We may get the definitive answer to the question above in 25 to 30 years. From Strategic Macro at strategicmacro.com:
I think what is happening overall is brinkmanship by a number of parties, which is not uncommon in geopolitics, and it is unlikely anything significant happens.
But lets discuss the interests of different parties in each state:
Ukrainian interests
There are interest groups in Ukraine that want Nord Stream 2 sanctioned as it going live in June 2022 would end $3bn of transit revenues that the Ukraine government gets. The oligarchs in the Ukraine owe a lot of their wealth to milking the state budgets. Then there are Neo-Nazi militias that were folded into the military without much ‘re-eduction’ who dream of taking Donbass region back and like to wear WWII Galician division insignia.
So we had a Ukraine forces build up last Feb/ March then a climb down (NS2 was supposed to go live last summer but a German court said the legal structure was not compliant and needed to be changed and then reapproved) now is the last gamble before it goes live. Ukraine built up forces in Oct and used newly received Nato weapons, such as a TB2 drone to strike 15kms behind the ceasefire line. (https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/ukraine-uses-bayraktar-tb2-drone-in-combat-for-first-time/) They also crossed the ceasefire line and attacked two small villages with an armoured column. There are daily ceasefire violations of 100-1000 events that the OSCE record in a daily report published on the OSCE website. Here is a video of a Ukraine journalist firing a howitzer towards the area. They generally try and shell utilities to make the area as unliveable as possible but also routinely injure and kill civilians.
