is something that you definitely don't want to give Russians.
This is very flattering, of course, but Russian folklore is also full of stories of Russian laziness.
Given a chance to rest, Ivanushka may never rise up to work again.
Also, a передышка works both ways.
Look at 2014 for example - a perfect chance to end Ukraine once and for all - and with minimal loss of life. As fate would have it, it was not meant to be. Putin likely decided that time was needed to gather further strength.
Ukraine didn't sit on its hands either and also prepared. The result is the bloodiest war in Europe since 1945.
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Just some questions, if I may?
1) If Russia is close to financial collapse (as Jon and others claim), presumably because of the insurmountable costs of running the war, then why would it not drastically curtail military spending shortly following a peace agreement?
2) If military spending is cut drastically, in favor of sectors that had suffered from underinvestment throughout the duration of the war, then how will rearmament occur?
These two positions seem to be mutually exclusive.
In general - I think it is relatively easier and cheaper for Ukraine to prepare for Round 2 than it is for us.
What is Ukraine's main problem now? The main problem is that Russia has broken through (slowly, painfully) the line of fortified defensive positions they had prepared in the East. They are scrambling to build new defensive lines, and are having some problems with this. Themselves, they had found it impossible to penetrate Russia's defensive lines during their 2023 Summer Offensive.
So what I would do, if I was president of Ukraine, is spend the time granted by a ceasefire to build a new Ukrainian Maginot Line. Now that the trick of invading through Belarus (Belgium) is known to them, they can fortify that vector too.
Russia will have to invest disproportionately into enhancing its firepower, in comparison to what it will cost Ukraine to fortify.
So long as the war happens on a conventional plane, Ukraine can resist. If nukes enter the discussion, then something else is wrong, and it likely has little to do with the state of the war on the ground.