Notes

How? and Does? the War in Ukraine End: The Need for a Grand Strategy
In World War I, a poorly motivated and provisioned Russian army collapsed, helping bring down an out-of-touch czar. While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visits frontline troops, Putin is mostly hidden from view far from any fighting. No surprise that morale of Ukrainian soldiers is strong and that of Russians is weak. The conflict has lasted longer than many regional wars, and no victory or retreat is in sight. Predictions merit only guarded confidence when so many have proven wrong, e.g., that Kyiv could fall within days or Russia would quickly gain air superiority over Ukraine. Russian nationalist voices have already expressed skepticism in Russia's ability to launch a successful offensive, but Ukraine's defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, says Moscow could "try something" to mark the anniversary of its initial invasion.

While no one can provide definitive answers, academic research on war gives us some insights into how the conflict in Ukraine might unfold. A ceasefire would give the Ukrainians a reprieve without backing Mr Putin into a corner, preventing a possible escalation in which he resorts to extreme measures such as attacks on Western energy infrastructure or the use of nuclear weapons. As long as his military avoids total collapse, and he believes there is a chance of political change in the West, Putin will likely keep sacrificing Russians to stay in the fight. An effective grand strategy requires planning for at least another year of major combat and the possibility of further years to come. Most likely a new diplomatic effort would start with a third party initiative.
And Ukrainians were putting a priority on liberating territory and that required a land offensive in some shape or form. 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. Ukraine's air defenses have been surprisingly effective against Russia's air force. Wars require the tacit approval and support of those on the home front. Regardless of a country’s government style, a leader is still dependent upon the support of a group of people, or coalition, to stay in power. Vladimir Putin depends on oligarchs, the Russian mafia and the military for his survival.

How will the war in Ukraine end? The potential paths forward in Vladimir Putin's ill-conceived invasion
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. There seems to be some degree of sensitivity in Ukraine to Russia's claims it's waging a proxy war with the West over Ukraine. A lot of the Ukrainians I've talked to, while they appreciate the Western weapons supplies, say this is their war to fight. 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. The invasion has been a disaster for President Vladimir Putin and in order to justify it at home he at least has to take control of Ukraine's Donbas region, after which he can falsely claim that the army saved Russian citizens persecuted by Ukraine. As Russian tactics become more aggressive, the Ukrainian people are paying ever higher costs.

NATO does not want a full-scale war in Europe, and Russian President Vladimir Putin knows he would lose a conflict with a 30-member military alliance led by the Americans. A year ago, most everyone expected Russia to dominate the skies with its much larger and more modern air force. The U.S. 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. Ukrainian replacement troops go through combat training on Feb. 24 in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.


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. And that has direct consequences for the future of the war in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russian demands for Ukraine’s demilitarisation and neutrality are a “non-starter”, according to Slantchev. Polls in Ukraine show that the public overwhelmingly rejects concessions to Russia.

When will the war in Ukraine end? Experts offer their predictions.
This challenges any firm commitment to implementing programs and contracts needed to provide the personnel, readiness, modernization, and war reserves they require. Depending on how long the war lasts, it remains far from certain whether lawmakers will keep funding Ukraine aid packages. Congress provided more than $100 billion in aid to Kyiv since Russia invaded last year, including $61.4 billion in military aid.

Gen Sanders said that within the next three years the British Army needed to be 120,000 strong with the addition of reserves. In a June article by Sergei Karaganov, an established ultra-nationalist analyst, which I discussed in October, most interest was in his urging Putin to take more nuclear risks (advice rejected by Putin). Children look out from a carriage window as a train prepares to depart from a station in Lviv, Ukraine, on March 3, 2022. All too often, however, they turn into enduring struggles, and wars of attrition like the war Russia is now inflicting on Ukraine involve far more than military casualties.
The most strategically important part of Ukraine that remains occupied by Russia is Crimea, which is what we call the "decisive terrain". The military course of this war in 2024 will be determined in Moscow, Kyiv, Washington, Brussels, Beijing, Tehran and Pyongyang more than in Avdiivka, Tokmak, Kramatorsk or any of the devastated battlefields along the frontlines. 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.

Where exactly is the U.S. aid money coming from? Is this an open-ended budget line? — Trevor
The immediate need is for Ukraine to win the fight, or at least check Russian advances, but it is all too clear that Ukraine may need sustained military and civil aid for years to come. In addition, it will need massive aid in economic recovery once the fighting ends. NATO needs to make a massive effort to rebuild its forces to deter Russia from any further military adventures. Over-optimistic rhetoric aside, the United States and its strategic partners recognize this. https://desertoption93.bloggersdelight.dk/2024/02/10/has-putins-war-failed-and-what-does-russia-want-from-ukraine-4/ are rushing to try to provide the right kind of military and financial support Ukraine needs to survive and have any chance of pushing Russian forces and occupiers out of Eastern Ukraine. No grand strategy for the Ukraine war can have meaning unless Ukraine can win its near-term battles at the military level, and this is only part of the story.

When we first spoke, in early September, Goemans predicted a protracted conflict. This means the United States and its partners need to look beyond the current battlefield. Or Mr Putin could resort to more-drastic measures, including the use of nuclear weapons, Dr Oliker warns. 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 Russian air force - which has played a low-key role so far - launches devastating airstrikes.
And then, in the weeks after Goemans and I first spoke, events accelerated rapidly. Ukraine launched a remarkably successful counter-offensive, retaking large swaths of territory in the Kharkiv region and threatening to retake the occupied city of Kherson. Putin, as predicted, struck back, declaring a “partial mobilization” of troops and staging hasty “referendums” on joining the Russian Federation in the occupied territories. The partial mobilization was carried out in a chaotic fashion, and, as at the beginning of the war, caused tens of thousands of people to flee Russia. There were sporadic protests across the nation, and these threatened to grow in size.

In his self-assessment, Phillips O’Brien concludes that he was too optimistic in assuming that the US and its allies would transfer the long-range systems necessary to attack and disrupt the supply lines behind enemy lines. But it has not defined what it means, in this context, for the war to be “over.” Must there be a formal peace treaty? Meanwhile, any prospect of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine look slim despite efforts to bring both sides to the negotiating table.
Ukraine has also shown that it is a much stronger partner than Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. It has its own internal failures, as its recent anticorruption drives have shown. However, Ukraine has shown that it is more united, better governed, and more able to fight on its own. In response, companies on both sides of the Atlantic announced plans to restart production lines for artillery shells and other weapons considered somewhat arcane until recently.


But he said even that is not enough - so the Army should be designed to expand rapidly "to enable the first echelon, resource the second echelon, and train and equip the citizen army that must follow". 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. Finland, Nato's newest member and a country which has an 800-mile border with Russia, has wider conscription.


The latter might be deterred in part by NATO nuclear maneuvers or by Chinese, Indian, or other international opposition. Given the pattern of missile attacks to date, and the development of hypersonic and other potentially dual-capable, long-range strike systems on both sides, it might well lead both sides to deploy larger longer-range precision strike systems to deter or pressure the other side. It might well revive reliance on active theater nuclear forces at the same time. It would probably leave sanctions and trade barriers intact and fail to give Russia and Europe any clear basis for pulling back from a posture of mutual distrust and conducting at least the low-level equivalent of economic and political warfare.

My Website: https://desertoption93.bloggersdelight.dk/2024/02/10/has-putins-war-failed-and-what-does-russia-want-from-ukraine-4/