Notes

Ukraine war: Three ways the conflict could go in 2024
“And there was a proxy war overlaid onto it,” Morris told Al Jazeera, referring to the US support for Iraq in furtherance of its own interests in the Middle East. The war in Ukraine assumed international dimensions the moment Russian armoured columns rolled across the border in February 2022. A conflict where a major nuclear power and energy exporter violated the sovereignty of a country that is a keystone of global food security was never going to be contained to just two countries. In explaining why, Reiter pointed to “the heavy diplomatic costs of [Russia] using nuclear weapons, the lack of military utility of using nuclear weapons,” and the risk that such use would “increase NATO military involvement” in the war. Timothy Snyder, a historian of Eastern Europe at Yale, told me he stands by an assessment he made in October in which he similarly argued that a Russian nuclear detonation was highly unlikely.

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 challenge now is training and equipping an armored force big enough and sophisticated enough to envelop Russia’s fighting force. Either side may act boldly if it winds up on the ropes and needs an exit strategy. Ukraine, Jensen suggested, might try a spectacular special operation to assassinate a Kremlin official, or Russia could decide to use — or simply test — nuclear weapons. 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.

We asked three military analysts how they think events may unfold in the coming 12 months. It could lead Russia to scale back, maybe even recognize this was a bad idea, perhaps going all the way out of the country or at least going back to the eastern provinces. Carl-Oskar Bohlin asked the public "have you considered whether you have time to join a voluntary defence organisation? If not - get moving!" His remarks were backed up by the country's top military commander, who said Sweden should prepare itself mentally. With just three UK-provided Storm Shadow cruise missiles, they have forced the commander of the Black Sea Fleet to withdraw a third of his fleet from Sevastopol. While this scenario might appear positive for Ukraine, with Russia becoming a pariah state at a global level and withdrawing after a costly invasion, Ukraine would be "devastated" in the process, the strategists said.
Countries on the EU's (and NATO's) eastern flank like Poland, Romania and the Baltic states, all of which have seen their NATO deployments bolstered in recent weeks, are extremely nervous about the potential for the conflict to spill over into their own territories. In this scenario, the strategists noted that a Ukrainian insurgency could force "a significant, sustained human and financial toll on Russia" as it would be required to devote far more of its resources over a much longer period of time than it had anticipated. In the meantime, NATO countries "would likely provide covert but very robust defensive assistance to the Ukrainian resistance." Resistance to Russian forces is likely to get tougher as the war progresses and Russia pulls out the stops to seize more territory.

UK citizen army: Preparing the 'pre-war generation' for conflict
Third, since there are not free and fair elections, there is no way other than mass mobilisation and revolution for the Russian people to overthrow Putin. Yes, that war is Europe’s biggest in a generation, but it’s not Europe’s alone. The pain it’s producing extends to people in faraway lands already barely surviving and with no way to end it.

For now, at least, Ukraine's allies are standing firmly beside it, saying they will support it "whatever it takes" while Russia too is "nowhere near giving up," Barrons said. Maybe Russia cannot provide enough troops to cover such a vast country. Russia began the war with what seemed to be a massive advantage by any imaginable measure—from gross domestic product (GDP) to numbers of warplanes, tanks, artillery, warships, and missiles. But the idea that Ukraine can be pressured into some kind of peace is “incorrect” and “denies Ukraine their agency”, said Branislav Slantchev, a professor of politics at the University of California, San Diego, and a specialist in war negotiations and how conflicts end. As a consequence of the resilience of the brave people of Ukraine, and with the support of the vast of majority of this Forum, Ukraine remains resolute in the face of aggression and continues to thwart Russia’s malign intentions. Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, also called for sending long-range missiles to Ukraine alongside advanced Gray Eagle and Reaper drones.
The forecasting firm Good Judgment’s superforecasters, a global network of about 180 experts in various fields with a strong track record, tend to “see a long slog coming” in Ukraine, CEO Warren Hatch told me. Some of the superforecasters, however, point to key differences between this war and past conflicts that they believe could produce a faster resolution—including the degree to which the West is arming Ukraine and punishing Russia economically. The conflict is “already a long war when compared to other interstate conflicts, and wars of this kind tend to cluster as either being relatively short—lasting no more than weeks or a few months—or averaging several years in duration,” Kofman told me. The Center for Strategic and International Studies has found that since 1946, more than half of interstate wars like the one in Ukraine have ended in less than a year, and that when such wars persist for more than a year, they last more than a decade on average. 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.

