Notes

When and how will Ukraine's war with Russia end?
To show key areas where advances are taking place we are also using updates from the UK Ministry of Defence and BBC research. https://barlow-larsen.blogbright.net/romeos-reaction-to-banishment-from-verona-a-deep-dive by the ISW show Russian forces have made advances north of Bakhmut. 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. When Ukraine retook Robotyne in August it was hoped that its forces would be able to cut the land corridor to Crimea, making Moscow's supply lines more complicated. 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.

Putin would ideally like to see the Zelensky government quickly capitulate and surrender, to be replaced by a Moscow-leaning puppet government. One problem is it leads to playing down the benefits the US has always got in its conventional operations from superior firepower. Yet six months on Putin does not give the appearance of having suffered long-term harm. But what Snyder envisions is Putin prioritizing his political survival in Russia over his personal and ideological designs on Ukraine, not necessarily Putin’s removal from power. Ukraine, meanwhile, would need years of western support to ensure its eastern border remains stable.
Defense News spoke with national security analysts, lawmakers and retired officials, asking each how the conflict could end. Without a critical mass of support, resistance to the Russian military will fall apart and Ukraine will lose the war. The fierce determination of the Ukrainian people up to this point suggests that this will not occur any time soon.

Western allies are starting to split over the conditions for a peace
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". Opposition leader Alexey Navalny, once seen as a major threat to the president's authority, has been in jail since 2021. He has won several presidential elections comfortably, but in recent years no serious opposition has been allowed.


Kyiv will be reluctant to halt when the immediate prize is so great. Ukrainian offensives might, nevertheless, pause down in the south-west, following the recovery of Kherson. At least 10,000 civilians, including over 560 children, have been killed and more than 18,500 injured since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission there said on Tuesday. Also briefing the 15-member Security Council, Ramesh Rajasingham, Director of Coordination, at the UN humanitarian affairs office (OCHA), said that millions of civilians in Ukraine, including women and children, are staring at the prospect of yet another winter of severe hardship. Might it be possible this war could spill outside Ukraine's borders?

What History Says About Biden’s Power to Strike Back Against the Houthis
Instead Commander-in-Chief Valery Gerasimov took over direct responsibility for the Russian campaign. The Russian offensives at the start of the year were unimpressive with crude and unimaginative tactics. Little progress was made, and then at high cost, with Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group to the fore in Soledar and Bakhmut. 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.

Rather than framing the war as a struggle between democracies and autocracies or East versus West, U.S. and European leaders should make the case that the Kremlin, in its thirst for empire, has “violated the UN Charter [and] international laws” that keep other countries safe as well. For now, such cracks in the West are contained by the mantra that the future is for Ukrainians to decide. The administration official told POLITICO Magazine this week that much of this strategic shift to defense is aimed at shoring up Ukraine’s position in any future negotiation. The conflict in Ukraine is about to enter its second calendar year.
To keep up the military effort, Putin may need further mobilisation (something he said at his press conference not to be necessary). This is not a prediction but it would not wholly be a surprise if he decided that this was as good a moment as any to suggest the possibility of a ceasefire arrangement. Otherwise he would be stuck with many more months of war without tangible progress and a growing sense of futility. “Futility” was my most used word in 2023 in connection with Russian policy.


And long, exhaustive fighting carries its own risks, according to Benjamin Jensen, a war gaming expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. That’s because the longer conflicts last, the more they exhaust finite resources and, hence, the parties are more willing to gamble. It was largely apparent that Russia’s army was and is far superior to Ukraine’s in terms of stockpiles of weapons and number of personnel.


This is because they have stuck with the UN Charter which precludes the sort of territorial annexations expected by Putin. There have been much publicised problems with the next large tranches of EU and US support. The problem with the EU lies with Hungary’s veto of any funds to Ukraine, but either this will soon be overcome or, even if not, there are workarounds that will lead eventually to the desired result. The problem in the US reflects Republican efforts to tie support for overseas causes to action to stop immigrants coming in from Mexico. There is enough money left for one more military aid package, but then it depends on a new deal.

Blumenthal has joined other lawmakers — particularly pro-Ukraine Republicans — in pushing President Joe Biden to give Zelenskyy most of the weapons he requested, including long-range ATACMS missiles and F-16 fighter aircraft. It is clear to the most dispassionate observer of the war that Ukraine is having to fight very hard, and take casualties in troops and equipment, including the armour supplied by Nato. And while we have no right to tell Ukrainians to stop fighting before their country is whole, we also have no right to expect them to keep fighting at any cost. That scenario, of a Russian military incursion into a Nato country, almost unthinkable until recently, is when Nato and Russia could indeed be at war with each other.
Here's my website: https://barlow-larsen.blogbright.net/romeos-reaction-to-banishment-from-verona-a-deep-dive