Russia began the war with what seemed to be a massive advantage by any imaginable measure—from gross domestic product (GDP) to numbers of warplanes, tanks, artillery, warships, and missiles. Little wonder, perhaps, that Putin assumed his troops would take the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, within weeks, at most. Western military experts were convinced that his army would make quick work of its Ukrainian counterpart, even if the latter’s military had, since 2015, been trained and armed by the United States, Britain, and Canada. The next key date for Putin is the presidential election on 17 March. Yet I recently posed them to several top historians, political scientists, geopolitical forecasters, and former officials—because only in imagining potential futures can we understand the rough bounds of the possible, and our own agency in influencing the outcome we want. Since the counteroffensive was launched in June, only a handful of villages have been recaptured. Some Ukrainian officials acknowledged the fear that gives Western leaders sleepless nights, that a public collapse of President Putin's regime might lead to real danger as his would-be successors jockey for power in a state with the world's biggest arsenal of nuclear weapons. He judges that continuing the war may be a greater threat to his leadership than the humiliation of ending it. Putin can’t keep his forces on the offensive all year long and now has to keep an eye out for new Ukrainian strikes on assets not only in Crimea (such as the recent hit on a large landing ship in the Black Sea port of Feodosia in occupied Crimea) but also in Russia proper. But even if this occurs, that doesn’t mean the war itself will end with Putin’s downfall. NATO does not want a full-scale war in Europe, and Russian President Vladimir Putin knows he would lose a conflict with a 30-member military alliance led by the Americans. His focus is Russia and Ukraine, in particular the war started by Moscow. They had lots of new equipment but it came in many different types. There are more indiscriminate artillery and rocket strikes across Ukraine. The Russian air force - which has played a low-key role so far - launches devastating airstrikes. Massive cyber-attacks sweep across Ukraine, targeting key national infrastructure. President Zelensky is either assassinated or flees, to western Ukraine or even overseas, to set up a government in exile. President Putin declares victory and withdraws some forces, leaving enough behind to maintain some control. Ukraine invasion — explained The first and most obvious way for Ukraine to win would be for its armed forces to take back all the territory Russia has unlawfully seized since its first invasion in 2014 — including Crimea. And the United States should do everything possible to support it, including, if Congress approves more funding, by providing the more advanced weapons Ukraine has requested. That conflict, also between neighbours, was fundamentally fought over territory and resources. Ukraine will do all it can to keep pressure on the Russians there to make it untenable for the Russian navy in Sevastopol, the handful of air force bases there and their logistics base at Dzankoy. Putin dithered, not dealing with the dispute while in its early stages, and then could only be rescued by doing a deal with people he’d just called traitors, albeit one on which he later reneged (as with so many of his deals). But the idea that Ukraine can be pressured into some kind of peace is “incorrect” and “denies Ukraine their agency”, said Branislav Slantchev, a professor of politics at the University of California, San Diego, and a specialist in war negotiations and how conflicts end. Then there are all those websites to check out, their color-coded maps and daily summaries catching that conflict’s rapid twists and turns. “This war will last indefinitely, with long pauses for cease-fires,” he said. At the same time, election season in the United States — Ukraine’s most important backer — stands to spur arguments that a war in Europe of unknown duration is a costly nuisance for America. They understand the wider strategic point, which is that this is a confrontation between the West and Russia and at stake is not just the future territorial integrity of Ukraine but the security construct for Europe and the West with Russia, he noted. Ukraine's counteroffensive is likely to make some progress in the remainder of this year, Barrons said — but nowhere near enough to end the occupation. The war between Russia and Ukraine entered a new phase this summer when Kyiv launched its much-anticipated counteroffensive, and there were hopes Ukraine would regain the upper hand. Putinology: the art of analyzing the man in the Kremlin It would receive a guarantee that the water canals flowing southward to that peninsula from the city of Kherson, which would revert to Ukrainian control, would never again be blocked. Russia would not annex the “republics” it created in the Donbas in 2014 and would withdraw from some of the additional land it’s seized there. Ukraine would be free to receive arms and military training from any country, but foreign troops and bases would be banned from its territory. Still, Russia and Ukraine have now been fighting for more than three months. Both have suffered heavy losses and each knows that the war could drag on for years at a staggering cost without either achieving its aims. But Smith also said ATACMS producer Lockheed Martin no longer makes the missiles, and the U.S. military still needs them in its stockpiles. “Everything I have come to learn about the will and determination of the Ukrainians leads me to conclude retaking Crimea is within reach, and they need the artillery that will enable hitting targets — the sites of missiles destroying infrastructure in Ukraine,” he said. Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, expects the war to end at the negotiating table, but said serious diplomacy hasn’t begun because Putin is still clinging to “maximalist” goals. Moscow has proved resourceful when it comes to building autonomy into critical goods, Lichfield explained. For example, the tactic of repurposing dishwasher electronics for weapons, mocked in the West as a sign of desperation, probably means “somebody thought about that from the beginning,” he said. Perhaps Italian analyst Lucio Caracciolo was the most pessimistic of all. He could threaten to send troops into the Baltic states - which are members of Nato - such as Lithuania, to establish a land corridor with the Russian coastal exclave of Kaliningrad. Russian forces may try to push again along the entire front, at least to secure all of the Donbas region. Ukraine will probably try to exploit the success it has had in re-establishing its control over the western Black Sea and its vital trade corridor to the Bosphorus. I spend most of my day poring over multiple newspapers, magazines, blogs, and the Twitter feeds of various military mavens, a few of whom have been catapulted by the war from obscurity to a modicum of fame. Then there are all those websites to check out, their color-coded maps and daily summaries catching that conflict’s rapid twists and turns. The current war is different, with Western support helping Ukraine regain large parts of the territory Russia grabbed in the early weeks after last year’s invasion. He said there is little the West can do to stop Ukrainians from trying to take back all of their country’s territory currently held by Russia — including parts that Moscow has formally, though illegally, annexed. It has a homegrown war machine and enormous reserves of manpower and resources, and Morris believes there is a good chance Russia can sustain the conflict for years to come. “Serbia’s war against Kosovo was ended because outside powers got involved,” she told Al Jazeera, referring to NATO’s bombardment of Serbia in 1999. Zelensky's visit to Washington, D.C., on December 12, was lower key than the red-carpet treatment he previously received. The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington told Defense News that Ukraine would not strike Russian territory with longer-range weapons pledged by the United States. Some observers have suggested that continued defeats on the battlefield might result in Putin’s downfall. And there have been no shortage of predictions that the invasion will indeed prove Putin’s death knell. After imposing sanctions and export controls, Lichfield expects the West’s latest economic pressure point — oil price caps — to yield results because the Russian economy is so tightly linked to the energy market. Then, having encountered minimal opposition and a few cheers, he carried on towards Moscow. There was certainly more optimism surrounding the Ukrainian position at the start of the year than there was at the end. This is partly because of the uncertainties surrounding the level of US and European support, a matter to which I will return in my conclusion. But it was largely because of the meagre returns from Ukraine’s intensive efforts to liberate more territory. Pressure would then grow on Kyiv to negotiate – not necessarily from the west, but perhaps led by China. The world was united in shock when Russia invaded Ukraine, with prominent members of the international community calling for an end to the conflict. He said he aimed to make Russia a great, peaceful and free country. Mr Nadezhdin, who name is similar to nadezhda, the Russian word for hope, said he had the support of dozens of millions of people. Putin has made a lot of mistakes, not just with the special military operation, Mr Nadezhdin says. But Biden and other Western leaders should tell them that this is an option they will have if their counteroffensive is still grinding on next year. It could prove the best chance to achieve the victory that Ukraine and the democratic world need soon, while making it both Putin- and Trump-proof. In turn, Putin accepts Ukrainian independence and its right to deepen ties with Europe. But it is not beyond the realms of plausibility that such a scenario could emerge from the wreckage of a bloody conflict. Maybe https://euronewstop.co.uk/why-are-there-so-many-orphans-in-ukraine.html get bogged down, hampered by low morale, poor logistics and inept leadership. Maybe it takes longer for Russian forces to secure cities like Kyiv whose defenders fight from street to street. The fighting has echoes of Russia's long and brutal struggle in the 1990s to seize and largely destroy Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia — never,” President Joe Biden said in a speech in Poland this year, and rightly so. The recent arms donations — Kyiv still wants fighter aircraft and long-range tactical missiles — are predicated on the assumption they’ll force Moscow to end its invasion and begin negotiations because military costs are too high. Anything that generated any momentum would certainly change the context. “Futility” was my most used word in 2023 in connection with Russian policy. Recently, Ukraine's winter offensive seems to have come to a halt. Outlier events cannot be ruled out, such as the brazen challenge to Putin's authority by Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose death in a plane crash followed his seizure of military facilities in Rostov-on-Don and a march on Moscow. Also, the Kremlin has repeatedly dismissed rumors about Putin's health. Yes, that war is Europe’s biggest in a generation, but it’s not Europe’s alone. The pain it’s producing extends to people in faraway lands already barely surviving and with no way to end it.
https://euronewstop.co.uk/why-are-there-so-many-orphans-in-ukraine.html
