Trump also described Putin as "very smart" following the full-scale invasion and has rejected U.S. intelligence assessments that Putin had interfered on his behalf in the 2016 election. Even though the end of the war is not yet in sight, he says he can envision a scenario for which a precedent exists. Or, Shea added, both sides reach a stalemate “where they dig in behind heavily fortified lines that remain fixed for years with a low-intensity conflict across [a] no man’s land”. Ukraine’s much-anticipated spring counteroffensive makes incremental or even no progress in the spring and summer, partly because the west has failed to supply it with enough weaponry.
- But Ukraine's air defenses were surprisingly effective, shooting down many Russian fighter jets and helicopters in the first couple months of the war.
- “For the time being, political support for Ukraine remains strong in the US and Europe, and the EU can hardly abandon a country to which it has just granted EU candidate status,” Shea said.
- Many experts I consulted were pessimistic about the prospect of a negotiated settlement to end the war in the foreseeable future.
- However, if the war were to drag on this year and into next year, the reasoning could change.
In World War I, a poorly motivated and provisioned Russian army collapsed, helping bring down an out-of-touch czar. While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visits frontline troops, Putin is mostly hidden from view far from any fighting. No surprise that morale of Ukrainian soldiers is strong and that of Russians is weak. The conflict has lasted longer than many regional wars, and no victory or retreat is in sight. Predictions merit only guarded confidence when so many have proven wrong, e.g., that Kyiv could fall within days or Russia would quickly gain air superiority over Ukraine. There are predictions aplenty that Russia's war on Ukraine will persist.
Russia attacks Ukraine: More coverage
Defense News spoke with national security analysts, lawmakers and retired officials, asking each how the conflict could end. Military experts warn that this means the war is likely to be prolonged, putting immense pressure on Ukraine to fight for several more years to come, potentially, and on its international partners to commit billions of dollars more in military, humanitarian and financial resources. The first - which would be the most optimistic from Kyiv’s perspective - is that Ukrainian forces successfully move towards Mariupol on the Black Sea coast, cutting off Russian forces from the southern part of the country. The move “would also put Crimea at risk and then potentially we could see a collapse of Russian forces and effectively Ukraine could win,” he said.
"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. That scenario could embolden critics of the war; increase public discontent with continued funding for Ukraine; and pose a problem in terms of arms production and supplies for the West. "I think the danger for Ukrainians is if they really do end up with a stalemate, where they've gained very, very little territory where a lot of the equipment supplied by the West has been written off with Ukrainians having suffered very significant casualties," Shea said. It's become clear that the counteroffensive won't produce quick results and that success — however that might be measured in terms of retaking Russian-occupied territory — is not guaranteed. When I asked the official who wanted to remain anonymous about recent tactical gains in the east, including a handful of small villages, he lifted his hand with his finger and thumb pinching the air perhaps half an inch apart. Another senior official, who spoke on condition he was not named, went further, suggesting that President Putin would be forced to dismiss his Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of Staff General Valery Gerasimov, perhaps as a response to another military setback.
All that happened this week in Russia-Ukraine war
Moscow called it a “gesture of goodwill” aimed at showing it backed efforts to restart food exports from Ukrainian ports, but Kyiv hailed it as a victory, saying it had forced the Russians to retreat. The Russian leader's future may depend on the country's powerful security forces, such as those led by Yevgeny Prigozhin or Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. Throughout the war, Western governments have continued to supply aid and weapons to Ukraine and, if that continues, Kyiv's forces could translate that into more battlefield success. Ultimately, it appears that this war will not end quickly, as it will take a considerable amount of time for either side to make the other give up. Either the Russian military’s transition to indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets succeeds in eroding Ukrainian resistance, or battlefield casualties and domestic economic woes succeed in defeating Russia’s will to fight.
- The eastern city of Bakhmut, the small town of Vuhledar, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia — the gateway to the south — could all be in their sights, the BBC has reported.
- Children look out from a carriage window as a train prepares to depart from a station in Lviv, Ukraine, on March 3, 2022.
- There are predictions aplenty that Russia's war on Ukraine will persist.
- In Jensen’s view, even the collapse of Russia’s conventional force or a traditional Ukrainian victory may not mean the war is over; either could lead to nuclear escalation by Russia.
After all, Russian defeats in the Crimean War in the 19th century, and losses to Japan and in Afghanistan in the 20th century, all catalysed profound domestic changes. A protracted and costly World War I helped usher in the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. The Russian ruling elite saw the Soviet Union’s collapse merely as a reconfiguration in which former Soviet countries would “continue to be together in some way”, Popova told Al Jazeera, whereas Ukraine saw it as an opportunity to be fully independent.
The fog of war can obscure our view of who is winning, who is losing, and how long all of this will last. While no one can provide definitive answers, academic research on war gives us some insights into how the conflict in Ukraine might unfold. Many experts I consulted were pessimistic about the prospect of a negotiated settlement to end the war in the foreseeable future. But a couple offered scenarios for what such a settlement could look like, portraying them as more guesswork than predictions. In the United States, he noted, everything from industrial policy to diplomatic and military strategy to domestic politics similarly will need to be refashioned for this new conflict. “One may imagine something like the outcome of the Korean War,” with “the warring sides remaining not reconciled and irreconcilable, always on alert, but more or less securely divided,” Lipman told me.