Costs of war
The overall effect means Finland can muster one of Europe's largest armies. The size of its active armed forces is only 19,000 personnel, but it can call on another 238,000 reserves. In Sweden and Norway, conscription is partial - not everyone gets drafted. But it boosts the strength of the professional armed forces, which is often relatively small. Conscription requires young men and women to serve for a limited time in uniform. It means that some of the population will have had some military training - and can then be assigned to reserve units should war break out.

The Russian president does control additional chunks of Ukrainian territory, but he may hope to find some way of easing Western sanctions and also avoiding being wholly dependent on China. The continued success of the Ukrainian army might damage the confidence of the Russian forces to challenge the state of affairs, while Ukraine would feel obliged to prevent a new wave of civilian deaths. That could end up looking something like the Korean peninsula, with a demilitarised zone between Ukrainian and Russian-controlled territory, or a grinding perpetual conflict that flares up and down, eventually resulting in an uneasy truce.
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. 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.


With just three UK-provided Storm Shadow cruise missiles, they have forced the commander of the Black Sea Fleet to withdraw a third of his fleet from Sevastopol. It is in a fight for its survival and understands what Russia will do if it stops. 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. What happens on the battlefield becomes ultimately only the symptom of that struggle. Russia lacks the equipment and trained manpower to launch a strategic offensive until spring 2025, at the earliest. It would be wrong to say that the front lines in Ukraine are stalemated, but both sides are capable of fighting each other to a standstill as they each try to take strategic initiatives.


It is important that we, as a collective organisation of responsible states, reflect on the reality of this point because Russia is keen that this brutal action becomes lost in the noise of diplomatic obfuscation and a sense of normality. Earlier today, a Russian official said air defences had thwarted a drone attack on the Slavneft-YANOS oil refinery in the city of Yaroslavl. Moscow has claimed its forces have taken control of the village of Tabaivka in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region. US-based thinktank the Institute for the Study of War said it had seen continued reports that Russia had not been able to produce missiles and artillery ammunition at pre-war levels for its own forces to use - making it unlikely to be able to export arms at pre-war levels. Hungary has signalled it is ready to compromise on EU funding for Ukraine - after Brussels reportedly prepared to sabotage its economy if it did not comply. Meanwhile, Moscow has claimed its forces have taken control of the village of Tabaivka in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region.


The morale of the Ukrainians remained high and their military tactics adept. By https://ambitious-camel-g3r4ks.mystrikingly.com/blog/when-will-the-war-in-ukraine-end-russia-ukraine-war-news of March, Russia had lost tanks and aircraft worth an estimated $5 billion, not to speak of up to a quarter of the troops it had sent into battle. Its military supply system proved shockingly inept, whether for repairing equipment or delivering food, water, and medical supplies to the front.


Russia is keeping those fighter jets grounded for now and is attacking with cruise and ballistic missiles, as well as drones. Ukraine shoots most of these down with its air defense missiles. For Ukraine, the problem is it's running low on these missiles. If it runs out, then Russia could unleash its fighting planes. This Swedish Air Force handout image from March 2, 2022, shows Russian fighter jets violating Swedish airspace east of the Swedish Baltic Sea island of Gotland.

This week, Mr Putin put his nuclear forces on a higher level of alert. He uses Russia's internal security forces to suppress that opposition. But, by agreeing to the talks, Putin seems to at least have accepted the possibility of a negotiated ceasefire. Then there are all those websites to check out, their color-coded maps and daily summaries catching that conflict’s rapid twists and turns.
The Wagner mutiny, and Mr Prigozhin's denunciation of the Kremlin's justifications for the war have, they said, removed what remained of Mr Putin's chances of hanging on. 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. However, it is hard to imagine Russia striking very far west, given the painfully slow advance around Bakhmut and the catastrophic attempt to capture Vuhledar. Currently, western intelligence estimates Russia is taking 1,000 casualties a day.

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