Notes

Ukraine: How might the war end? Five scenarios
"We want peace around the world," 70-year-old Kyiv resident Nina Albul recently told my colleague Hanna Palamarenko, "but we also want the world to know that it's okay for enslaved people to fight back." Shortly before Russia invaded last February, less than a third of Ukrainians supported foreign boots on the ground in Ukraine. At some point, Ukraine will have to decide if there's a military solution to the conflict or if it has to look for another way out without conceding any kind of defeat, Barrons said. One way to do that is with an armistice, a temporary agreement to cease military operations, but one that does not conclude the war decisively. Russia was not present at the discussions, however, and U.S. national security spokesperson John Kirby stated ahead of the talks that the White House did not expect any "tangible deliverables."


Children look out from a carriage window as a train prepares to depart from a station in Lviv, Ukraine, on March 3, 2022. Says more than 8 million Ukrainians fled to Europe since the start of the invasion. "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.

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The undersecretary of state for political affairs, Victoria Nuland, told the Senate in January the Biden administration still expects the $45 billion Ukraine aid package Congress passed in December to last through the end of this fiscal year. But the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, Celeste Wallander, warned at the hearing that the current funding level “does not preclude” the administration from needing to request more assistance before the end of September. Under Article 5 of the military alliance's charter, an attack on one member is an attack on all. But Mr Putin might take the risk if he felt it was the only way of saving his leadership. If he was, perhaps, facing defeat in Ukraine, he might be tempted to escalate further.


Perhaps most significant is the activity around Avdiivka, a strategically important town on the front line in eastern Ukraine. Russia has also made advances north east of Kupiansk, north of Bakhmut, and south west of Avdiivka, according to the latest ISW assessment. The village of Robotyne in the Zaporizhzhia region could offer a similar stepping stone but Russian forces are reported to have made some advances in the area. Ukraine has continued ground operations on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River with heavy battles reported to be ongoing in the area around the village of Krynky, about 30km (19 miles) from the city of Kherson. " https://euronewstop.co.uk/who-is-winning-the-war-in-ukraine.html is not finished. He won't stay in exile in Belarus."

Russia’s Putin says ‘obvious’ Ukraine shot down plane over Belgorod
Still, Western arms — even though supplied in an incremental, cautious manner — in Ukraine have similarly been key to halting Russian advances. In theory, that gives the West influence over the direction of the war. The West could — as Ukraine has sought — supply even more sophisticated weapons, faster, in the hope of convincing Russia that it cannot win. Meanwhile, Western powers have pledged coveted battle tanks to Ukraine, and there is much talk of a new Russian spring offensive. Never,” United States President Joe Biden said in Poland last week, a day after a previously unannounced visit to Kyiv. The war in Ukraine conjures up a strong sense of historical déjà vu.


"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. To indicate which parts of Ukraine are under control by Russian troops we are using daily assessments published by the Institute for the Study of War with the American Enterprise Institute's Critical Threats Project. To show key areas where advances are taking place we are also using updates from the UK Ministry of Defence and BBC research. Recent assessments by the ISW show Russian forces have made advances north of Bakhmut.


But the sizable swaths of terrain Ukraine wants to liberate will take time, and to even build the necessary forces will take six months, Donahoe estimated. 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.


The situation in Ukraine is often fast moving and it is likely there will be times when there have been changes not reflected in the maps. By October 2022, the picture had changed dramatically and having failed to take Kyiv, Russia withdrew completely from the north. Ukrainian forces were also quick to deploy Western supplied arms such as the Nlaw anti-tank system, which proved highly effective against the Russian advance. Russian ground troops moved in quickly and within a few weeks were in control of large areas of Ukraine and had advanced to the suburbs of Kyiv. The Ukrainian General Staff says settlements in the area - including Klishchiivka and Andriivka - are continuing to come under artillery and mortar fire. It notes the building gives Ukraine a "localised defensive advantage" and says Russian forces will probably suffer significant losses if they attempt to assault the facility.

Ukrainian replacement troops go through combat training on Feb. 24 in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. “The narrative is the great struggle of the Cold War,” he said, a framing that has helped to attract new recruits. There would ideally be a return to the line of February 24th; “pursuing the war beyond that point would not be about the freedom of Ukraine, but a new war against Russia itself,” he declared at the World Economic Forum, a talkfest in Davos. During President Putin's marathon state address on Feb. 21, he accused Western countries of attempting "to deprive Russia of these historical territories that are now called Ukraine," making war the only way to "protect the people in our historical lands."
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. 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. Defense experts say it's unlikely the counteroffensive will see any breakthroughs this year. But they note it's crucial for Ukraine to be able to show at least some gains in order to maintain Western support for the war into 2024 — and perhaps beyond. Instead, its forces are facing a 600-mile front line and extensive Russian defensive fortifications — in some places up to 19 miles deep — that were built in winter while Ukraine was waiting for more heavy weaponry from its allies before launching its counteroffensive in June.

Ukraine first announced it had made a breakthrough in mid-November - the river had separated Ukrainian and Russian forces since Moscow's troops withdrew from Kherson a year ago. 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. Yet Ukraine’s choices are in turn shaped by what the West will provide. "The United States maintains by far the world's most powerful nuclear stockpile, but with the US out of the mix, the French and British, with their much smaller arsenals, would be Europe’s only nuclear deterrent," Mr OBrien says.
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