Trump Proposes Russia Shoots Its War Machine in the Foot for Free

Not a single sweetener

“Russia, we offer you... that you stop attacking.”

Wow! What an incredible breakthrough for peace we’ve had! (So we are told.) The US has approached its war ally Ukraine, and asked would it be okay with her, if Russia stopped attacking for 30 days and Ukraine amazingly said “OKAY”! Wow!

Such amazing diplomatic breakthroughs and such incredible sacrifices from the US-Ukrainian warfighting coalition to offer its war enemy to…. give it a 30-day respite.

30 days in which to lay more mines, build more fortifications, conscript more men, stockpile more shells, and beef up defenses in every other way. And what’s the sweetener for the Russians to grant this? Well, there isn’t one.

As we all understand a ceasefire means that no combat is taking place. But combat is only one aspect of warfighting. If the Russians call off their assaults, does it mean US arms factories suspend operation, and Ukraine shuts down basic training for a month? Of course not.

There is a temporal aspect to fighting. What dictates outcomes isn’t just how much force is brought to bear, but over how much time. The same amount of men and material applied, but spread out over a longer time period is much more easily rebuffed.

Ukraine has already benefited from a lull in fighting this winter which was exceptionally warm. The soft ground hampered assaults and logistics, and cloud coverage grounded glide bombs, halving their expenditure.

Functionally what the Ukraino-Americans are asking for now is that Russia grants them the extension of this lull in pressure out of the goodness of its heart.

Here are just some of the ways a temporary combat suspension will be disproportionally useful to the side on the backfoot trying to absorb pressure:

• Ukraine has major problems conducting rotations. On a transparent battlefield with mass precision strike 10-20km into depth these require complex operations. Disproportionally losses in personnel and territory happen when the Russians successfully take advantage of a rotation when Ukrainians leave their shelters. The problem is so challenging that Ukrainian infantrymen now prefer exhausting month-long shifts since this actually reduces their losses compared to more frequent switches. A 30-day truce would allow Ukraine to switch out all its embattled infantry units with fresh ones at zero cost.

• Among other things, this war is a competition between the fortification and the glide bomb. A ceasefire means 30 days in which no fortifications are being destroyed, but new and expanded fortifications are going up. But it goes beyond this simple arithmetic. In the 10-20km zone Ukraine does not use excavation machinery because the loss rate to drones is too high. All entrenchment on the front line is done manually. A ceasefire would allow Ukraine to move construction machinery forward and build vastly improved fortifications on the front line.

• This war is also an attritional contest where Ukraine is trying to reconstitute its depleted infantry, and Russia is trying to prevent that, or deplete it further. A 30-day truce means a month in which Ukraine will add 15,000 men to its force (maybe a third of that to deployed infantry), but subtract none to losses. A gifted net gain of 15,000 invalidates many months of costly Russian effort toward Ukrainian infantry depletion.

• For the longest time, Russia hasn’t been able to have operational success where it takes out sizeable chunks of the Ukrainian force or territory at once. The one thing it has been able to do is apply relentless pressure along several select directions. I’ve argued in the past this is a bad strategy, but that’s not to say it hasn’t produced any results (at great cost). The textbook example is the defeat of the Ukrainian 72nd Brigade which had spent over two years deployed to Ugledar until it had to fall back out of sheer exhaustion. Why Russia which enjoys a numerical superiority and is able to afford its (assault) units more rest would gift the hard-pressed defender 30 days in which to recuperate itself physically, psychologically, and organizationally, and thus undercut the very bedrock of its strategy is a mystery.

By definition, a combat pause aids the defending side absorbing the pressure and hampers the attacking side applying it.

Even were that not the case, even if a ceasefire simply perfectly paused a war for 30 days, what does Russia gain by pushing back the war’s resolution by one month? Among other things, Moscow is ostensibly fighting to ‘liberate’ territories in Kursk, Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhye, and Kherson that since 2022 it regards as its own. Is this a goal that can be pushed back by a month because Rubio-Waltz ask so?

The only thing more comical and absurd than the content of this proposal is its presentation.

Trump is a leader of the war coalition opposing Russia. He has just sent a delegation that will make a proposal to the enemy that is beyond warped and a total non-starter. This is the reality.

Instead of this reality we are being fed a narrative where Trump is a disinterested and frustrated third party trying to corral the Ukrainians and Russians into mutual peace and who just made a bold and remarkable first step.

After heavy pressure from the ruthless Trump envoys, Ukraine has reluctantly agreed to a 30-day ceasefire and “the ball is now in Russia’s court.” Sure, and I reluctantly agree to spend a hot steamy night with Megan Fox. Why wouldn’t Ukraine agree to a 30-day ceasefire?? That’s an insanely good proposition for the American-Ukrainian side.

This is on par with Russia announcing a dramatic new diplomatic breakthrough — after difficult marathon talks North Korea has agreed to a ceasefire during which Ukraine will denazify itself and reduce the size of its military! Such painful sacrifices from the Koreans and such dramatic commitment to peace by the Russians!