What if Russia launched full-scale invasions of Georgia and Ukraine and annexed all of those countries? The West has no obligation to support those countries, they're not part of NATO. I suspect given OTL's response to Russian Intervention, the reaction would be nearly the same.
2008 and 2014: The Fall of Georgia and Ukraine
- Thread starter Montgomerie Ward
- Start date
redlightning
Banned
Russia wouldn't annex the whole of both countries out right. At most, the would annex parts which have most as ethnic Russians and maybe overthrow the governments friendly to NATO simply with one of its own.
Annexing of Georgia would quiet pointless and pretty bad backlash for Russia. It would mean earlier embargos. With Ukraine Russia should be ready for long guerilla war and if even Chechya was difficult, what would be Ukraine? In both cases Russia probably would just annex Russian majority areas and erect pro-Russia governments.
Involving nuclear weapons would be incredibly stupid. Russia is already making herself an international pariah here that will have even more severe consequences for its economy than OTL, dropping nukes on top of that would just be insanity.
There's a ton of risk of escalation here. God knows what Poland would do if there were Russian troops in the Western Ukraine.
It depends.
If Ukrainian guerrillas get a lot of support from the West and use it well (we are talking billions of dollars in equipment and training per year here, it would have to be a bigger effort than the US-Pakistani support for the Afghan resistance in the 1980s), and the occupiers prove unwilling to massacre enough Ukrainian civilians, Russia would lose just as fast, if not faster, as the USSR lost in Afghanistan.
If the guerrillas get their support and use it well, but the Russians kill/expel enough people, Russia would win, likely permanently (we are not Estonians, we assimilate well with Russians).
If the guerrillas do not get enough support or use it poorly, see the previous paragraph.
Isnt genociding 40 million Ukrainians likely to trigger resistance within Russia itself? Or the entire international community?
Well, Russia would not need to kill all 40 million ITTL - just enough to break all resistance for good. Going by the Chechen example, killing/expelling 10 percent of the population should be enough. Some internal Russian opposition to such actions would be likely, yes (after all, quite a few Russians have opposed the ongoing conflict OTL). However, any Russian government able to occupy all of Ukraine and kill millions has to be a brutal dictatorship, which would treat any Russian dissidents harshly. The international community, on the other hand... The premise of this thread is that it does next to nothing in the face of Russian conquests, and I think it is quite plausible.
So you mean it would be plausible that the international community would do essentially nothing if Russia invaded and annexed both Georgia and Ukraine? I can't see that as likely. At the very least, Russia would face a lot heavier sanctions than it has during the Ukraine crisis IOTL, and would get suspended or kicked out from a host of international organisations. Such larger wars would create heavy problems for the EU, for example, through the arrival of Ukrainian refugees in large numbers in Eastern member states, say, and both the EU and NATO would have to act in some way.
But if you mean that to avoid doing "next to nothing", "the international community", say the EU or NATO, would need to actually go to a shooting war with Russia, you might be right. I however think that there are a lot of things on the scale between "doing next to nothing" to "WW3".
I admit that "doing next to nothing" was too harsh a description of the West's likely actions. I would expect the West to do a lot if Russian tanks rolled into Kyiv and Lviv in 2014, but none of their measures would be likely to influence the course of events. I will rephrase it as "doing nothing of use," then.
Opunium asked whether Russia massacring Ukrainians would be likely to trigger action on the part of the West. I took it as a question whether Russia would be able to kill enough Ukrainians in the face of the Western response (I may be wrong in my understanding of Opunium's question, though). Massacres are stopped by wars, not sanctions, therefore any response other than war would count as useless under such circumstances. My thinking is as follows:
1. A shooting war between the West and Russia is clearly out of the question ITTL, so the occupation (and massacres to maintain it) will continue.
2. Heavy sanctions (like trade embargoes) are likely but not inevitable. After all, China and India would gladly buy Russian oil all the same, so embargoes will not work without blockade - and blockading Russia means war. Why keep an unworkable embargo on, then? Thus, even if one is instituted, it is likely to be lifted before long ITTL.
3. Kicking Russia out from a host of international organizations is not a heavy sanction in my book.
4. Arming and training the Ukrainian resistance is possible, but not inevitable.
Summing up, there are multiple plausible answers to OP's question:
a. Russia gets away with annexing Ukraine (and Georgia) ITTL. The West shuns it, but it doesn't help people fighting Russian occupiers, and Russia ultimately wins its war for good (like the USSR did in the Baltics in the 1940s OTL). If any embargoes are instituted, they prove ineffective.
b. The same, only with the West helping Ukrainians, but the latter lose even with Western weapons at their disposal.
c. The West helps Ukrainian guerrillas, they put this help to good use, and Russian occupiers retreat (like Soviet troops did in Afghanistan in 1989 OTL).
Massacres sound unlikely, while isolated political murders seem more probable, and these would then be blamed on the resistance. Ukraine might be split in one pro-Russian part and one independent rump-Ukraine, for Russia to avoid the worst opposition and also to put emphasis on the differences between the eastern and western parts of the Ukraine.