Notes

UK citizen army: Preparing the 'pre-war generation' for conflict
Russia is also massively boosting military spending in 2024, with almost 30% of its fiscal expenditure to be directed toward the armed forces. Its military-industrial complex has also ramped up the production of hardware from drones to aircraft. Ukrainian forces have adopted a more defensive stance as circumstances dictate; a senior army general warned last week that front-line Ukrainian troops face artillery shortages and have scaled back some military operations because of a shortfall of foreign assistance. Weather conditions are deteriorating in Ukraine, with mud, freezing rain, snow and ice making offensive and reconnaissance operations challenging.

Ukrainian troops are also pushing back hard against Russian forces, focusing their efforts on breaking through Russia's heavily fortified defensive lines across occupied territory in southern and eastern Ukraine. To achieve its military goals, Shoigu said Russia was supplying its troops with modern weapons and offering improved training, despite reports indicating Russian troops lack advanced training and are low on weapons. Still, "given the durability of the Ukrainian resistance and its long history of pushing Russia back, the U.S. and Western powers do not believe that this will be a short war," CBS News reports. Question marks and suspicions surround the shooting down Wednesday of a Russian military transport plane that was carrying 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war and nine Russians.
And, nevertheless, the Nazi Kiev regime took this step, pursuing the goal to blame Russia for the destruction of the Ukrainian military. "This may indicate deliberate actions by Russia aimed at creating a threat to the life and safety of prisoners," it alleged. Ukraine's intelligence agency said it still did not have reliable and comprehensive information about who was on board and the number of passengers. "It is obvious that the Russians are playing with the lives of Ukrainian prisoners, with the feelings of their relatives and with the emotions of our society," he said.

Could we be headed towards a world war? — Jakob
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. 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.

“The narrative is the great struggle of the Cold War,” he said, a framing that has helped to attract new recruits. Perhaps Italian analyst Lucio Caracciolo was the most pessimistic of all. “This war will last indefinitely, with long pauses for cease-fires,” he said. At the same time, election season in the United States — Ukraine’s most important backer — stands to spur arguments that a war in Europe of unknown duration is a costly nuisance for America. 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.

Brendan Cole is a Newsweek Senior News Reporter based in London, UK. Hein Goemans Well, as you say, they have the manpower base, so they can do a mobilisation. Ukraine's counteroffensive is likely to make some progress in the remainder of this year, Barrons said — but nowhere near enough to end the occupation. Retired Maj. Gen. Patrick Donahoe, a former commander of the U.S. The problems could extend beyond Ukraine, he said, arguing that Europe could face another wave of immigrants from African and Middle Eastern countries previously reliant on grain exports from Ukraine if the war continued to disrupt maritime exports.
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. 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.

The costs of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
The Pentagon declined to say whether the GLSDB will be used to attack Russian targets in Crimea. The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington told Defense News that Ukraine would not strike Russian territory with longer-range weapons pledged by the United States. And the near-total control of information by the government is making dissent difficult. “Those who are against the war have left, and those who remain are adapting,” Meister said. 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. The challenge now is training and equipping an armored force big enough and sophisticated enough to envelop Russia’s fighting force.


As a result, Russia essentially stopped flying fighter jets over Ukraine. Numbers are hard to come by, but Russia had an estimated 1,500 fighter jets before the war began and still has the vast majority of them, probably 1,400 or more. A year ago, most everyone expected Russia to dominate the skies with its much larger and more modern air force. https://etextpad.com/ . is also training about 100 Ukrainians on the Patriot anti-missile system in Oklahoma. The Western countries have gone from training the Ukrainians on specific systems to training larger units on how to carry out coordinated attacks.

Russia's at war with Ukraine. Here's how we got here
After liberating a handful of villages in the summer, Ukrainian and Russian forces have been caught in largely attritional battles, with neither side making significant gains. To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here. You can get in touch with Brendan by emailing or follow on him on his X account @brendanmarkcole. Brendan joined Newsweek in 2018 from the International Business Times and well as English, knows Russian and French. 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. 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.

"The only way I can foresee the Ukraine war possibly ending in 2024 is if Vladimir Putin dies," Beth Knobel, professor of communications and media studies at Fordham University, and former CBS News Moscow bureau chief, told Newsweek. The statements suggest the west believes Ukraine cannot achieve a rapid military breakthrough despite the anticipated arrival of fresh Nato-standard arms, while officials in the country have continued to call for rapid help. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has warned it could last for years, while Western intelligence agencies have reportedly said Russia’s combat capabilities could be depleted in the coming months.
"The guns are talking now, but the path of dialogue must always remain open," said UN Secretary General António Guterres. President Macron of France has spoken to President Putin on the phone. And, surprisingly, Russian and Ukrainian officials have met for talks on the border with Belarus. But, by agreeing to the talks, Putin seems to at least have accepted the possibility of a negotiated ceasefire.


"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. Ukraine's counteroffensive is likely to make some progress in the remainder of this year, Barrons said — but nowhere near enough to end the occupation.

In his first major speech on defence, Grant Shapps said the country was moving from a "post war to a pre-war world". We asked three military analysts how they think events may unfold in the coming 12 months. Ukraine, after all, is situated at the doorstep of the European Union and NATO, both of which have a vested interest in ensuring that the country’s sovereignty is maintained and that Russia’s aggression is curtailed. It did not specifically reference the aircraft which crashed earlier Wednesday, which Russia said was carrying 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war and nine Russians. Russian prisoners exchanges will continue, a senior Russian official said Thursday, despite Wednesday's plane crash that saw 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war killed, alongside nine Russians, prompting further tension and hostility between Moscow and Kyiv.
Maybe Russia cannot provide enough troops to cover such a vast country. Ukraine's defensive forces transform into an effective insurgency, well-motivated and supported by local populations. And then, perhaps after many years, with maybe new leadership in Moscow, Russian forces eventually leave Ukraine, bowed and bloodied, just as their predecessors left Afghanistan in 1989 after a decade fighting Islamist insurgents. The recent arms donations — Kyiv still wants fighter aircraft and long-range tactical missiles — are predicated on the assumption they’ll force Moscow to end its invasion and begin negotiations because military costs are too high. That objective has coexisted with an expectation that Putin’s government will probably never stop fighting, as losing the war could spell the end to his political power.

How can you possibly believe that is true, particularly if he demonstrates that he can stand up to Nato and the west? Ukrainian forces have adopted a more defensive stance as circumstances dictate; a senior army general warned last week that front-line Ukrainian troops face artillery shortages and have scaled back some military operations because of a shortfall of foreign assistance. "Unfortunately, there is a very real chance that the Russo-Ukraine war will last well into 2024 and possibly beyond," he said. To train and equip that larger army would inevitably require more money. 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."
President Putin could seek to regain more parts of Russia's former empire by sending troops into ex-Soviet republics like Moldova and Georgia, that are not part of Nato. Mr Putin could declare Western arms supplies to Ukrainian forces are an act of aggression that warrant retaliation. He could threaten to send troops into the Baltic states - which are members of Nato - such as Lithuania, to establish a land corridor with the Russian coastal exclave of Kaliningrad. Joe Gould was the senior Pentagon reporter for Defense News, covering the intersection of national security policy, politics and the defense industry. 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.

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