansion eastward and calling it imperative and a necessity. So I suspect color revolution attempts in CIS countries like Georgia, the -stans. They’ve already pulled shit in Armenia. The goal being to distract and overcome Russia by pushing up to their borders in too many places for them to militarily defend at once with their limited troops.

Long-term I think they want enlargement to indoctrinate the peoples there with anti-Russia sentiment and eventually throw them into a grand conflict with Russia to cause enough internal trouble, instability and profit loss to allow a coup to replace Putin with someone more pliant to the west. They’re not giving up, there are degrees of success for the US and though Ukraine hasn’t succeeded as much as they hoped they’ve in some way’s strengthened their hand by pulling Europe inescapably into their orbit it seems (reactionary populism though could undo that in the next decade or two).

Edit The west is very guileful, very dangerous. They suspect they're not strong enough to pin and hold down Russia and China, let alone defeat them. So instead they implement a short-medium-term plan to create armies against Russia, to put down propaganda and create a sea of hostility around them that can be used to pin them while leaving all of the imperial core and NATO resources free to go after China. They are not bad strategists.

Same thing as when the US lost in Afghanistan. Lots of cry babies and that's basically it. All these countries are just chess pieces to them.

East / West

austerity and QoL to be sacrificed for a new permanent European arms industry (probably a subsidiary of US arms).

WW3 fr fr by 2050 to try to Balkanize Russia and suck it's resources for western crap-it-all-ism. Oh and Naizs all over the leadership being more brazingly Nazi.

“The west didn’t even want that territory anyhow!”

I'm curious what would happen after the current war-time surge of jingoism cools down in Russia and people notice their material conditions do not improve

Blowback season 10 or so will be dope. Especially because most of us witnessed it first hand.

Bush will come out of retirement for one more job; donning the flight suit for a victory lap