My predictions in the last few weeks (~80%) have been quite a bit higher than the community's for some time. So I thought it would be worthwhile to write out where I'm at. Thoughts/critiques are always welcome.
I think it's worth trying to take a step back from the daily (or hourly) updates and think about what the likely endgame scenarios are. I see four major ones, starting with the clearest and ending with the muddiest.
1. **Ukraine folds**. Ukraine agrees to implement the Minsk agreement according to Russia's interpretation, and swear off applying ...
I’ve been working on developing a very rough casualty projection model to help answer these related questions. Bottom line, estimating under 25,000 deaths requires a near term end to the war. If it drags on, deaths in excess of 50,000 to 100,000 are very likely. Feedback is always appreciated.
TL;DR for the normies who don’t spend their Friday nights doing this, with my pre-model guesses in parentheses. All will go upward as the war drags on:
**Over 25,000: 62.5%** (up from 58%)
**Over 50,000: 40%** (up from 31%)
**Over 100,000: 30%** (up from 13%)...
>We will consider being under Russian control if more than 50% of the city's population is under the de facto control of the Russian military.
I think this is a worse resolution criteria than the other question, which is based on districts. How do we determine how many people are in what areas of the city if it's being actively fought over for several months? I think it's likely that we'll have maps indicating what areas are occupied if the city is still contested, but population is a lot messier. What if the parts the Russians control are absolutely wr...
@(johnnycaffeine) OK, I'll jump out there: I downvoted this not because I don't appreciate points of view outside the "echo chamber" but because it was just an off-topic news article from almost 20 years ago with no analysis or explanation for why it's relevant. If you want to make the case that we should be skeptical of US/UK claims of impending war because of what happened in the leadup to the Iraq War (assuming I'm inferring your point correctly, based on your edit?) then please go ahead.
Personally, I'm very skeptical they're analogous situations: ...
***My prediction: 75%***
I hate to say it, but I think the probability that Kyiv can successfully hold out is fairly low, though larger than I would have predicted 24 hours ago. Key points on both sides below. Admittedly this is based on medium-level subject matter knowledge, though I can try to find sources if people are curious:
In favor of Russian capture:
- The Russians has made substantial progress in southern Ukraine and moderate progress in northwestern and northeastern Ukraine. As they get closer, the Ukrainian military will be increasingly...
@(DustinKlavon) I'm a little confused by how this market works and how the data is displayed. The 1 hour view shows it at $0.50 up until 36 minutes ago and then jumping to $0.62 and holding steady there. The 24 hour view shows it at $0.62 at a straight line, which can't be true based on the 1 hour view. The 7 day view shows it as a upward line (yesterday at $0.4848, February 15th at $0.1778!). It seems like it was extremely low until the past few days, and now is displaying pretty strangely? It doesn't seem like this is a normal, constantly adjusting mar...
#***30%***
On the day of the invasion I gave a [75% chance of a positive resolution](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/9939/kyiv-to-fall-to-russian-forces-by-april-2022/#comment-82638). Early on I was a little higher than the community at times, but after the first few days at or somewhat below the community. I am now down quite substantially to ***30%*** and rapidly dropping as time goes on. Key factors below:
1. Russia has now brought in the bulk of their forces with fairly marginal progress after the first 48 hours of the war.
2. The Russian air fo...
@(kievalet) On January 28th, [Good Judgment](https://goodjudgment.io/superforecasts/#1570) had it at 60% No as well, when their forecast opened. And that was with more time than Matt and Scott.
One interesting thing here is how much better Metaculus seems to have been than the competition. At that point we were at 52% Yes. We were even less fooled than GJ with the fake pullback February 16-17 - GJ had No rise from 43% to 63%, while Metaculus was 60-69% Yes. It looks like there's consistently been a a non-trivial difference in forecasts. I hope someone ...
Do the 100 soldiers have to be within city limits simultaneously or is it 100 total? My assumption would be the latter since the question doesn't specify simultaneity, but I thought I would check.
If the latter, maybe we should start [collecting incidents like this](https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/28/europe/kharkiv-street-fight-russia-ukraine-intl-cmd/index.html) below the 100 person threshold. In this case I counted at least ~22 Russian soldiers in the first video (unknown how many are inside the 3 vehicles, so I'm assuming just 1 for that count). Definite...
@pasha1237654 Oh come on. Even Russia does not deny that they are building up their forces near the Ukrainian border. They just insist they're not going to attack, while threatening to enforce their demands with unspecified "military-technical measures".
You can make of that what you will in terms of predictions (diversity of opinion is important for making these markets function!), and of course have your own opinion about whether it's justified or not. But insisting that it's not happening is just denying reality.
@Bookie Says the person who has been on this website 5 days, has 52 comments on this question only and not a single prediction on this entire website, including this very question. If you're so confident, why aren't you predicting accordingly? If you don't care enough to even predict on this question, why should we have any confidence in your analysis?
Interesting note: Wikipedia says Cherkasy only has two raions, so this question resolution essentially requires the entire city be controlled as currently written.
@mumpskin Well said. I've been highly confident this was coming for quite a while, but it's still terrible to see it come true.
A big part of the reason I'm on this site is to get better at separating my rational forecasts from my emotional responses and what I wish to be true. It's still depressing to see it happen. I've never been so depressed to "win" a bunch of fake internet points.
@johnnycaffeine Not trying to start an argument, but I was one of the people who downvoted you, and I didn't do so because you had a different opinion, but for labeling the alternative opinion a "rules cuck." I think that's the kind of language that makes it hard to have a civil discussion of alternative readings of the resolution criteria. Part of what makes this place so great is that it's several steps above the PredictIt comment level. Just my opinion!
Does this question include the [territorial waters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_waters) of Ukraine? If so, just out to the 12 mile boundary of sovereign territory or something else?
I'm not just asking to be absurdly nitpicky. I've seen some discussion of the possibility of a nuclear strike as a demonstration of will and capability, like on Snake Island (which would obviously resolve positively) or over the Black Sea (unclear). I think that's fairly unlikely, especially over this short timeframe. But I could see myself adding ~1-2% if that...
@(FJehn) Sure, that's fine. I'm not seeking to convince you per se - I just wanted to stick up for the community forecast, since I didn't see anyone doing that!
A lot of this hinges on how long you think the war is going to go on and at what pace. I don't think it's likely that this question will resolve positively, but if you told me this war would go on for another year, I would probably go up to 2/3 chance.
To illustrate what I'm talking about, I made this [spreadsheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PRrfg-rWUhgCaO8sp7cDe4-oYdz27wW5/edit#gi...
The Minnesota Star Tribune has published an estimate of $500 million in local damages. Source is just "owners and insurance experts" so take with a grain of salt, but it's one of a few holistic estimates that I've seen.