{"id":5591,"date":"2022-03-24T21:24:32","date_gmt":"2022-03-25T04:24:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/?p=5591"},"modified":"2022-03-24T21:24:32","modified_gmt":"2022-03-25T04:24:32","slug":"one-month-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/?p=5591","title":{"rendered":"One Month On"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>It&#8217;s going <em>significantly<\/em> better for Ukraine, and <em>significantly<\/em> worse for Russia, than I had imagined, and I had imagined it wouldn&#8217;t precisely go well for Russia. (This is, in fact, why I incorrectly predicted Russia would not attempt a full-scale invasion: because such an invasion was so unlikely to work out well for them.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I am not going to strut around and make predictions of an imminent Ukranian victory any time soon, as much as I would like to see such a thing, and as much as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/ideas\/archive\/2022\/03\/ukraine-is-winning-war-russia\/627121\/\">some sources<\/a> are predicting . Mostly, this is because the fog of war is very real: yes there <em>are<\/em> some encouraging reports that make it look like a <em>big<\/em> Russian retreat is imminent, but the accuracy of those reports is difficult to verify, and both sides lie in wars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But still, I was expecting the formal government in Ukraine to fall pretty promptly. (I was then expecting an armed resistance to make life hell for the occupiers.) I certainly didn&#8217;t expect the Russian side to stall out so soon, and to still not have taken any major cities a month in. I would have in fact waved off any such predictions as Pollyanna-ish in the extreme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It bears keeping in mind, however, that &#8220;going significantly better&#8221; than expected is still in the context of there being a war going on, and war is a very ugly thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As bleak as the latter point is, though, we are still in a <em>much<\/em> better place than if Putin had been rewarded, once again, with a very cheap price to be paid for his aggression. That would have not only encouraged Putin to launch follow-up actions, it would have probably encouraged other dictators, particularly the one in Beijing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s going significantly better for Ukraine, and significantly worse for Russia, than I had imagined, and I had imagined it wouldn&#8217;t precisely go well for Russia. (This is, in fact, why I incorrectly predicted Russia would not attempt a full-scale invasion: because such an invasion was so unlikely to work out well for them.) I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5591"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5596,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5591\/revisions\/5596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}