The Russia force is already largely conscripts. And no, simply locking down a city doesn't really need all that many ground forces if you are willing to be decently ruthless about it. So long as you can keep the city under surveillance and have decent coordination with your artillery, you can basically keep the city contained enough to let you ignore it.
In Ukrainian conditions, its not as easy as in the sandbox wars - the enemies being locked down there are not insurgent light infantry, they are a mixture of regular and conscript infantry with some vehicle support, drone support, and lots of infantry heavy weapons.
Also Russian army is not mostly conscripts, at least not in its normal/current state with no mobilization. About 1/3 is, and by regulation they can't be "combat troops", logistics are filled with them though *ahem ahem*.
You take/disable the power plants, cut the communications links, deploy decent jamming, and then interdict shipments into the city as you are able. Minefields are also useful.
That's a siege. As i said, it can work if done properly, but it will take months.
Russia isn't grabbing Ukraine because Putin wants to be a conqueror.
Of course not. Putin considers that a reunification, not a conquest.
Ukraine is still losing them in substantial numbers.
As long as they can keep morale high, they can afford it. With the numbers involved, for a very, very long time.
Not really. The goals that Russia cares about are all on the Western edge of Ukraine. The only "lesser" goal that Russia could credibly have gone for is everything east of the Dnieper River; and the expected consequences of trying that are identical to the consequences for grabbing all of Ukraine.
Occupying the western edge of Ukraine is the most likely "guerilla hell" scenario they can arrange for themselves. Avoiding that is a boon in and of itself. Even if the direct diplomatic consequences stay the same, making the fighting easier and cheaper would make things easier on the military side immediately and on diplomatic front in long term.
Overall i think doing this invasion for the sake of gaining few conventional warfare advantages in terrain is an ass backwards maneuver - the price, direct and indirect, financial and otherwise, that Russia will end up paying for it will be many times greater than the value of these advantages in any conventional war, in addition to greatly increasing chances of said war. It would be far more efficient to invest these assets in improving own economy and defense if they worry about that. Geographical chokepoints in the end are a force multiplier, so if the force being multiplied is in shambles and the country can't afford a better one, they are not worth that much.
He's got another decade.
Define wealth. Because Dollars and Euros aren't really wealth.
For these purposes, anything that can be exchanged for foreign imports Russia needs.
Nations that are entirely reliant on fertilizer for their food production. Nations that have transport costs at least twice as high as Russia's. Nations whose food products are already spoken for on the global market.
Russia and Ukraine combine for, literally, 29% of ALL the world's wheat exports. That is not something that can be casually or quickly replaced.
But how much of world staple crops is wheat itself? From what i see wheat, rice and corn are roughly in the same ballpark, and substitution is rather obvious among these.
Western countries also kinda have the reserve of being able to suddenly dump staple crop prices by decree thanks to grift/green scheme of biofuels. End that grift, and suddenly the market is full of cheap corn. Its increasingly looking like Putin has accidentally made a strong argument for the west to dump the green movement hard right now. NPPs? Coal? Gas? Biofuels? Going against the green movement in any of these is going to help with the obvious moves against Russia, and many really want to make these moves.
In addition, a lot of Russia's wheat exports go to countries that won't give that much of a damn about the sanctions anyway, like Syria, China, Pakistan or Egypt, so the market effect will be nothing near removal of all of the 29%.
Most of Europe is critically reliant on Russian energy. Not just for electricity or heating, but also for industrial processes. Without Russian gas, you are looking at substantial inflation in Europe at best. Now, again, throw in the loss of the Russian market and the GLOBAL loss in excess money as everyone's energy and food prices increase. Europe's economy is driven by the export of what are, largely, luxury goods.
Is Europe reliant on that technologically or merely politically? Politics can change over mere years, months in emergency. Technologically, Europe could dump energy prices by cutting green bullshit, even gassify its currently artificially underused coal, not sure if that works well for industrial purposes but it certainly does for energy gas.
The Baltic states aren't going to be allowed into NATO, but they absolutely will be given trainers and military equipment sufficient to make a future Russian attack into another quagmire.
Waitaminute, Baltic States are in NATO since many years.
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