While those sanctions have indeed hurt Russia, they’ve also contributed to skyrocketing energy and food prices in the West (even as Putin profits by selling his oil, gas, and coal at higher prices). The US inflation rate, at 8.6 percent last month, is the highest in 40 years, while the Congressional Budget Office has revised estimates of economic growth—3.1 percent this year— down to 2.2 percent for 2023 and 1.5 percent for 2024. All this as mid-term elections loom and President Biden’s approval ratings, now at 39.7 percent, continue to sink. Still, the botched northern campaign and the serial failures of a military that had been infused with vast sums of money and supposedly subjected to widespread modernization and reform was stunning.
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. 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.
All that happened this week in Russia-Ukraine war
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. Unlike in the case of Serbia, experts do not foresee a scenario in which the US-led Western alliance would actively attack Russia. The war and Western sanctions have damaged Russia’s society and economy, but Moscow has blunted the worst effects and is unlikely to be left so weak as to be unable to pursue the war. https://euronewstop.co.uk/why-are-there-so-many-orphans-in-ukraine.html contracted by only a little more than 2 percent last year – far less than expected. The war in Ukraine conjures up a strong sense of historical déjà vu. Though recorded in 21st-century fashion through up-close-and-personal shots from mobile phone cameras and high-definition drone footage, the images being captured – of artillery duels and trench warfare – have a distinctly last-century feel to them.
While defense spending in the United States and Europe is trending upward, in large part because of Russia’s attack, industrial capacity to crank out weapons and ammunition has emerged as a bottleneck. 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. Also in the mix is a pledge from France to ship AMX-10 RC light, wheeled tanks. “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. And long, exhaustive fighting carries its own risks, according to Benjamin Jensen, a war gaming expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
00Surgeons from city train medics in Ukraine, published at 06:00Surgeons from city train medics in Ukraine
But Ukraine's air defenses were surprisingly effective, shooting down many Russian fighter jets and helicopters in the first couple months of the war. It is theoretically possible for the U.S. to sanction countries that maintain economic ties with Russia. The best precedent for this is perhaps the Helms–Burton Act, which extended U.S. sanctions on Cuba toward any foreign company doing business with both Cuba and the U.S. at the same time. When President Bill Clinton signed that law in 1996, several countries accused the U.S. of violating their sovereignty, passing their own laws to make the U.S. regulation effectively unenforceable.
- 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.
- This is why, as I noted in last year’s assessment, my preference is “to talk about trends, possibilities, and developments coming into view.” Wars pass through stages, as fortunes shift, and the challenges of supply and reinforcement change.
- But the uncertainty surrounding President Putin and his regime, almost a year and a half into a disastrous war and after the Wagner drama, might feed the anxiety of those Nato countries who would prefer the war to end around the negotiating table, not on the battlefield.
- After Russia first invaded in 2014, the U.S. military stepped up training for the Ukrainian military in western Ukraine.
- So while in principle looking at a map creates new options for the next stage of the Russian offensive in practice losses of this sort reduces the ability of Russian forces to build on any gains.
Equally, Ukraine’s dependence on their weapons gives Western powers a say in how Kyiv plots its strategy. In theory, they could threaten to curtail support if they grow weary of the war or if Ukraine, encouraged by its military advances, crosses a threshold that could spark an escalation unacceptable to the West. All one can say is that intense diplomatic activity can generate its own dynamic and could be a feature of 2024 largely absent from 2023. After a year in which both sides looked forward to military advances and were disappointed, this new year starts with expectations so low that the only way we can possibly be surprised is by developments that get us closer to a resolution.
More European nations are now talking about the need to step up aid in light of concerns that the US is weakening in its resolve. Industrial-age warfare bends significant parts, or in some cases whole economies, towards the production of war materials as matters of priority. Russia's defence budget has tripled since 2021 and will consume 30% of government spending next year. For democracies, long-term consensus in support for war has always been more complicated than for autocrats with no accountability. We asked three military analysts how they think events may unfold in the coming 12 months.
A second way for Ukraine to win — at least theoretically — would be through a diplomatic agreement. Last week, Ukraine ordered its forces to withdraw from the key city of Severodonetsk, which had been the target of an intense Russian offensive for weeks. While its forces are pushing to also seize the nearby city of Lysychansk, Russia on Thursday announced the withdrawal of its troops from the strategically important Snake Island. 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. "Unless circumstances change, it is unlikely that the war will end in 2024," he told Newsweek. "Despite the slow gains in 2023, Ukrainian morale remains high. The majority of the country still believes that they will win the war, and they will not accept any other outcome than the total removal of Russian forces from Ukrainian lands."
- “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.
- I was more struck by his description of the problem he was trying to solve.
- 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.
- As of this writing, the superforecasters had assigned a roughly 70 percent probability to the scenario of Russia and Ukraine not agreeing to end the conflict before October 1, 2024, the furthest-out date among the multiple-choice options presented.
The winter will be over and he can see what territory, if any, has been taken. The effectiveness of the drone and missile attacks on Ukraine can be judged. He will have been able to see whether or not the EU and the US have sorted out their funding packages. So while in principle looking at a map creates new options for the next stage of the Russian offensive in practice losses of this sort reduces the ability of Russian forces to build on any gains.
- Joe Gould was the senior Pentagon reporter for Defense News, covering the intersection of national security policy, politics and the defense industry.
- But why would he (and it will certainly be a male) do that if Russia controls large swathes of Ukrainian land?
- 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 invaders’ key advantage is the number of troops available – about 300,000, almost all of whom are already committed to Ukraine.
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”. Mark Temnycky, a Ukrainian-American journalist and nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center said that delays in 2023 allowed Russia to fortify positions in the south and east of Ukraine, regroup and re-strategize. "Unfortunately, there is a very real chance that the Russo-Ukraine war will last well into 2024 and possibly beyond," he said.
- Despite Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Putin's closest EU ally, vetoing a $55 billion support package from Brussels for Kyiv in mid-December, backing from other European allies has been strong.
- Bloomberg reported earlier this week that Putin had "put out feelers to the US via indirect channels," suggesting that he was prepared to engage in talks over ending the conflict.
- When a sufficient number of Putin’s coalition privately turn against the war, this will pressure Putin to end the war or risk his position of power.
- But even then, the very concept of victory may be inaccurate, they warned.
Over three million Ukrainians have fled the country since the Russian invasion of Ukraine early on Thursday, February 24, 2022, creating Europe's largest refugee crisis since the Second World War. "We are unaware of the shifts in Russia's position described," US National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said, per Bloomberg. The sources reportedly said that Putin could be willing to end his demands over Ukraine's neutrality and, eventually, his opposition to the country joining NATO.