MaxA

What started today is not an offensive on Kharkiv. It has the potential to become one but the probability is not high. What concerns me, however, is the resolution criteria: it will be enough for the Russian MoD to say they're attacking Kharkiv, even if it's just wishful thinking on their part. 

If the resolution were only by some objective measures, my forecast would be in the neighborhood of 20%.

Adjusting for the Georgia unrest. Yesterday, Ivanishvili, the de-facto leader of the ruling party, had a big speech where he basically said West bad, Russia good, compared himself with Yanukovych, and promised to choke the opposition after the October elections. The Ukraine scenario is becoming more likely.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/lawmakers-scuffle-again-georgia-over-foreign-agent-bill-2024-04-29/

Kyiv and Odesa are easy answers: Russia does not and will not have sufficient resources and battlefield success to be in a position to attack these cities at any time this year.

For Kharkiv, a lot is going to depend on the amount of resistance Ukrainian forces can put up in the Donbas. Because for Russia, the priority is: capture the remaining part of Donetsk Oblast; improve the Zaporizhzhia direction and recapture Kupyansk; and only if all of that is successful and hasn't bled the Russians too much, launch an attack on Kharkiv. The first item is within reach, even with the Western assistance coming. The rest will be much tougher. Still, there's eight months left, plenty of negative developments could occur over this period.

I've had an email exchange with an INFER team member and while this is not an official clarification it's worth noting. My hypothetical here was a possible forceful change of government in one of these countries (Georgia and Armenia are the most likely candidates) and the treatment of a Russian intervention done in response to a call by the new government. Here is the basic decision tree with INFER's position on each option:

In general, we would consider the deployment of troops into a country and attacking the internationally recognized government to be enough to count for resolution, but an attack on an unrecognized government would not. I'm sorry I can't be super definitive here, but this is how we would likely respond to your examples (comments in red):

- no coup, Russia attacks - obviously qualifies. Agreed.

- coup, the country's military is split in its loyalties, the new government is recognized internationally, Russia attacks the troops loyal to the new government - this seems to be the same as no coup, so should qualify Agreed.

- same but Russia attacks the troops loyal to the old government (no longer recognized internationally) - does this qualify? No -- not an attack on the recognized government

- coup, the new government is not recognized internationally, Russia attacks the troops loyal to the new government - does this qualify? No -- not an attack on the recognized government

- same but Russia attacks the troops loyal to the old government (still recognized internationally) - does this qualify? Yes -- this would be an attack on the recognized government

So, there's one additional possibility for a chain of events that no one has probably considered here. Imagine an internal conflict in Georgia, Ukraine style, pro-EU vs pro-Russian. The official government is pro-EU. A coup is executed by a pro-Russian group that takes power and controls most of the army. But it needs help to deal with the troops still loyal to the democratically elected and still recognized by the West government. It invites Russia for help. This is something that Russia can do even if it's still at war with Ukraine, or even with its own army weakened by the war - it won't have to deal with all of Georgia's military, just a certain small part that has few resources. Based on the above, it would still count as a qualifying event.

For this reason, I'm adding 2% for each Georgia and Armenia.

This one is relatively easy (but damn it's hard to think about): an attack that would have double the casualties of the worst one to date is extremely unlikely, especially given that of all parts of Ukraine, Kyiv would be the last to lose its air defenses.

No more doubt.

Procedural vote in the House, with Schumer promising to pick up the bill immediately.

Moldova 10% -> 15% in response to the posted clarification.