But if Joe Biden is defeated in the US presidential election in 2024 by Donald Trump or another isolationist candidate, it could pose serious questions for Ukraine’s war effort. The US has provided €44bn ($46bn) of military support to Ukraine, and Europe (including the UK) €18.7bn, according to Germany’s Kiel Institute. Since the counteroffensive was launched in June, only a handful of villages have been recaptured.
- Ukraine, meanwhile, would need years of western support to ensure its eastern border remains stable.
- 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.
- The invaders’ key advantage is the number of troops available – about 300,000, almost all of whom are already committed to Ukraine.
- “Even technologically advanced, wealthy states in the Middle East eventually reached a point where they’re lobbing missiles at civilian cities, openly using chemical weapons and fighting in waves — just people rushing across the field getting shot at,” Jensen said.
However, Ukraine would be highly unlikely to formally cede any territory, given popular support for resistance to the Russian invasion. 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. https://euronewstop.co.uk/how-the-conflict-in-ukraine-will-affect-the-uk.html is a protracted struggle that gradually lessens in intensity as the Russians run short on ammunition and resupply to Ukraine eases. The worry is that even this is overly optimistic, although it is the strategy that western leader appears to be selling to their publics. “There is a real problem here in that we may be over-encouraged by Ukraine’s early successes in counterattacking last year,” said James Nixey, a Russia expert at the Chatham House thinktank.
Putin ousted
There remains speculation that the Kremlin will seek a fresh mobilisation, and another worry is that Beijing may start covertly supplying Russia. Some Ukrainian experts fear a pincer movement to encircle Donbas and the east from Sumy in the north and Velyka Novosilka in the south, allowing Russia to occupy most of the four Ukrainian provinces it has unilaterally claimed to have annexed. At this point, Russia could call for a ceasefire to retain what it has, and run a defensive campaign to consolidate its battered military. 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. An inability to do so could foster economic discontent capable of turning public opinion against the war, Lichfield told Defense News.
- 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.
- Pressure would then grow on Kyiv to negotiate – not necessarily from the west, but perhaps led by China.
- According to a poll by the independent Razumkov Centre, a majority of Ukrainians said they believe Ukraine is "heading in the right direction" in light of the war.
- Currently, western intelligence estimates Russia is taking 1,000 casualties a day.
- What happens on the battlefield becomes ultimately only the symptom of that struggle.
If he was, perhaps, facing defeat in Ukraine, he might be tempted to escalate further. We now know the Russian leader is willing to break long-standing international norms. This same logic can be applied to the use of nuclear weapons.
Joe Biden Calling Donald Trump the 'Sitting President' Sparks Ridicule
Mr Putin wonders if he has bitten off more than he can chew. He judges that continuing the war may be a greater threat to his leadership than the humiliation of ending it. China intervenes, putting pressure on Moscow to compromise, warning that it will not buy Russian oil and gas unless it de-escalates. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian authorities see the continuing destruction of their country and conclude that political compromise might be better than such devastating loss of life. Ukraine, say, accepts Russian sovereignty over Crimea and parts of the Donbas.
Russian forces are already trying to slow down tanks in Ukraine with mines, trenches, and pyramidical, concrete “dragon’s teeth,” a type of fortification not seen in combat since World War II. Ukrainian forces, once equipped and trained for combined arms warfare and tank tactics, will be “designed to punch a hole through a defensive network,” Donahoe predicted. Retired Maj. Gen. Patrick Donahoe, a former commander of the U.S.
Elsewhere on the BBC
In the course of the past year, Putin’s domestic propaganda strategy has morphed from a message of “fight the Nazis” in Ukraine to “fight the West” there, said Stefan Meister, a Russia and Eastern Europe expert at the Berlin-based German Council on Foreign Relations. “The narrative is the great struggle of the Cold War,” he said, a framing that has helped to attract new recruits. But this winter, they’re expected to launch attacks across open plains, which would be harder to defeat, said Daniel Rice, a former U.S. Army captain who last year became a special adviser to Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander of the Ukrainian military. 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. “I would love to think the kinetic phase could end in 2023, but I suspect we could be looking at another three years with this scale of fighting,” Roberts said.
Ukraine appears very dependent on Volodymyr Zelenskiy in terms of its public diplomacy, but he does not direct its military strategy in detail and the country’s desire to fight runs very deep. 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. Ukraine, meanwhile, would need years of western support to ensure its eastern border remains stable. So a more likely end point here is not a negotiated peace, but rather a conflict that consolidates around lines of control. “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. Joe Gould was the senior Pentagon reporter for Defense News, covering the intersection of national security policy, politics and the defense industry.
The US defence aid package is held hostage by what President Biden rightly labelled "petty politics" in Washington. And the future of the EU's economic aid is seemingly dependent on Hungary's incongruous stance. To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here. Newsweek reached out to the Russian and Ukrainian ministries of foreign affairs for comment.
- This is a grinding trench and artillery war of attrition.
- Ukraine is assembling a force of more than 100 western Leopard 1 and 2 tanks, plus others, and a similar number of armoured vehicles that it hopes to use whenever the spring muddy season eases, to smash through Russia’s defensive lines in a D-day offensive.
- Army’s maneuver warfare school at Fort Benning, Georgia, said Western upgrades offer Ukraine the chance to dominate the close fight with Russian adversaries and conclude the tactical fighting to its advantage.
- “The ultimate end to this is the Ukrainians take back as much pre-Feb.
- WASHINGTON and ROME — Germany’s promise early this year to send tanks to Ukraine marked the country’s latest concession and provided a cap to the gradual escalation in the kind of equipment allies were supplying.
- Apart from a few exceptions, almost all of the tens of thousands of people who have died in this war have been on Ukrainian territory.
Amid the fog of war, it can be hard to see the way forward. The news from the battlefield, the diplomatic noises off, the emotion of the grieving and displaced; all of this can be overwhelming. So let us step back for a moment and consider how the conflict in Ukraine might play out. What are some of the possible scenarios that politicians and military planners are examining?
"I promise it will not take too long now, and every taxpayer in the U.S. will be able to see where every cent went," he said. Elsewhere in the interview with ABC News, Budanov predicated there would be additional strikes within Russia's territory in the future. However, Kimmage's own speculative timeline for the war's end doesn't align with Budanov's. Budanov added, "Our goal, and we will achieve it, is returning to the borders of 1991, like Ukraine is recognized by all subjects of international law." The G7's price cap could be lower, but that would effectively eliminate profits from Western oil suppliers, where production costs have traditionally been higher than in Russia.