- Mr Putin, on the other hand, is banking on support weakening over time, giving him an opportunity to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
- What happens on the battlefield becomes ultimately only the symptom of that struggle.
- While some Western governments will secretly balk at the ongoing costs of supporting Ukraine (the U.S. has already pledged over $40 billion in security assistance to Kyiv) many understand the high stakes, Barrons said.
- There are no certain answers to my questions, just ones contingent on unknowable future circumstances.
- William Courtney is an adjunct senior fellow at RAND and was U.S. ambassador to Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the U.S.-USSR commission to implement the Threshold Test Ban Treaty.
- The Russian air force - which has played a low-key role so far - launches devastating airstrikes.
“You end up with something between a frozen conflict and an everlasting war, in which neither side has the energy or economy to win,” Nixey said. As Russian tactics become more aggressive, the Ukrainian people are paying ever higher costs. If we see the average Ukrainian’s willingness to suffer and fight lagging, it should give us cause for concern. To this end, western governments have stepped up humanitarian and defensive aid to Ukraine, in order to ensure that Ukrainian support for the war endures. That effort would require extensive U.S. involvement as well, and could serve as a springboard for China to assert itself as a diplomatic power, as the United States did during peace talks after World War I. Persuading countries in regions such as Africa and the Middle East to deny Russia its imperial schemes will require a major shift in how the United States and its allies describe the stakes of the war and even in how they articulate their broader worldview, Hill argued.
By early summer Ukraine will be able to use US-made F16 fighter jets for the first time, which it hopes will improve its ability to counter Russian aircraft and strengthen its own air defences. The military course of this war in 2024 will be determined in Moscow, Kyiv, Washington, Brussels, Beijing, Tehran and Pyongyang more than in Avdiivka, Tokmak, Kramatorsk or any of the devastated battlefields along the frontlines. Russia lacks the equipment and trained manpower to launch a strategic offensive until spring 2025, at the earliest.
- This would bear similarities to the situation after the initial Russian incursions into Ukraine in 2014 – but this time the west would be left facing an implacable, large hostile actor in Moscow.
- Otherwise he would be stuck with many more months of war without tangible progress and a growing sense of futility.
- Meanwhile, Moscow has claimed its forces have taken control of the village of Tabaivka in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region.
- Meanwhile, Indian thinktank Observer Research Foundation's Russia expert, Nandan Unnikrishnan, said India was unlikely to sign "any major military deal" with Russia because it would cross a red line with the US.
Russia lacks a decisive, breakthrough capability to overrun Ukraine and will do what it can to hold on to what it currently occupies, using the time to strengthen its defences while it hopes for the West to lose the will to continue supporting Ukraine. What happens on the battlefield becomes ultimately only the symptom of that struggle. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 saw the return of major war to the European continent. The course of the conflict in 2023 marked the fact that industrial-age warfare had returned too.
- But even if this occurs, that doesn’t mean the war itself will end with Putin’s downfall.
- The suggestion is that this is to prepare for eventual negotiations, although the main need is simply for Ukraine to show that it can play a long game.
- "I don't think people in the U.S. should assume that Ukraine's continuing efforts to dislodge the Russians hinge entirely on U.S. or even West European actions," said Rachel Epstein, professor of International Relations and European Politics at the University of Denver.
- Kyiv has reclaimed more than half of the land Russia had captured since the start of the war in February 2022 and grabbed headlines by liberating villages and towns in the south and east.
- The fierce determination of the Ukrainian people up to this point suggests that this will not occur any time soon.
- “And there was a proxy war overlaid onto it,” Morris told Al Jazeera, referring to the US support for Iraq in furtherance of its own interests in the Middle East.
This could see states like Poland and the Baltics decide to aid Ukraine on their own, which "might leave NATO's eastern front vulnerable and cause a crisis within the EU and European NATO". "The nightmare scenario would be that the states close to Russia double down on aid to Ukraine while those farther west decide to force a deal on Putin's terms. Then Europe itself could fracture," he says. Alexei Kulemzin said Ukraine was behind the strike on the eastern Ukrainian city, which is currently under Russian occupation. https://euronewstop.co.uk/what-is-france-doing-to-help-ukraine.html is a Newsweek Senior News Reporter based in London, UK. His focus is Russia and Ukraine, in particular the war started by Moscow. Meanwhile, Putin can look to the post-Soviet space for an example of how to play the long game, said David Rivera assistant professor of government at Hamilton College, Clinton, New York.
Indeed, Putin was quite explicit about this in his press conference of 14 December. Ukraine has been unable to put itself in a position to force a decision on Russia. But even if the offensive had made more progress it would have been a tall order to put the Russians sufficiently in a corner that their choice was only between battlefield humiliation and a negotiated withdrawal.
He will have been able to see whether or not the EU and the US have sorted out their funding packages. According to Politico , encouraged by the Biden administration, this is the shift in posture currently underway, bolstering air defences, strengthening positions in eastern Ukraine, and making it harder for Russian forces to attack from Belarus. The suggestion is that this is to prepare for eventual negotiations, although the main need is simply for Ukraine to show that it can play a long game. US-based thinktank the Institute for the Study of War said it had seen continued reports that Russia had not been able to produce missiles and artillery ammunition at pre-war levels for its own forces to use - making it unlikely to be able to export arms at pre-war levels. It repelled early Russian lunges to seize Ukraine's three largest cities—Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odessa.